Page 34 of Love & Letter Charms
He turned Onyx toward Solstice Hall, and the pegasus responded instantly. Behind them, another set of wings beat against the morning air. His companion keeping pace, though barely. Ryden smiled to himself. Evryn had never been much of a morning rider. Though, to be fair, neither had he.
As they approached the palace grounds, Ryden felt the familiar tingle of the protective wards, invisible barriers that existed in layers around Solstice Hall. The magic recognized him instantly, a warm pulse of acknowledgment as he passed through.
He tossed a glance over his shoulder and saw Evryn and Cobalt—now falling slightly behind—pass through the barrier a heartbeat later. As an invited guest who’d flown these skies countless times over the years of their friendship, Evryn would experience only a brief shimmer of resistance before the wards recognized and admitted him.
Ryden guided Onyx down toward the landing meadow, a stretch of perfectly maintained grass that sparkled with morning dew. A scattering of palace gnomes scrambled to clear the field, arms waving as they hurried to rescue their tiny wheelbarrows of glimmering dew-crystals from the imminent landing.
Onyx touched down with a soft, rhythmic thud of hooves against the damp grass, the sound muffled and fleeting before he slowed to a graceful halt, wings folding against his sides. Beside him, Evryn’s midnight-blue mount landed with equal grace, though his rider swayed slightly in the saddle.
“Getting slow in your advanced age?” Ryden called out as he dismounted. “I seem to recall you claiming you could outfly me blindfolded.”
Evryn slid from Cobalt’s back with a groan that seemed to come from his very soul. “That was before you sent your deranged messenger pixie to assault me before dawn. The vindictive little creature didn’t just wake me—it poked me. In the cheek. Repeatedly.”
“It isn’tthatearly,” Ryden countered, though it was likely even the gossip birds weren’t awake yet.
Evryn rubbed his face, then shot Ryden a baleful look. “No one should be conscious at this hour, including you. The sun itself is barely awake. I’m fairly certain that pixie was still half asleep when it jabbed me. It kept yawning between pokes.”
Ryden found himself smiling despite the chaos in his chest. Indeed, he had never been fond of early mornings. Their rides typically happened somewhere around midnight, when thepalace slept and the world felt suspended between one day and the next. Those dark hours had always felt safer somehow. Less observed, less performed.
But he had woken early this morning and been unable to return to sleep.
After the previous night’s endless dinner—smiling and charming and deflecting while his mind churned with thoughts of L’s silence—he’d escaped to his chambers and discovered her letter waiting.
Relief and joy had flooded through him like sunlight breaking through storm clouds, like being pulled from drowning when his lungs had already begun to burn. After a week of agony, of checking the box obsessively, of writing increasingly desperate letters into what felt like a void, she’d finally, finally answered. At that moment, Ryden wouldn’t have cared if an entire flock of gossip birds had witnessed him cheering at his ceiling.
L had replied. She wanted to keep writing. She needed him, even if only in this limited way.
He’d responded immediately, trying to contain his elation enough to write something coherent, something that wouldn’t scare her off again. Then he’d attempted sleep, but his mind wouldn’t quiet. Her words kept echoing:certain events are unfolding in my life, events that require me to be brave, day after day. What was happening in her life? What was demanding such courage from someone who insisted she possessed none?
Sleep had finally claimed him, but it hadn’t lasted. By the time the first birds began their tentative morning songs, he was awake once again. The walls of his chamber had felt too close, the air too thick. He needed movement, needed sky, needed to outrun the tangle of emotions her letter had awakened.
So he’d summoned a messenger pixie—the poor creature had indeed been half asleep, blinking slowly at him as he’d given it instructions—and sent it to wake the one person he might at last dare to confide in about the secret correspondence that had gone on for almost a year.
When the first rush of elation at her reply had faded, a quieter ache had taken its place. She hadn’t responded the way he’d desperately hoped she would. She hadn’t admitted to feeling what he felt, hadn’t agreed to meet, hadn’t offered him anything beyond the continuation of their strange, suspended relationship.
And in his reply, he had not lied to her. Hedidwant to be whatever she needed, and he would continue to be so for as long as possible. The problem which had crept forward from the corners of his restless mind and grown sharper with every sleepless hour was that this arrangement could not continue forever. It could not even continue past this Season if he was expected to choose one of the Crown Court ladies. The conversation with Evryn at the Opening Ball haunted him—his friend’s belief that he might find it difficult to be faithful once wed.
But he fully intended to be. Which meant he could not continue this correspondence with L if he married someone else. Despite what he’d written about being friends, about pretending his confession never happened, the truth pulsed beneath every carefully casual line: he loved her. With a certainty that should have been impossible for someone he’d never met.
He could not maintain that love, couldn’t nurture it through letters, while pledged to another. It would be a betrayal of both women.
Which left him in a most wretched predicament: the Season slipping through his fingers while he was expected to choose a bride from among women who stirred nothing in him, while theonly one whodidhad made it heartbreakingly clear she did not wish to know him beyond their letters.
“I think I am in love with someone.”
The words tumbled free before Ryden could reconsider them, falling into the morning air with all the grace of a stone into still water.
Evryn, who’d been adjusting Cobalt’s saddle, froze. “I beg your pardon?”
“I said?—”
“No, I heard you. I’m simply trying to process the impossibility of what I heard.” Evryn turned to face him fully, his expression caught between amusement and disbelief. “Love? You? So soon? The Crown Court began only yesterday. Don’t tell me you’ve already fallen for one of them.”
Around them, the world carried on in perfect indifference. Birds twittered, and two garden pixies swung merrily from one of Onyx’s stirrups, chattering in delight as though nothing whatsoever of consequence had just been spoken.
Ryden cleared his throat, tugged slightly at the collar of his riding jacket, and tried to pretend this conversation wasn’t already making him infinitely uncomfortable. “It isn’t one of them.”
Evryn’s eyebrows climbed toward his hairline. “Then who?—”
