Allissa
The garden had become Lyra’s kingdom, and we were all merely permitted to live in it.
She stood in the middle of the lawn in a yellow dress already stained with grass, armed with the bubble wand Eira had enchanted for her last birthday. Each bubble drifted out shimmering in colors that didn’t entirely belong to this world, and Lyra chased them with the single-minded ferocity she brought to everything, which was to say she hunted them like prey.
Squall lounged on the garden bench with the careless ease only a dragon could manage, watching her with open amusement. Eira sat beside him, her hand resting in his, sunlight catching the silver and blue ribbons braided through her hair. Three years of mated life had softened nothing about either of them and gentled everything.
“Your dau
