Luna Forsaken (Arya and James) novel Chapter 258

258 A Friend In Blackbirth 2

Arya’s POV

I had spent too long being the woman people resented on sight. Too long being blamed for existing in a place someone else had wanted to use me up in. It did something to me, hearing another woman say it so plainly. No mockery. No hidden edge. Just relief.

Tamara must have seen something flicker over my face, because her own expression softened.

“I mean it,” she said quietly. “You don’t know me yet, so maybe you think I’m being silly or nosy, but I mean it. I wanted someone beside him who looks like she could stand through fire and not start crying because the room got uncomfortable.”

I let out a slow breath. “I have cried because the room got uncomfortable before.”

Tamara’s mouth twisted. “That doesn’t count if the room deserved to die.”

That made me laugh a third time, and this time even the old maid gave up pretending she was not listening.

Tamara leaned forward. “Now. I nted one finger at me. “There Chapter Unlocked, Enjoy Reading! will be women there who will sme and don you are do

actions that are not really questions. Old men who think they can weigh you with one look. Diana, who will act composed and superior and as if she was born in a room full of mirrors. And Mary of course, since the Countess is her godmother. Several people who still think they can pretend Lev is going through a phase. Do not let any of them make you feel like a guest Lev’s life where he has already chosen to put you at the centre.”

I watched her carefully. “You speak as if you know exactly how they think.”

Tamara barked a laugh. “I was born in the midst of these vicious wolves. I know how they breathe.”

Then she stood and came closer again, lowering her voice into something almost conspiratorial. “Diana is the one to watch most. Not because she is louder than the others. Because she is not. She’s ambitious. Wants what isn’t hers. She watches. She calculates. She lets other people stain their hands while she keeps hers looking clean. If she says something kind, inspect it. If she says nothing at all,

inspect that too.”

That tracked too well with what I had already felt.

“And Radimir?” I asked before I could stop myself.

Tamara’s face changed at once.

Not fear. Contempt.

“Regent my foot,” she muttered. “He has lived too long on borrowed authority. This house should never have become a resting place for him, his mate, and his daughter while they wear power like it belongs to them. If Uncle had any sense he would have sent them to Greenwich and let them play politics there. Instead they walk around Blackbirth as if the walls answer to them.”

There was so much open disgust in her voice that I almost smiled.

“You don’t hide your feelings much,” I said.

Tamara grinned. “Why should I? The whole place already knows them.”

Then her eyes glittered. “And between us, I hope Lev takes the seat soon and sends the father and daughter packing. Radimir isn’t worthy of it. He never was.”

That did it.

That was the exact moment it settled in me, clear as day: yes, Tamara and I were going to get on extremely well.

Because there was something deeply healing in hearing another person say aloud the things one had only muttered inside one’s own head. Especially when that person said them with full chest and no apology.

Ria purred in satisfaction.

Bestie, she declared.

I nearly snorted.

Tamara caught the change in my face and narrowed her eyes playfully. “What?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“You’re hiding something.”

“My wolf likes you.”

Tamara put a hand over her heart. “That is the nicest thing anybody in this cursed house has said to me all month.”

The maids finished pinning the hem and stepped back again. Tamara waved them off for a while with surprising authority.

“Out,” she said, not unkindly. “Give her air. And send tea to the south garden.”

The old maid blinked. “My lady, I do not know if…”

Tamara gave her a look that was far too Lev-like for me not to notice.

The maid dipped at once. “Yes, my lady.”

That amused me.

“You order people around very confidently for someone who just barged into my room,” I said when the women had left.

Tamara looped her arm through mine as if we had been doing this for years. “It’s not your room,

technically. It’s his room. But I approve of what you’ve done to it simply by standing inside it.”

I raised a brow. “You’re impossible.”

“And yet charming.”

I had not realised how tired I was of people asking questions only to force sympathy into spaces where it did not belong. Tamara let things stand. I liked that too.

By the time footsteps sounded on the gravel path, I was leaning back in my chair with my tea half- finished and more at ease than I had been in days. I looked up without thinking.

Lev.

Of course it was him.

He moved toward us with that calm way of his that never looked rushed and never looked uncertain either. Dark clothes. No unnecessary decoration. Hands clean. Jaw set. Eyes finding us first and then settling, some tension going out of him so slightly most people would have missed it.

I did not miss it.

Neither, apparently, did Tamara.

“There he is,” she said under her breath. “The terrifying heir who forgets how to be frightening around me.”

Lev heard her, because of course he did.

“You’ve been back less than a day,” he said as he reached us, dry as old paper. “And already the house sounds louder.”

Tamara beamed up at him. “You missed me.”

Lev looked at her for a long second in that flat way men do when they do not want to admit anything in public.

Then his mouth shifted.

Barely. But enough.

“I noticed the peace was gone,” he said.

Tamara gasped in fake offence and held out her arms. “And this is how you greet me after all this time?”

He sighed the way a man sighs when he knows he is doomed and bends anyway.

Then he leaned down and let her hug him.

That was when I saw it clearly.

Not just affection. Devotion. A protective softness hidden under his usual control. He let her squeeze him with both arms and even rested one hand briefly at the back of her head before stepping away. It was not the touch of a cousin greeting another cousin after a long absence. It felt more like a brother who had spent years making sure the girl in front of him remained safe in a world that did not deserve her.

It did something odd to me, watching it.

Because men like Lev were often all edges in public. Hardness. Calculation. Control. Power worn like steel. It was easy to remember what he could do to other people. Easier, sometimes, than remembering he was capable of this too. Quiet tenderness. The kind that did not perform itself loudly because it did not need to.