Casteel looked over the top of my head. “I think her name is Lyra. If that’s who I think it is. She’s a bit younger than Kieran and me, but her family is close to his.”

“Oh,” I whispered, watching them and thinking of what Kieran had once said about loving and losing someone. He’d never expounded on that, but what I’d felt from him when he spoke was the kind of anguish one felt when the person they loved was no longer in the realm of the living. It made me happy to see him with someone, even if they were just talking and laughing. Not that I would share that with him. He’d probably consider it a question.

“You know how you said it was weird to be a Queen to the wolven but not be a wolven?” Cas said after a few moments. “It made me think of how when I met you, I was looking for the Maiden, but I found a Princess, a Queen—my wife.” He laughed, and it sounded as if it were one of awe. “I don’t know. It just made me think about how you find things you never knew you needed when you’re looking for something completely opposite.”

“Or not looking at all,” I said, my nose scrunching. “Or maybe I was looking. I went to the Red Pearl that night because I wanted to live. And I found you.”

He curled his arms around me, tightening his embrace. A couple of additional moments passed as we watched the wolven around the fire. “What would you want to be doing right now if you could be doing anything? Barring seeing your brother or anything that has to do with what we need to do.”

My brows rose at the unexpected question. Letting my senses stretch out to him, I felt a boyish sense of curiosity, one that brought a grin to my face. I didn’t even have to think about it. “This. You?”

“I’m being serious,” he said.

“I am, too. I would want to be doing this—all that we’ve done today,” I said. “You?”

“The same,” he said quietly, and I knew he spoke the truth. “But with you naked and more sex.”

I laughed loudly at that because I also sensed that to be true. “I’m glad that I chose to spend right now this way.”

“Me, too.” He pressed his lips to my cheek.

I really didn’t know when we would have another day like this one, or at what point there would even be time. But I didn’t want to think of the reasons why it would probably be a while. That wasn’t how I wanted to spend right now, so I watched those dancing around the fire with avid interest, entranced by the joyous frenzy of the dark outlines of their bodies, how they moved from one partner to the next, both male and female, with the kind of reckless abandon I’d shared with Casteel in the garden. What I felt from them could only be described as a release, as if they danced to toss away the chains of what preyed on their minds and souls, and in so doing, found freedom.