added to TBR | on my TBR | couldn’t finish it | did not enjoy | it was OK | liked it | loved it | favorite | not interested
I liked it quite a lot the first time I read it. Then a summer or two ago, I was in the mood for Maid Maleen and for Hale and decided to reread it, and it just wasn't doing it for me. Answering the question of "why would the princess do this?" with "she's insane and the maid just has to go along with it" struck me as an extremely lazy retelling strategy and offended me as a reteller. So between that and some other worldbuilding elements that I wasn't in the mood for, I didn't finish the reread. Maybe I'll give it another chance someday.
@sweetteaanddragons has gifted me the most amazing Tolkien Secret Santa gift, and I'm just sitting here still trying to get a hold of myself.
But Makalaure was a performer; he was practiced at manufacturing smiles. It was almost impossible not to return it, even with his lips still so badly chapped from the Ice that they cracked at the strain.
Finrod sees Maglor for the first time since the Ice. It doesn't go quite like he planned.
Read This is the Eye of the Hurricane on AO3 for a complex Finrod & Maglor reunited in Beleriand, and ALL the emotion, psychology, healing, and Songs of Power.
In a game of wits between Eugenides and Batman, who would win?
Eugenides would win and lose, because it would be close to an even match except Eugenides would gain the upper hand because Batman would be distracted by the fact that a dark-haired teen boy was off being weird about social rules, and then Eugenides would win the game but also find himself adopted/mentored/fostered very suddenly and I’m not sure he’d feel about that.
For your prompt event: Merlin accidentally hurting Arthur with his magic post-reveal and freaking out about it? (I love your writing!)
oh my god op YOUR MIND!!!!!!!!! im losign it,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Arthur had all of ten seconds to get out of range and, as it turned out, ten seconds wasn't nearly enough.
To tell the truth, he knew it was all his own fault—he hadn't tried or, at least, he hadn't tried hard enough, mostly because he didn't want to get out of range, he didn't want to run away, and he certainly didn't want to leave Merlin behind to face the mad old witch entirely on his own. For all his magic, for all his power and know-how and strange, old-soul wisdom, Merlin was a right idiot most of the time and, while Arthur trusted him to take down an obviously mediocre, middle-of-the-road sorceress alone, he most definitely did not trust him to be smart about it. He didn't trust Merlin to be smart about most things, come to that, but magical battles with evil sorcerers was settled firmly at the top of the list.
But it didn't do an ounce of good, because Arthur couldn't get near enough to land a blow on the old woman, and he couldn't even get near enough to watch Merlin's back like he should, like he usually did in these sorts of situations—the spells flew far too thick and fast around the quiet green grove, blinding bursts of color and light flashing like suns and stars in the deep shadows of the wood, curses rebounding like stray cannonballs off the trees and boulders and branches—no, he could only stand there, sword in his hand, out on the edge of the battle, completely useless.
All of a sudden, the old witch stopped, her wrinkled hands still held out in front of her, and she said something—it didn't sound like magic, it didn't sound like a spell, and it didn't look much like magic, either, it looked like she was talking to Merlin, like she was talking and she wanted him to talk back, but Arthur couldn't hear the words over the whispers and rustles of all the sorcery in the grove—and it must have been magic, he realized, hardly half a second later, because a high, howling wind whipped up, right in the middle of the forest, on a cloudless, sunny day.
She must be a bit better than mediocre, then, she must be a bit more than middle-of-the-road, if she could call up storms like Merlin could—
The wind picked up, stronger and stronger until the shriek of it was all Arthur could hear, until the force of it nearly ripped his cloak from his shoulders and clawed the sword from his hand, until it pushed him back, farther and farther away from the old witch, away from Merlin, until it finally grabbed him up in its screaming grip and slammed him, with a nasty crunch, back into the nearest tree.
As near as Arthur could figure out, from the flashes of blue sky rushing past over his head and the fleeting glimpses of Merlin's bone-white face and terrified blue eyes, he had come back 'round on the way back to the castle, but he hadn't stayed awake long enough to remember much, and Merlin had, apparently, defeated the old woman mere moments after Arthur had blacked out, but he never heard the whole of it, and Merlin never told him.
All he could say for certain was, when he had finally opened his eyes to find himself in Gaius' chambers, in the rickety white cot reserved solely for the very ill, the old man had forced him to choke down a vast number of horrible potions and medicines before he had allowed Arthur to settle back in his own bedchamber.
It had seemed an awful lot of fuss for nothing but a broken arm and a few bruised ribs, and, if he had to make a guess, he would say the whole thing had upset Merlin rather more than he had thought it would, and certainly a great deal more than it had any right to—the idiot had turned into the perfect servant in the week since, nothing but yes Sire or no Sire or let me get that for you, Sire, not one gripe or grumble or complaint to be had, and never more than ten steps from Arthur's bedside.
And he didn't make a face when Arthur told him to muck the stables, and he didn't breeze in to work a half hour too late Arthur's breakfast in one hand and a sheepish smile on his face, and he didn't throw the curtains wide and shout good morning like he wanted to wake the entire castle, and he hadn't spilled wine in Arthur's lap even once, and he hadn't used his magic to heat the bathwater, or scrub the floor, or make the bed, and Arthur's armor had literally never shined brighter, a dazzling silver gleam out of the corner of his eye, glinting and flashing in the light of the sun through the open window.
It was absolutely unbearable.
And it was obviously much more than the usual mother-hen impulses Merlin fell into when Arthur got hurt, because he certainly hadn't acted like this even when Arthur had gotten a bite from the Questing Beast, when Arthur had, very literally, cheated death, and survived the unsurvivable!
No, this was bigger than all Merlin's girlish little fits and frenzies of fear, this was more than his everyday panic over nothing, and Arthur was not going to put up with it one moment longer.
"All right," he said, eight days out from that fight in the forest with the old witch, his arm still wrapped firmly in a simple white sling, and the bruising on his ribs a touch lighter now, and certainly less painful, "out with it, Merlin, what is it? What's gotten into you lately?"
"Sorry?" Merlin said, flatly, and he didn't even look up from where he had crouched down to pick up all the dirty laundry scattered 'round the chamber. "Not sure what you mean."
Arthur rolled his eyes. "Don't be an idiot, Merlin, you and I both know that suits you a bit too well."
"Yeah," Merlin said blandly, stuffing Arthur's brown trousers in his basket, "just one of my many gifts, Sire."
"Merlin," Arthur sat up a little in his seat, and put down his quill with a soft swish of the long white feather on parchment, "what's going on?"
"Nothing," Merlin said at once. He tossed a pair of socks in the basket, too. "It's nothing."
Arthur waited.
Merlin straightened up and turned his back on Arthur to pluck a red tunic up off the floor and plop it down in the basket with everything else.
Arthur waited a bit more.
All of a sudden, Merlin stopped, with the basket perched on the end of the bed, his hands still clinging to the wooden rim, and finally, Arthur thought, with a rush of relief, finally, he's going to stop being such a girl and just tell me—
Merlin sniffled.
Arthur's insides turned to ice. Oh, God, no, this was a mistake, this was a terrible, awful, horrendous mistake, and now Merlin was having feelings, and what if Merlin wanted to talk about those feelings, couldn't he just give Merlin the day off and let him sort it out on his own time, wasn't that a thing he could do, or would that be "insensitive" and "rude" the way Guinevere always told him, would that make him a "bad friend" the way Guinevere always told him—? "Um," he said, a little blankly, and a lot desperately, "y-you don't need to—you shouldn't—erm—"
"I—" Merlin wiped at his face with the back of his hand, and turned to look at Arthur, his eyes red and puffy, his cheeks sticky and stained with tears, "—I-I'm sorry."
"For crying?" Arthur said, rather weakly, and also rather hopefully.
"I should have said it sooner, but I thought you were going to—to bring it up, and I thought you were going to be angry, so I-I just waited and waited, but you didn't—"
Not for crying, then, Arthur concluded dismally, before he scraped up the last remnants of his dwindling-in-the-face-of-a-crying-Merlin courage. "Why on earth did you think I'd be angry with you?"
"I did this to you," Merlin said, looking for all the world like a deeply repentant puppy left out in the pouring rain, waiting to be kicked. "I hurt you. I-I used my magic to h-hurt you."
What? Arthur blinked a bit dazedly at Merlin while he waited for the words to make some sort of sense. "Hang on," he said, slowly, mostly to make sure he had this absolutely right, "you were the one who called up that wind? You were the one who—?"
Merlin blinked back, just as dazedly. "Y-You didn't know?"
"I thought it was the witch!" Arthur said, thoroughly baffled now. "What in God's name did you do that for? You never do storms unless it's—!"
"I got angry," Merlin said miserably. He sniffled again and wiped at his nose now. "I—I got so angry, she—she said some things that made me realize she was—she was somebody that had done really awful things, she had—she had hurt someone I know, she'd hurt her really badly, and I lost my temper, and—" he flicked a mournful glance up at Arthur from under his wet lashes, "—and it just happened, and Arthur, I'm so sorry!"
Arthur almost crumpled right back down in his seat again. Merlin had conjured up that wind, not the old witch, and oh, that made sense now, didn't it, he had thought, even then, the old woman hadn't seemed strong enough for magic like that, he had thought she hadn't had the power for a thing like that, and he had been right, and—
—and if she was so mediocre and middle-of-the-road, what on earth had she done in her past, to make Merlin so furious with her? "Is she—?" Arthur raised his head to look at his friend on the other side of the room. "Is she all right? The friend that the witch hurt? Is she all right now?"
Merlin stared blankly back at him, blue eyes wide and wet. "That's—?" he scrubbed at his nose again. "That's what you're worried about? Not the fact that I almost killed you?"
Arthur almost laughed. "It's a broken arm, Merlin, and it's not even my sword arm! Honestly, I hardly think I'm going to drop dead all because—"
"It's not funny," Merlin snapped, his every word sharp as a knife when it rolled off his tongue. "It's not funny, Arthur, this isn't a joke! I almost killed you! I almost killed you because I lost my temper! Because I lost control!"
"Yes," Arthur conceded, "but everyone loses their temper at some point, I wouldn't worry about it if I were—"
"Well, you're not me!" Merlin bit out. "And count yourself lucky on that, because when you lose your temper, you don't have to worry that you'll wipe out the entire kingdom, or—or level a whole forest, or put all your friends in danger just because you can't—!"
"M-Merlin," Arthur said, too startled to stay silent any longer, "of course you're not going to—"
"You don't know that!"
"No, I don't know that!" Arthur said sharply, a bitter burn of fury in the back of his throat, because what the hell was wrong with this idiot, why the hell couldn't he see—? "You're right, Merlin, I don't know that, I don't know for absolutely certain that you are never going to do something horrible, but I trust that you won't! I don't know, I can't tell the future, I'm not a Seer, but I trust you to do what's right and to never take it too far, and isn't that enough for you?"
For a moment that felt very much like forever, Merlin only looked at Arthur, his eyes still red, a few stray tears still trailing lazily down his wet cheeks. "But look at what I did to you," he whispered. "You can't honestly tell me you're not angry with me."
Arthur let out a soft, heavy sigh, and rubbed a hand down the side of his face. Yeah, sure, he was a bit put out, but mostly he was put out that he had gotten stuck in bed for three days straight, and that Merlin had decided to hedge around the problem for so long when he could have come to Arthur and told the truth straight-out, but it was like he had said to Merlin—everybody lost their temper now and then, it was hardly some sort of bone-deep sin Merlin had to atone for every day for the rest of his life.
"You can't honestly tell me," Merlin said, and even softer than a whisper now, softer than a breath, "that you're not scared of me."
Oh. Arthur's chest squeezed with something almost like pity. Oh, that's what this is, that's what he thinks, that's what he's so worried about— "Merlin," he said, and he meant it, "I'm not scared of you. There's nothing in you to be afraid of."
"Except the magic that could have broken your neck," Merlin snapped, voice high and tight and still thick with tears. "You don't have to pretend, Arthur, you don't have to put on some kind of front for me, I understand, I get it—"
"You can't swing a sword without almost impaling yourself on the blade," Arthur pointed out. "You can't go an entire day without tripping over your own boots and falling flat on your face. There's nothing in you to be afraid of, and trust me, I'm not flattering you when I say that."
Merlin stared at Arthur like he had never seen him before, his eyes enormous in his tear-streaked face, one hand halfway up to dry the damp trails on his cheeks again. "Y-You're not—?"
"For God's sake, no!" Arthur rolled his eyes. "One time, I heard you say sorry to a butterfly!"
"I startled her," Merlin said, at once, and scrubbed at his eyes again. "I hit the branch she was resting on with my elbow, and I startled her."
Arthur had to bite back a smile. "Yes, I'm absolutely terrified. Shaking in my boots, Merlin, please don't kill me with your evil temper and big bad sorcerer powers."
Merlin turned a little pink. "I'm sorry," he said, hoarsely. "I really didn't mean to hurt you."
"Yeah, I picked up on that, believe it or not."
Merlin went a touch pinker, but he pushed on valiantly. "I-I didn't realize you were near enough to get hurt. I should have been more careful with you."
"Careful with me?" Arthur echoed incredulously, half-offended and half-amused. "Tell me, Merlin, how is it that I'm the one who got thrown into a tree, you're the one crying about it, and you still manage to make me sound like the delicate maiden in this situation?"
Merlin wiped at his nose again. "Should have known you'd be all right," he said, finally, and unless Arthur was very much mistaken, he could swear he saw a small smile tug at the edge of the idiot's lip. "Should have figured your thick skull would cushion the blow."
some Fëanor & Fingolfin fluff to brighten your day!
inspired by @sweetteaanddragons’ fic
[also available on AO3!]
~
Ñolofinwë stared. “You—what?” he asked, unable to believe his ears.
The look Fëanáro gave him was so disgusted and condescending that Ñolofinwë was immediately assured that he had heard wrong. But then Fëanáro snapped, “You heard me. Do not make me say it again.”
“I'm—not sure I did hear you,” Ñolofinwë said. “Because I believe I heard you tell me that you loved me, which certainly cannot be correct.”
Fëanáro made a noise in the back of his throat that in someone less dignified than the Crown Prince of the Ñoldor would be considered a scoff. “I am not prone to repeating myself, half-brother, especially not in this circumstance where such a statement is difficult enough to wring from my lips.”
“Forgive me if I am uncertain of your affection, brother,” Ñolofinwë said, biting back as much sarcasm as he could, “but your attitude does not match your words. You must understand my confusion.”
“Yes, I said it!” Fëanáro gritted his teeth, a bit of that mad fire flashing in his eyes. “But only to appease our beloved father.”
“You should not say things you do not mean,” Ñolofinwë said, forcing lightness into his voice. He had not expected an admission of affection from Fëanáro to impact him as much as it did; he had not expected an admission of affection at all. He loved Fëanáro, of course, and hated him perhaps as much, but he had long since accepted that Fëanáro resented him wholly and without reservation.
To hear that was not the case—
“I speak no lies,” Fëanáro insisted, his back straight and proud. “I never have.”
Ñolofinwë was at a loss for words. He still did not quite believe Fëanáro.
“Do not look so shocked,” Fëanáro rumbled. “I would not have tutored you, tolerated you, treated you with an ounce of respect if I did not—” He grimaced. “If I did not love you,” he finished. “You know of my hatred for Melkor, and for the Queen. I give them no such leniency.”
On another day, Ñolofinwë would have taken umbrage with comparing his mother to the Dark Vala, but he knew better than to press the point in this moment. He felt like a child again, hanging onto Fëanáro’s every word, yearning for the slightest hint of affection or approval from his elder brother. And there had been such moments, though they were few: when Fëanáro graced him with a rare smile when he caught his first prey on a hunt, or a brief nod when Ñolofinwë offered a sufficient rebuttal as they debated, or a possessive protectiveness when Ingwion made veiled comments about the younger prince’s inferior abilities compared to Fëanáro’s with the undercurrent of This is my half-brother, and I alone am allowed to mock him.
But never, not once, had Fëanáro spelled out any positive feeling for him, and certainly not in so direct a fashion.
Fëanáro furrowed his brows. “Speak, Nolofinwë; your silence is more unsettling than any patronizing falsehood of reciprocation would be.”
“You fool!” Ñolofinwë cried, unable to repress the impulse to smack Fëanáro on the shoulder. Fëanáro drew back, insulted, only for Ñolofinwë to pull him into a firm, swift embrace, burying his face in Fëanáro’s shoulder. He held on only for a moment, tears budding in his eyes, and shoved his brother away just as quickly, scowling as fierce as Fëanáro had moments earlier.
Now it was Fëanáro’s turn to stand bewildered, uncertain of how to react. Ñolofinwë wiped his eyes and glared, exclaiming, “I have never once lied about my love for you, Fëanáro. I adore you; how could I not? You are my elder brother—all I have ever wished for was your love!”
“A political farce,” Fëanáro said weakly. “An attempt to wrest power from the rightful heir.”
Ñolofinwë laughed. “Politics is a complicated game,” he said, “and I admit to playing my best cards, but affirming our brotherhood is not simply a courtroom strategy! And I would be a politician unparalleled in my skill, to have been cozening up to you since birth.”
“I have not the talent for such long games,” Fëanáro muttered, and Ñolofinwë only snorted.
“You have a talent for everything, Curufinwë,” he dismissed. “Tell me, brother: you admit our father set you up to this confession, but I am certain this is not the first time he has made such a plea. Why now, when it so clearly hurts your pride?”
Fëanáro gave him a look like he was an idiot; this, at least, was far from new. “Your son is about to be born,” he said. “Atya does not want him to enter a divided house. And my quarrel is with the Queen, and to some extent her children—not with a newborn, especially when his mother is so esteemed a graduate from Rúmil’s tutelage. I would hope, at least, that Anairë’s child could come to love his uncle, no matter the fault of their relation.”
If Ñolofinwë had been holding back his emotions before, he let them flow freely now. He smiled, touched beyond measure that Fëanáro was willing to put aside their differences for the sake of the babe. Fëanáro and Anairë had been close, once, before she wed Ñolofinwë; he knew them both too well to be ignorant that they missed that friendship.
“Thank you,” he said, no longer surprised by the depth of his sincerity. “I treasure my nephews, and I would not dream of depriving you from such a relationship with my own son—nor he from all you can teach him. I can only hope that he can keep up with such clever boys as Maitimo and Makalaurë.”
Fëanáro’s one weakness was his sons, and he beamed. “They shall be the best of friends,” he assured Ñolofinwë. “No matter what.”
“And us, brother?” Ñolofinwë asked after a pause. “Are we to put our differences behind us, for the sake of our children?”
The grin slipped from Fëanáro’s face. “Do not think that because I love you, that requires I like you, Nolofinwë,” he warned. “It will take more than shallow words to garner you my full respect.”
Ñolofinwë bit back a sigh. Of course it would be this way; Fëanáro was too stubborn for his own good, and even if he would put aside their rivalry for the sake of their children, it did not absolve Ñolofinwë from the crime of being Indis’ son.
“I must admit that my hatred for you is as strong as my love,” Ñolofinwë replied, raising an eyebrow. “But I do wish you to know that such feelings are constantly at war within me, and were it not for my impeccable composure, I would—”
He did not get to finish the sentence as Fëanáro groaned and pulled him into an embrace. “I hate you, too,” he hissed into Ñolofinwë’s ear, “much more than I love you, but love you I do, despite my better judgement.”
Ñolofinwë clung to his brother, soaking in this uncharacteristic affection as if it would make up for decades of animosity.
“I love you, too, Fëanáro,” he whispered, and in that moment, he looked to their future together with a hope he had never held before.
~
[if you liked this fic, please reblog & leave me a comment on AO3!! thank you!!]
For the HC prompts - Yondu and Peter, number 48 (deaging)
So this is a timestamp for my earlier de-aging fic, specifically the Yondu chapter: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11004729/chapters/24515922
“Did you tell them?” Gamora whispered fiercely as she went down to the cargo bay with Peter.
“Tell them? Tell them how?”
“Peter.”
“Look, I’ll figure out a way. Just … shhhh!”
They’d come into the Milano’s main bay just as Stakar and his glittering crystalline first mate debarked from their ship. Peter pasted on a cheerful smile. He’d only met Stakar once before, and he hadn’t exactly been in the best frame of mind at the time, given that Yondu had just … well … yeah, it hadn’t been a good time.
Since then, their two ships had had occasional communication from a distance, but of course it would be on this run that they’d end up in the same sector.
Rocket and Drax were already down here, which was … kind of a good sign, at least in that they could tell Peter if they’d seen any sign of their kinda-sorta stowaway before Stakar saw him. Peter attempted to ask this question with expressive movements of his eyebrows. Rocket frowned at him and made a significant movement of his hand toward his gun. Drax attempted to emulate everything Peter was doing with his eyebrows.
… right, no help was coming from that quarter, then.
He’s probably somewhere else in the ship, Peter thought in relief, moving forward to shake hands with Stakar or at least figure out what Arcturans did for their cultural greeting ritual.
And of course that was the point in the negotiations when skinny five-year-old Yondu dropped from the ceiling and tried to stab Stakar in the neck.
There was a quick flurry of panicked movements: Stakar’s number-one drawing his gun, Rocket drawing his gun (on general principles, Peter hoped, since there was no way Rocket didn’t recognize their little guest), Gamora lunging forward sans weapons in what was hopefully not going to be interpreted as a threat.
But Stakar had already gotten a grip on his squirming little blue attacker and held him out at arm’s length, while the tiny version of Yondu writhed and spat and kept trying to cut him with what Peter recognized as a knife from their galley.
“Quill,” Stakar said in a really strange voice.
“Yeah, yeah, so there are a few things I didn’t mention since the last time I – we – look, could you give him to me?” Peter had spent enough time around kid-Yondu by now to recognize when he was getting worked up, and he was really worked up. He must be interpreting new people on the ship as a threat. “I’ll just get him to chill out, play some music – yeah, here you go, buddy –”
He didn’t really think, until Stakar deposited kid-Yondu on him, that he hadn’t actually touched Yondu up to this point. At least, not like this. He’d been working his ass off trying to get the scared, damaged kid to trust him, and what seemed to work the best was letting Yondu make all the first moves. What he had from the boy so far were quiet touches: Yondu crouching on his chest with a knife at his throat, Yondu taking the Zune from him with shy little hands –
He’d never done anything like this, which Stakar had just done without asking, without letting Peter do anything about it – and now he had a furious and terrified little Yondu held out at arm’s length, one hand under each of the kid’s arms, with Yondu clutching a knife that was probably sharp enough to sever the arteries in Peter’s wrists, given how much time Drax spent sharpening the galley knives. (“A proper ship must have the ability to butcher any beast!”)
He fully expected Yondu to either stab him in the arm or writhe out of his grasp with one of the impossibly quick and graceful motions the child was capable of. But the kid didn’t, and Peter did something he’d never dared do with Yondu before (mostly for fear of being stabbed and/or having one of his important limbs broken) – he brought Yondu up to his body and just held the kid against his shoulder. He still expected to be stabbed. But he also felt like, in front of the outsiders and strangers, he didn’t want to just deposit Yondu on the floor.
“Yours?” Stakar said in a dry voice, and Peter’s mouth dropped open in sheer outrage and horror.
All the while, he held Yondu against his shoulder – a liberty the kid had never allowed him before – and felt the fast rabbitlike beating of Yondu’s heart, the way the kid had instinctively thrown an arm around his neck while the arm clutching the knife had dropped down along his back.
It was easy to forget, sometimes, that the kid version of Yondu was a kid – a fierce kid, a distrustful kid, an incredibly traumatized kid, but underneath all of that, he was just a kid.
“Do you not recognize him?” Gamora said. She had moved forward so that she was interposed between Peter and Stakar’s bunch, though she was also discreetly one step off to the (left) side so she wouldn’t be in the way of his weapons.
“He’s a Centaurian,” Stakar said, his voice still cut with a sardonic note. “I know what they look like. That doesn’t explain where you got such a child from. Or why,” and now there was a sharp note, a dangerous note in his voice, “why you have on your ship a child of a species known to exist in the galaxy primarily as slaves.”
And Yondu growled, actually growled, a tiny sound deep in his throat that Peter heard mainly because the kid was pressed against his chest, his small head twisted around toward the interlopers. He’s trying to protect me, Peter thought, and his heart grew three sizes.
“He’s Yondu, ya’ dink,” Rocket said. “Seriously, was nobody but me gonna say it?”
Stakar looked, for just an instant, like someone had slapped him: a mix of fury and a raw, deep pain. Behind him, his lieutenant stirred, raising the gun. The swooping, glowing of Stakar’s uniform over his shoulders glowed brighter. “You named him what?”
“Oh, come on,” Peter said, finally jolted out of the temporary (very temporary) paralysis of his vocal cords. “He’s Yondu. He’s Yondu at age five. Come on, you’ve been out there in the galaxy a lot longer than I have, you’ve seen what’s possible, you really think this is a bridge too far? Really?”
There was a very long, chilly pause between them. Then Stakar said, “Let us speak more of this.”
“Let’s,” Peter said. Against his shoulder, the child had slowly begun to relax.
