I won’t pretend to understand how you could care for her, Benjy had said. But . . . I accept it.

Well, I don’t, Ayla remembered thinking. I don’t accept it. I’ll never accept it.

“The lines are so faint,” she murmured, tapping the center of Crier’s palm.

Crier didn’t answer for a long moment. She seemed to be holding her breath. “Lines?” she said finally.

“On your palm.” Ayla held up her own hand. “See, mine are deeper. More defined. The head line, the heart line, I forget the rest. Some people think the lines on your palm predict how your life will go. How long you’ll live. How happy you’ll be.”

“I see.” Crier looked down at her palm, tilting her hand back and forth in the firelight, as if trying to reveal some hidden lines. “What does a nearly blank palm mean, then?” She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “A blank future? Only the faintest happiness?”

“Nah,” said Ayla. “If I believed in that kind of thing—which I don’t, really—I’d say a blank palm is like a blank page. A whole book of blank pages. You’re a storyteller. I bet you could fill them with something.”

“Ah, so I write the lines myself,” said Crier. “That’s not such a bad fate.”

“Not bad at all.”

“What does your palm say?”

“You know,” Ayla said, lips quirking, “I’m not actually sure. I think this one”—she took one of Crier’s fingers and guided it to her own palm, tracing it over the topmost line, right below her calluses—“is the head line. Maybe. Mine’s kind of short.” She frowned. “A short head line. Does that mean I’m a fool?”

Crier smiled, small but real, nose crinkling. “You know more than I do.”

“My heart line’s short, too. Am I a heartless fool?”

“To be fair, everything about you is short.”

Ayla’s jaw dropped. “You take that back.”

Crier shook her head. The smile had faded from her lips, but it glowed like candlelight in her eyes, gone dark again since she’d turned from the fire.

“Not all of us can be beanpoles,” Ayla said, with a mock scowl. She went to pull her hand away, but Crier caught it. And just like that, Ayla’s breath hitched in her throat, and the words left her, and she could have sworn her entire being had narrowed to that small point of contact, the place where Crier’s fingers were curled loosely around her own. The wanting swelled inside her, blooming like peonies. In her ribs. Between her lungs. Beneath her sternum.

Crier’s grin had faded. She was staring down at their joined hands, brow furrowed.

“What?” Ayla whispered.

“I want to . . .” Crier brushed her thumb almost absentmindedly across Ayla’s knuckles. She shook her head. “Tell me more about your lessons with Lady Dear,” Crier said in a rush. “Or your friend, the boy with the curly hair. Or your history. Your life. Those weeks in Thalen. The things you’ve done. The things you haven’t. Whatever you want to tell me, please tell me that.”