FIA
I had not expected him to agree with me.
The shock of it hit somewhere beneath my ribs, sharp and sudden. I kept my face smooth anyway and I tried hard to keep my expression measured like I had planned this all along. Like his voice cutting through the chamber with those two simple words had been part of some grand design I had orchestrated from the start.
It had not been.
This was a gamble. A wild, reckless throw of dice that I thought would clatter uselessly across the floor. I thought the elders would dismiss me. I thought the Lily of the Valley delegation would stay silent or worse, object. I thought Hazel's family—because I couldn't call them mine at this point—would talk circles around my suggestion until it dissolved into nothing.
But he had spoken.
The boy from the meadows. The one with emerald eyes that kept watching me with an intensity I still felt crawling across my skin.
And now the entire room hung on that agreement like it was law.
