flora
Safrin’s light spills over her skin like warm silk, and Flora lifts her face to it without bowing her head. The goddess hangs suspended between their ships, indulgent and gleaming, and for a heartbeat Flora lets herself simply look, lets the hum of pride and vanity and ancient amusement wash over her without flinching. This is theatre, and Safrin has always loved a stage.
Her gaze flickers sideways, just once, toward Jack. There are a thousand ways this could still go wrong. A loophole. A misstep. A flare of temper. A technicality sharp enough to cut. She knows him well enough to catalogue the possibilities in an instant. But the terms are clear now, laid bare under starlight. If she and Kaisel say nothing, if they hold steady, then the blade he’s been carrying at their throats dulls. The threat to her friends, to her family, to Torchline, gone. Or as close to gone as anything involving Jack Barclay can be.
And if he pulls anything anyway, she still has teeth. She still has an arsenal of demigods, still has the full weight of her title and her reach. So, drawing in a breath, she looks at Kai, and there’s a softness there she doesn’t try to hide, something bright and unguarded cutting cleanly through the tension as she finds his eyes and lets a small smile touch her mouth. He’s already reaching, already trusting her work, and the sight of that steadiness in him anchors something deep in her chest.
Flora extends her hand, her fingers press into its light. Warmth surges through her skin, not painful but sharp enough to steal the air from her lungs, and when she pulls her hand back a small star gleams inked into the middle finger of her right hand, delicate and precise. She turns her wrist deliberately and then holds it up, eyes lifting to Jack’s across the space between hulls, and she smiles at him—sweet, bright, almost playful—as if she’s just shown him a new ring instead of the mark of a vow that binds them both.
Her gaze flickers sideways, just once, toward Jack. There are a thousand ways this could still go wrong. A loophole. A misstep. A flare of temper. A technicality sharp enough to cut. She knows him well enough to catalogue the possibilities in an instant. But the terms are clear now, laid bare under starlight. If she and Kaisel say nothing, if they hold steady, then the blade he’s been carrying at their throats dulls. The threat to her friends, to her family, to Torchline, gone. Or as close to gone as anything involving Jack Barclay can be.
And if he pulls anything anyway, she still has teeth. She still has an arsenal of demigods, still has the full weight of her title and her reach. So, drawing in a breath, she looks at Kai, and there’s a softness there she doesn’t try to hide, something bright and unguarded cutting cleanly through the tension as she finds his eyes and lets a small smile touch her mouth. He’s already reaching, already trusting her work, and the sight of that steadiness in him anchors something deep in her chest.
Flora extends her hand, her fingers press into its light. Warmth surges through her skin, not painful but sharp enough to steal the air from her lungs, and when she pulls her hand back a small star gleams inked into the middle finger of her right hand, delicate and precise. She turns her wrist deliberately and then holds it up, eyes lifting to Jack’s across the space between hulls, and she smiles at him—sweet, bright, almost playful—as if she’s just shown him a new ring instead of the mark of a vow that binds them both.
you're under the feeling like teenagers in cars
it ain't robbing or stealing if the moment is ours
it ain't robbing or stealing if the moment is ours
