Alda

Sophia

“What was that about?” I asked Luke. As quickly as his adoptive brother entered the room, Abir left again.

Luke walked over to the table and lightly kissed the top of my head. I leaned against him. “Abir wants us to meet his girlfriend.”

Sophia’s eyes widened. “Alda?”

“Apparently, she’s a frequent visitor to the palace.”

“It must be serious then,” I said.

“I’ll be the judge of that,” Luke said.

I touched his hand. “Down, boy.”

He smirked. “I just want to get to know her better. I haven’t been a very good big brother.”

“You’ve done just fine.”

Something flashed in Luke’s eyes. Before I could identify it, the look was gone.

Even though Luke had told me that everything went okay in the meeting with the council, I had a strange sensation that he wasn’t telling me everything. Luke only hid things from me when they directly affected our relationship. I thought we were over doing that, but Luke was a kind and intelligent man, and if he needed to work through something, he would do it