“I think they know I don’t like them,” I say, preferring not to admit that I’m a little afraid of them.

“Why don’t you like them?”

“Other than the fact that they smell like a pit of dead bodies, I was attacked by a dog when I was five.” I press my finger to my lips where a faint scar remains from the attack. “I don’t even really like to be around the nice ones.”

She looks at my lips a lot longer than I expect, and I want to lean in and kiss her, but one of her hounds barks, making us jump.

“Go!” Anora commands, pointing to the woods. The hounds’ growls turn into whimpers, and they sulk away, melding with the dark.

“Come on.” I grab her hand. This is the most I have touched her since I met her, and I’m soaking up every bit of it—the feel of her fingers laced with mine, the heat of her skin, the faint blush that colors her cheeks almost every time she looks at me.

“What did you want to show me?” she asks as we step through a curtain of willow branches. “Oh.”

We’re at the lake, far away from light and anything that might pollute the natural beauty of the landscape. The water is so calm and so dark, it mirrors the star-clustered sky. There’s a faint breeze picking up the smell of roses. It envelops me and makes me shiver.

“It’s beautiful here,” she whispers.

She’s beautiful.

The moonlight spills over her delicate nose and full lips. Her fingers are still twined with mine. It’s strange, standing next to this girl who had, just hours earlier, wielded the Thread of Fate as her weapon.

“The lake is one of my favorite places. Being near the water, it helps me think.”

“Do you come here often?”

“Yeah, mostly after patrol.”

“How often do you patrol?”

“Most nights,” I say with a sigh. “Well, except recently. I’ve been…excused.”

She doesn’t ask why. We are quiet for a moment, and then she says, “At Lily’s memorial, you said you’d been training since you were twelve. Training to do what, exactly?”

“To fight and defend,” I say. “Being anything other than a shadow knight really isn’t an option when you’re Valryn. It’s just what you do. We take the oath at twelve, then we begin training. We learn our history and then our enemies. We learn to fight, and we learn weaponry. Our last year, we are given a patrol and tested. This is my last year. If the elites think I’m ready, I’ll be ranked and given an assignment as a full-fledged shadow knight.”

“I want to learn to control the thread,” she says.

“We can teach you.”

My fingers tighten around hers, but she lets go, and I feel the loss of her immediately.