So fucking beautiful.
70
Maren
I’d forgotten our rings until I’d woken to a bizarre canvas of words inside my head, each one a swipe of paint I hadn’t dipped my own brush in, until my mind began making words that mixed with the foreign ones, the canvas becoming so blurred with thought that whatever art might have been there muddied into a puddle of mucky gray.
“Stop. Stop, stop, stop,” Kye said, fingertips rubbing the sides of his eyes. “Say what you want to say out loud.”
“Fine.”
“What’s on your mind, Leihani?”
“I need to talk to Selena.”
“Now?”
“Well. Today.”
Kye rolled off the bed, feet hitting the floor.
I chewed my lip. “When did you put your ring back on?”
He sent me a slow look over his shoulder, thrusting his head through the hem of his black shirt.
I immediately regretted the view that shirt cost me.
His smile brightened.
“Answer the question,” I snapped at him.
After you left, he thought slowly, testing his inner voice for a semblance of control.I was here in the palace. I didn’t want anyone to see me without it, especially with you gone. I forgot I was wearing it, Leihani. I’m sorry.
“Don’t be sorry.” I sent my fingers under my hairline, scratching the side of my head in thought.I forgot I was wearing mine, too.
Our eyes met, each of us suddenly shy.
No more secrets.A nervous chuckle bounded in my ears.
No more secrets. And no more privacy, either.
You don’t have to think so rudely.
I narrowed my eyes. “How inMihauna’sname do I thinkpolitely?”
Think positive thoughts.
“You little cockroach,” I spat, earning a highly offended look from him. “Did it really take you twenty seconds to figure out how to decide which thoughts to share with me?”
I was taught from a young age to mask my thoughts, whereas you take no issue in parading yours wherever you go, glaring at everyone like they’ve generally arrived to intentionally exist in your way and hinder the most mundane of your daily tasks.
“I do not.”
Kye grinned, and it was the strangest, most satisfying thing in the world to hear his voice without watching his mouth move.You do. It’s one of the things I admire most about you.
I shoved a fist into my hip, nothing to retort at that.Let’s go, lout.
You could always take it off.
