Unlike her mother and brother, Arya is a hotheaded chatterbox. Physically, she looks like a younger replica of her mother: same light brown hair, slight stature, full mouth and high cheekbones. Beyond that, they are nothing alike.
“Did you get to go clubbing?” Arya asks me. “I can’t decide whether it looks fun or terrifying. I’d love to have the chance to find out.”
“No.” I haul myself up a switchback, lungs burning. I’m starting to think my companions are part mountain goat.
“Pity. Probably my brother’s fault.”
“No comment.” I gasped. Lorcan glanced back at me, half-concerned, half exasperated.
“It’s not very fair that my brother has been out traveling the world while I’m stuck here in boring old Tenáho. I’d have enjoyed being outside Auralia. Unlike my stick-in-the-mud brother.”
“I thought you liked it here,” Lorcan said.
“It’s okay. I didn’t run away screaming from it like you did. Not that you ever invited me anywhere. After we moved here, I never even got to see Midwinter at the Sun Temple, or the Midsummer bacchanal, much less Paris. The Louvre,” she sighed. “London.”
“By all means, come to the Harvest Festival,” I panted, before remembering her presence there would be a given if we were, in fact, marrying. Lorcan caught my slip.
“If you miss it, I’ll never forgive you,” he added.
“Ha. Fat chance of that. Can I be one of your ladies in waiting, Princess?”
“You’d have to be a lady, Arya,” Lorcan teased.
I let the siblings snipe at one another and focused on putting one foot in front of the other. The thickly wooded forest blocks most of the sunlight. It’s still hot and I’m sweating through my last clean top and trousers.
“Hold up.” Lorcan stopped abruptly and tilted his head, listening.
“What is it?” Arya asked.
“I might be able to figure that out if you’d be quiet.”
I hid my grin by taking a drink of water. Arya gave a long-suffering sigh. Thirty seconds later, Lorcan was back, crouching low to stay out of sight. I put one finger to my lips. Arya nodded.
“Maned tiger with two cubs. We’d better take a different path.”
“You’re not going to shoot them?” Arya asked.
“No.”
“Mum won’t like that.”
“Which is why we aren’t going to tell her what we saw today, right?” Lorcan’s exasperation was countered with an affectionate ruffling of his sister’s hair. He and Arya led me down a side path.
Not long after that incident, we came to our destination: a lake nestled in a depression of rock. The view out over the valley below is spectacular.
“Worth the climb?” Lorcan asked, dropping down beside me on a section of the grassy bank.
“Ask me tomorrow.” I caught his quicksilver flash of disappointment from the corner of my eye and squeezed his arm. “It’s beautiful up here.”
He looked at me, not at the vista. “Gorgeous.”
It’s a good thing I’m already a sweaty mess—my face is already flushed from exertion. I don’t know how I managed the climb to the Temple, in retrospect. Pure determination. Or desperation to not feel so guilt-ridden and sad. It didn’t quite work as I’d hoped.
“Are you coming in or not?” Arya popped out from behind a bush wearing nothing but undergarments under a thin shift. She flung her clothes over a bush and splashed into the water.
“Is this why you brought me all the way up here?” I asked. “If I’d known, I’d have brought clothes to swim in.”
“Don’t need clothes.” Lorcan stripped off his shirt, toed off his boots and unbelted his trousers. My face went from warm to scalding as I dragged my gaze away.
