Status Updates From Feathers So Vicious (Court ...

Is this not what you pretended to do?” Malyr asked. “When you ran along the bailey?” “Yes, but—” “Stop pretending, Galantia,” he said. “Do it. Lean slightly forward, press your legs against him, and say, alesh.” “It’s dangerous.” “Mmm, did your mother not tell you?” he whispered with a shove of his nose at my temple. “My little white dove, so is playing with knives.”

The gulf between what I yearned to believe and what I had come to expect from him seemed impossibly vast, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was teetering on the edge of a cliff, one misstep away from a fall that would shatter me beyond repair.

“Fated only to end in emotional tragedy.” His fingers stalled in my hair, and I only now noticed the slight tremble they carried. “As it should. As it ought to. Anything other than that, Galantia, would be too great a betrayal to my family, no matter my personal… affliction.” His personal affliction.

“A bracelet. The chain of aerymel, a local artisan crafted for me, but the trinkets I chose and gathered myself.” He lifted the bracelet from my palm, letting wood and bone clank against metal. “Show me your wrist. No, the other one.”

“Yeh ash valtem skalde ya.” Something deep at my core reveled at his word. “What does it mean?” “I will forever treasure you,” he said.