Neverwinter Forest on a black throne reigns upright

Cypress dimly registered Rian’s pleading whine and heightened nearness, but it wasn’t until the O’Malley boy started speaking that the raven began settling down. Despite the embarrassment he felt at losing control of himself, there was something cathartic about his tears — even more cathartic than his therapeutic destruction of the Eastmire. His breathing hitched unevenly as the last sobs wracked his body, but he said nothing for a long while as he turned his head and buried his tearstained face against the sloping side of his cousin’s neck. He didn’t know how much time had passed when he finally cleared his throat — it took a few tries — and mumbled, “You belong with me, too.” If Cypress needed to hear it, Rian probably did, too. He was quiet for a moment longer before he drew a breath deeper and wider than seemed physically possible for his trim rib cage. “Yeah,” he said quietly, trying on the idea for himself. “Yeah, we can make something better.” He waited for something awful to happen — for Rian to be stolen away from him, or for Ondine to hear of their plan and condemn them both — and when nothing did, the somewhat superstitious young wolf looked into his cousin’s compassionate jade eyes and lifted a muddy, bloodied foreleg to wipe away the last of his tears. “What about Dublin, Eimear, and Szabala?” he wanted to know. “Are they coming, too?”