Vo’s Holy Teeth, the damned purple.

A mind-lulling euphoria rises in his chest as the trees’ glowing fronds rain down all around him, the garden path fronted by luminous violet flowers of every night-blooming variety—Xishlon roses, jasmine, creamy lilac orchids. Luminescent lavender night-lilies twine around the trees in a supple caress.

Or’myr frowns and tenses his lines in an effort to fight off the color’s enchanting lure. The lavender moon’s thrall certainly doesn’t help. Try as he might, he can’t suppress the way it prompts his heart’s most loving desires to rise. Melancholy thoughts of Tierney fill his mind, his longing to be more than a friend to her near impossible to press back.

And now that he knows she might return his interest...

Or’myr huffs out a disparaging breath and glowers at the moon only to find himself swept up anew in its intoxicating mix of purple hues. His shoulders relax slightly, as if in reluctant surrender.

It’s only one night. Would it kill you to let yourself be drawn in just a little?

Everything changes tomorrow. The most massive deployment of Vu Trin forces west since the Realm War. Or’myr considers how he’ll likely be deploying with his Black Witch cousin and her allies, including the Icaral of Prophecy and a number of Vu Trin soldiers.

Such a stunning turn of events.

A throng of purple-garbed children jostle past Or’myr, shrieking with laughter as they trail floating strings of lavender runic orbs, drumbeats sounding from the pier boardwalk before him, music bright on the air.

The Wisteria grove opens to reveal a puppet show in progress in one of the garden’s plazas, puppeteers holding a giant purple Vo’Zish dragon puppet aloft on poles above a small plum-curtained stage, purple-hued deer, lizard and frog puppets cavorting around the dragon. The puppeteers begin to weave through the audience seated on a glowing carpet of violet moss, sounds of delight rising. Nearby vendors hawk heart-shaped wreathes of purple roses and Xishlon’lure moon-necklaces sold in pairs and supposedly magicked to embolden the wearers to express the love in their hearts.

Or’myr eyes the racks of necklaces, charmed by the idea and scoffing at the same time, that familiar bitter hurt knifing through the moon’s bedazzlement. He’s never been offered a necklace and likely never will be, not with his lightning bolt kiss and Black Witch lineage. And there are couples kissing everywhere, these lower dockside gardens a notorious spot for couples to escape for secret, intimate encounters, even when this gratuitous love holiday isn’t giving them even more encouragement to be so outlandishly brazen.

Jealousy wells inside Or’myr as he passes besotted couple after couple tangled around each other in the grove’s shadows, some of the women so lovely...

Heat rises in his cheeks as a current of longing kicks up inside his lines.