He stepped back, taking in my state and his own with a short laugh. “Sorry about the cold water, but I knew you had somewhere to be.” He reached up and scratched his hair with one hand, and his tattered shirt moved enough that I could see something on his stomach.
In a second, I had his shirt off and wadded in a ball with one hand, and my other on his abdomen. “What in the name of the Goddess isthis?” I hissed, my fingers tracing the strange marking in between two of the ridged muscles. It looked like a recent stab wound, but scarred over. I grabbed his shoulder, the one I’d stabbed just days before. That wound was gone.
“How?” I whispered, slightly scared. Flashes of the night before were coming back. He’d made a magical flame. The flame had dropped down. And then he’d kissed me… Yes. We’d kissed one last time, and something had gone terribly wrong.
I exhaled, my breath on his shoulder smelling the way it had for weeks when I was a child. Honey and rich spices that I didn’t know the names of, but felt like I should. Like they came from a place that was more my home than anywhere else I’d ever been, even my city.
“Serak. Did… Did the Goddess come for a visit?”
His eyes fucking twinkled. “Why would you ask?”
“When we kissed,” I said, my fingers trailing over the golden, tanned skin of his abdomen, idly tracing the lines as I tried to remember what had happened. “When I blanked out. Did She…” Suddenly, I was pissed. “Did you kiss the Goddess?”
He burst out laughing. “Now, what kind of a gentleman would I be if I kissed and told?”
I threw the wadded-up shirt at his stupid face. “Just tell me!”
He stepped close and cupped my chin in his hand, tilting my face up to his. His eyes swam with secrets and something like regret. “Yes, Ratter. The answer is yes. Last night, I kissed a goddess.”
It was so romantic, I felt slightly nauseous. I scowled up at him, even though my heart was doing ridiculous flips inside. “Just tell me. What happened? After the kiss. Where did you get that scar, and why do I think there’s something I should know about what caused it?”
Something important.
His gaze shuttered, and his smile dropped away. “I made a choice. And now, I must face?—”
Whatever he was going to say was interrupted by a shout from the street. A grubby face appeared at the gate, one of my younger spies. Her mouth formed a perfect o as she noted how close Serak and I were standing. “Oooh, he was right. Uh, Boss says stop flirtin’ with the Pict spy and get to the castle!”
“Pict spy—” I began, but Serak was already on his way out of the courtyard, pulling the tattered shirt back on.
He called over his shoulder, “Hurry up. Verdanians are punctual.”
I followed behind him, feeling something unusual. Like, my balance was off, or… I checked my cloak pockets and breathed a curse. My vials had been replenished. Every pocket that lined the cloak had been restocked, the metal, wood, and ceramiccontainers all back in place. The garrote wire was still inside the hem, and the thin metal rods that made the very best skeleton keys for picking difficult locks were all inside the front seams. I frowned, unfastening one last pocket. There was a brand-new vial of veninspire, a poison Vilkurn had taken out of my cloak years before, and promised to give back when I was old enough.
This had to be his Solstice gift, though I didn’t understand how he’d gotten me to fall unconscious long enough to give it to me. Or why he’d done it, and cleaned me as well. I didn’t have time to wonder for long, since we were at the western castle wall within minutes.
I stopped, stunned at the sight that greeted me. It was barely dawn, but it looked like half the castle had turned out to wave me off. “Ratter!” more than one of them cried.
Serak paused, the sun behind his hair making an odd, fiery crown as he held up one hand and blew me a kiss. Then he vanished behind the gathered crowd as my crew greeted me, running out to meet me with most of the queen’s brood as well, each small hand held by one of my sisters or brothers. They peppered me with questions about the night before, but I waved to the rest of the gathered crowd.
“No time, rats. Gotta catch a donkey cart to Verdan. You know how it is.”
“Yeah. Pockets to pick, people to poison,” Verity said. “They look ripe for fleecing. I’m jealous.”
The royal family, and my family, were all gathered by the gate, but the caravan of horses, carts, and a few donkeys waited a few hundred paces away. Verity was right. Most of them wore far nicer jewels than was safe around someone like me, and not nearly enough weapons.
I grinned back at my sister. “You can come next time.”
The first of the queen’s consorts to approach was Axe. His massive, scarred handsmoved quickly, his dark eyes dancing.“You can’t leave Turino yet, little thief. You’ve saved the lives of everyone but me,” he signed.
I arched an eyebrow, signing back, “Are you not counting the times I saved you from death by harp?”
“Harp?”
He’d given me and all my siblings small harps when we’d been adopted. The others had all taken lessons with Axe, with varying degrees of success. I had been a complete failure as a musician, and had pretended to lose my harp after three lessons. Axe hadn’t pressed the issue.
“Yes, death by harp. Vilkurn tells me my playing is almost as deadly as veninspire.”
“Did you pack yours?”he asked, his dark eyes gleaming with humor.
