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Chapter 21: You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.

Never before has Aidan felt his veins ice over as he does in that instant, but thankfully the world has a saviour in the form of an odd young woman with a penchant for seeing a solution where others only see a problem.

As quick as Aeron has the gun raised, Aures pulls what Aidan had thought to be an ornate comb out of her hair, sending her curls cascading over her shoulders dramatically.

The comb turns out to be a gorgeously handcrafted dagger that she plunges, hilt-deep, between two of Aeron’s vertebrae.

His legs collapse out from under him and the gun drops like a paperweight to the ground. Aures kicks at him on the way down and he pitches forward to fall, face-first, into the churned-up dirt.

The dagger is expertly tugged free and Lilliana, dazedly, helps Aures use it to pin her hair back up.

Aidan steps around Edmund to kick the gun away.

“I, uh… Thank you for, er, saving my life, Aures,” Edmund says, looking gobsmacked for the first time since the farm was bombed.