Come closer, and I will tell you."But he forgot. He kissed her, and became lost in the exquisite sensation of his skin becoming too tight for his body. He murmured other things instead. A secret, a want, a promise. A story, in its own way.

Little Fists, what's wrong?

Kestrel atesoraba el recuerdo de la canción de Arin. Era como miel en la colmena de su corazón.

She turned to look at him, and he was already looking at her. “I’m going to miss you when I wake up,” she whispered, because she realized that she must have fallen asleep under the sun. Arin was too real for her imagination. He was a dream.“Don’t wake up,” he said.

She’d felt it before, she felt it now: the pull to fall in with him, to fall into him, to lose her sense of self.

Someone was coming through the velvet.He was pulling it wide, he was stepping onto Kestrel’s balcony—close, closer still as she turned and the curtain swayed, then stopped. He pinned the velvet against frame. He held the sweep of it high, at the level of his gray eyes, which were silver in the shadows.He was here. He had come.Arin.

A singer who refused to sing, a friend who wasn't her friend, someone who was hers and yet would never be hers. Kestrel looked away from Arin. She swore to herself that she would never look back

I want to know everything about you." So he told her. The stars, too, seemed to listen.

Her innocence was maddening. She should know. She should know what her steward had done. She should know it to be her fault whether she’d given the order or not–and whether she knew or not. Innocent? Her? Never.He did not want her to know. He did not want her to see. But:Look at me, he found himself thinking furiously at her. Look at me. She lifted her eyes, and did.