When Yamm had showered her with a god-like amount of affection, he took his leave, making her promise to reach out to him if she needed anything. Loma now sat outside under her hawthorn tree, wrapped in a shawl to take the edge off the evening chill as she waited for Alaric. Her favorite book lay open in her lap.
The small volume of poetry with its red binding and glided pages was a gift from her father. She used to read it to him in the evenings while he watched her with love in his eyes, as if the sound of her voice reciting the same poems over and over was the most beautiful thing in the world to him.
The memory of it made her chest ache, muting the happy glow that she'd been carrying inside her since Nicasi had come to visit.
What did her father know about beauty or poetry or love? Those things were honest.
He was not.
