The wildflowers had taken over the training yard.
It happened every time Arvella lost concentration — which was often, because controlling celestial power turned out to be significantly harder than unleashing it. One moment she would be focused, hands raised, bare feet rooted into the damp earth, channeling moonlight through her fingertips into a controlled pulse of energy. The next, her mind would wander — to Lucas, to the way his mark on her chest warmed when he thought about her from across the compound, to the council meeting at noon she hadn't finished preparing for, to the supply request from the northern patrol that had been sitting on her desk for two days, to the seventeen other things a Luna was apparently responsible for before breakfast — and the energy would bleed sideways in
