... until Miri could not help it any longer and she laughed out loud. The sound broke the game. Peder looked at her. He reached out, and she thought he meant to grab her straw or perhaps yank her hair as he used to when they were little. But her put his hand behind her head and, leaning forward, pulled her face to his. He kissed her. One long, slow kiss.

Throwing herself into learning helped Miri ignore the painful chill of solitude around her.

I let my head fall back, and I gazed into the Eternal Blue Sky. It was morning. Some of the sky was yellow, some the softest blue. One small cloud scuttled along. Strange how everything below can be such death and chaos and pain while above the sky is peace, sweet blue gentleness. I heard a shaman say once, the Ancestors want our souls to be like the blue sky.

But in a country where you hang your dead up on walls and pride whether or not a man bears a javelin more than his character, how am I to persuade you out of a war? It would be suicide for Kildenree to war on Bayern and butchery for Bayern to attack Kildenree. If you don't believe me, then send me back. Or if you don't trust me to leave, I'll return to my little room on the west wall and tend your geese, and you can be sure that on my watch no thieves will touch my flock.

Geric," she called. He turned back around. "What kind of flowers were they?" "I don't rightly know," he said. He made faltering gestures with his hands, forming their size and shape from the air. "They were yellow, and smallish, and had lots of petals." "Thank you," she said. "They were beautiful.

He smiled in a way that made me want to kiss him right on the spot. Or the lips. Whichever was closer.

Finn leaped from his horse to greet Enna, and she entwined herself into him, their arms around each other, their faces close. Thoug they did not kiss, Rin thought that the way they looked at each other was even more intimate. 'Let's get married,' Enna was saying with yearning in her voice. 'Please, let's get married right now.' Finn put his face into her neck and whispered something that made her hum.