This is the ninth chapter of a novel which I am publishing here in serialized form. Chapters 1 and 2 are available to all readers, but access to all following chapters require a paid subscription.
The two girls entered the noisy house, and it was at that moment, for reasons she never quite understood— much as she thought about it afterwards— that Rayna’s eyes were drawn along a trajectory where they met the gaze of the azure-eyed, defiantly overdressed stranger, previously mentioned at the start of this tale.