hailey rose

“You’re not ok, not even close,” said Noah.“It’s fine, the pain is receding.”“The pain’s disappearance doesn’t concern me as much as its arrival. What happened?”

Once she’d finally found a good spot, she remembered what she was trying to do. Slowly and steadily, she brought her hand up and over his chest, the light sheet rippling above her the only thing keeping them from the warm autumn night. Again, she brought it down past the end of the hair on his belly and only stopped once she felt that rough patch of hair just above his groin. With only the moon filtering through the sheet above she could barely make it out as she peered over her dad’s waist. Short and curly, much curlier than his armpit hair, pitch-black, though most of his hair was with only a bit of grey poking through.

“Your loss to Bella does not undo everything you, Sophia, and Cyrilo have accomplished. The literature program you’ve established is a blessing for this world, and you and Sophia managed to take down a gold-ranked knight who was standing in the way of public education. That is no small feat. You’re too young to be focusing on your regrets, on what you couldn’t do. The story of the Bow Mistress is only just beginning. When the war against the Profane is over, they’ll sing songs and legends about you, about how you fought and saved this world. And your clash with Bella? That’ll be a good story for you to tell around the campfire.”