Evryn straightened, his expression shifting from curiosity to something more guarded, a flash of vulnerability crossing his features. “Did you—after we were in Dreamland and you left me asleep in the cottage?—”
“Oh, no, I would never,” she assured him. “I left before I could hear anything. Well, I’ll admit I was tempted to stay a little longer and listen, but I didn’t.”
He nodded slowly, turning his face toward the sea, expression thoughtful once more.
“What sorts of things do you dream about?” Mariselle asked. “When you’re not inadvertently trespassing in my dreamscape, that is.”
He shifted beside her, suddenly looking awkward. “Oh, a wide variety of things,” he said vaguely.
Her smile widened at his evident discomfort. “What are you hiding?”
“Nothing.” But the denial came too quickly, and the faint color in his cheeks belied his words.
“You know, in dreams, it’s exceedingly difficult to lie convincingly,” she told him, leaning sideways to bump him lightly with her shoulder. “The truth hovers on the edge of our tongues, waiting to spill free.”
“Yes, I can tell.” He rubbed his jaw, glancing at her with a sidelong look that mingled sheepish embarrassment with unmistakable warmth. “Your dreamscape appears most eager to draw a confession from me that I’m not quite ready to make.”
She laughed. “Very well then. I’ll allow you your secrets. I know it’s different when one can’t control their own dreams. Tell me about your writing instead,” she continued. “When did E. S. Twist first put quill to parchment? What inspired you to begin? Before discovering your manuscript, I never would have imagined you harbored such talent.”
“Ah, talent is it? I seem to recall you referring to my writing as ‘thinly veiled allegorical drivel.’”
She rolled her eyes. “I may have been a touch hasty in my initial assessment.”
“Mayhave been?” This time it was he who leaned over and bumped his shoulder playfully against hers. “Very well. It began as simple journaling,” he admitted, his gaze drifting toward the horizon. “A way to …” He rubbed one hand along the back of his neck. “Well, to process my frustrations at being perpetually overshadowed by my older brother’s far more significant magic.”
“More significant?” Mariselle’s brows arched in genuine astonishment. “Evryn, you reconstructed the physical parts of Dreamland. All that lumyrite shaping … it was no small feat, and was something only you could accomplish. Dreamland’s resurrection would have been impossible without your particular gifts.”
His gaze lingered on her face with an expression she couldn’t quite decipher. “I find I rather enjoy the sound of my name on your lips,” he said softly, then immediately appeared startled by his own admission. “Well, that declaration was entirely unplanned.” He looked pointedly up at the star-strewn sky, as if addressing it directly. “You really are determined to embarrass me, dreamscape.”
She laughed, a delicate flush spreading across her cheeks. “I believe youmay be missing the more significant revelation here—that neither you nor your magic are in any way inconsequential.”
Evryn drew in a deep breath, hand rising to rub awkwardly along his jaw again. “Well, be that as it may. I continued writing, but my daily observations began to transform into something else. Characters started emerging from the people around me. Fictional scenarios, invented settings.” He paused, a small, wry smile tugging at his lips. “I spent months during the quiet season working up the courage to submit my first story to the literary section of the Gilded Gazette. But then they accepted one. And then a second and a third. And I finally felt as though …” He shrugged. “As though I’d achieved something of my own.”
Mariselle nodded, watching him, understanding what he meant. “And why E. S. Twist?” she asked, curiosity warming her voice. “There must be a story behind the name.”
“It’s silly,” he demurred, shaking his head. “Ridiculous, really.”
“Tell me. I promise not to laugh.”
Evryn hesitated, then sighed in surrender. “E for Evryn, obviously. S for Secondson.” A self-deprecating smile crossed his face. “And Twist … for twisting the truth into fiction. Taking what I observe and transforming it into something new.” He glanced at her, vulnerability plain in his eyes. “I told you it was ridiculous.”
“I like it.”
“Flattery, Lady Brightcrest?” His lips curved into a smile. “I shall endeavor not to let it go straight to my head.”
“LadyBrightcrest?” she repeated with a laugh. “I see you are actively resisting the dreamscape’s invitation to openness.”
Evryn’s smile deepened, genuine warmth replacing his earlier guardedness as he leaned toward her, closing the distance between them by inches. They fell quiet then, the silence stretching between them, delicate and charged with possibility, neither willing to look away.
“Mariselle,” he said softly, and a shiver danced down her spine, because she rather liked the sound of her name on his lips too. “I am … perplexed.”
“Oh?”
“By what I witnessed earlier this evening.”
“Ah.” She withdrew slightly, the gentle warmth that had enveloped themmoments ago retreating like the tide, leaving her exposed to the chill memory of her family’s cutting remarks.
“You present yourself to the world with such fierce independence and unwavering confidence, yet in your family’s presence, those qualities seem to vanish entirely. Why do you not assert yourself with them as you do with others? Withme? Why do you endure such treatment from them when you would permit it from no one else?”
