Page 84 of Ties of Starlight

Didn’t Frode have other things to concern himself with?

“Then don’t criticize.”

“Are you going to tell her?”

“Hmm. I must be getting amnesia.”

Frode startled. “Your Majesty?”

Nyrunn shot him a cold, deliberate look. “I don’t recall when how I handle my marriage became any of your business.”

Frode threw his hands up and rolled his eyes. Nyrunn didn’t need his opinion. He couldn’t ruin what was finally going so well by telling her where her so-called soulmate was. Not until he’d found out what exactly it was that the witch queen had done to start this mess and get Idonea out of it. When she was free from it, maybe then he could tell her.

Or maybe not.

They knew where he was. That was enough.

He slipped into the tent right as Idonea finished doing the last button on her nightgown, no longer doing it all the way up to her neck, but letting the top of her deathmark be visible. She turned to him, a smile pulling on her lips.

This was all he’d wanted for so long.

“I was wondering where you’d gone off to. What did Frode want?”

He couldn’t risk losing this. Losing her.

“Nothing important,” Nyrunn said as he sat on the edge of the bed and began taking his shoes off.

“Huh, I’d sort of been hoping it might be about Lady Asa,” Idonea said, climbing onto the bed as she pulled out her current journal.

“What about her?”

“I think she likes him more than she’s willing to let on, that’s all,” Idonea said.

He barely held in his laughter, like she was any decent judge of that. As he finished getting ready for bed, he looked at the journal and asked, “You know, I was wondering,do you remember more about your first life in this one than in your previous ones?”

Idonea looked up. “No. I wouldn’t say so. Why?”

“I remember seeing more about it in other journals, so I was thinking of maybe taking another look at them. We’re about to be at the Constellation Pool, and there could be something useful.” He looked over his shoulder. “In freeing you from the curse.”

The bond that recently had settled into something soft and warm now went cool.

Idonea looked back down at her journal, her loose hair falling into her face and hiding it. “The memories aren’t really anything I can control. I remember what I remember in the lives I remember them in.”

“And for your first life, that is?”

Idonea huffed, looking up quickly before her eyes darted back down. “All I remember you’ve already read or heard.”

The bond flared on her end, a tight tension creeping in.

Nyrunn reached for her bag, digging out the journal from her fourth life and flipping through it. “I was thinking about what was different about your first life than some of the others. I think you wrote about the memory of you meeting Venefica’s queen. It was the first, and only time, a witch has witnessed the Cometa Couple. Do you remember anything about her?”

Idonea sighed. “She was, nice, for a witch queen, I suppose. She was fascinated by the fact I was a half-elf. We were friends.”

Nyrunn found the passage he was looking for, skimming over it, fingers resting on the pages as he said, “Here you mention she convinced you to finish the ceremony even when Olaug was already cheating on you weeks after your marriage?”

Idonea’s cheeks flushed a vibrant red as she glared at him. “He wasnot.I wrote in that memory they were rumors.”

Nyrunn raised an eyebrow, his voice dry as he said, “Really? We’re talking about the same elf you caught cheating on you red-handed last life?”

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