The Raven and the Dove (The Raven and the Dove #1) - Kaitlyn Davis Page 0,94

time? So they don’t try to wash them?”

Lyana nodded and sighed as Cassi's fingers began to part her hair, moving meticulously around the crown of her head, weaving her curls into many small sets of braids that Lyana would be able to keep for a few weeks and style easily, without requiring aid from the servants who had tried to help, but had instead made her bitter.

Without anything to do, her mind began to wander.

To her mate.

To his mother.

To the lessons and the advisors.

To the people she’d met.

And finally, to the encounter she’d told herself to ignore, because she wasn’t supposed to be thinking about him, or wondering about him, or asking about him. But she wasn’t. Not technically. Not if she played her cards right.

“What did you do today?” Lyana asked lightly, a little too lightly.

Cassi snorted behind her. “Oh nothing, just another day like any other.”

Lyana tried to glare over her shoulder without moving her head, which was a pretty difficult thing to do. “Nothing you want to talk about?”

“Not really,” Cassi responded, but her tone was too playful by half. “Not unless there’s something you want to talk about.”

“Of course not,” Lyana countered, while silently grumbling in her head.

“Because if there was something you wanted to talk about,” Cassi continued, as methodically as she worked on Lyana’s hair, “something maybe that you expressly forbade me to let you talk about, or someone rather, then we could talk about him. It’s just that you have to tell me, because otherwise I’d be defying a direct order from my princess and, well, we both know what sort of trouble I could be in if I do that.”

“No trouble you haven’t been in before,” Lyana muttered under her breath.

“What’s that?”

“Nothing."

Her tone was sweet, but against the floor, her fingers curled into fists and she bit her lips to keep from talking. Cassi began to hum quietly, an annoyingly cheerful little tune that made Lyana’s blood boil. An image gathered in her thoughts, the image of the raven as he’d rounded the corner, eyes glued to Cassi, so enthralled by her friend he’d smacked right into his own brother, the crown prince.

It shouldn’t have bothered her.

It shouldn’t have mattered.

She was supposed to forget everything about him.

But a sensation clawed at her gut, digging and digging and digging, until suddenly, the words burst up her throat as though freed from some deep, dark place and propelled themselves into the world.

“Fine, fine.” She spat the admission and raced on to the rest, “Why was he training you? What were you doing together? Why were you covered in mud? What did he say? What did you say? Is he— Are you— What—”

“Relax, Ana,” Cassi teased. “Contrary to the sordid thoughts I know are racing through your mind, the raven and I did not, in one afternoon, begin an illustrious affair behind your back.”

Tension oozed from Lyana's body, making her wings droop—in relief, this time. “You didn’t?”

“No!” Soft laughter escaped Cassi’s lips, and Lyana could envision the way she was shaking her head while the rest of her body trembled with quiet mirth.

“Then why was he teaching you swordplay?” Lyana asked. “You know, the thing you did with Luka when I wasn’t around that eventually transitioned into, well, other kinds of swordplay, if you know what I mean?”

The hands against the top of her head fell still.

Lyana winced. She hadn’t meant to bring up her brother. Not really. Not as a weapon against her friend, whose heart was fragile at the moment. The words had just slipped out.

“Cassi—” She tried to turn around.

“Don't move,” her friend chided, tugging at the strands of hair gently, yet hard enough to keep Lyana from twisting. Her voice was more somber as she continued, “I wasn’t—”

She broke off with a sad sound that made Lyana’s soul hurt for her.

“When I woke up, you were gone, and no one seemed interested in me, so I got dressed and wandered the halls for a bit," Cassi said. "Before long, I found myself at the practice yards with my bow, itching for something to do. He was by himself at the opposite side of the grass, hurling a blunt sword into a bag of beans he’d strung up to a post. The other people there seemed wary of him, watching from a distance. And he seemed very lonely, and then sort of desperate as he flung his sword to the grass and started punching the thing with his bare hands. And I