Frederick read Juliette’s missives aloud in the dark hold, wondering betimes—with a hollow inside of him growing wider by turns—what it would have been like to have words written for him by such a hand. But he never let the thought linger, for her words were not for him. Instead he contented himself that the shapes of the letters—the jots and lines and crooked way she quirked her S’s—were for him. For she knew he would read them and Elias would not. But the meaning beneath the letters, the words with a heartbeat and a soul, was for Elias. Frederick drew strict boundaries around the stubborn
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