She gave him a softly admonishing look. “You yourself said fortune telling isn’t real magic, just a superstition.”
He grumbled as he tipped up the mead bottle again, then wiped his mouth. “Has anyone ever told you that you have a way of turning people’s words back on them?”
“Yes.”
“Well, it’s infuriating.”
A smile flickered at the corners of her mouth. “Don’t the pretty ladies who sit on your lap challenge you?”
“They don’t,” he muttered. “Their brothers, however…”
Winter adjusted her skirt so she could move closer to him to show him the tankard’s insides. Her soft ponytail brushed his neck, sending a flush throughout him. Her body radiated good health—her pink cheeks and strong hands. He felt suddenly repulsive in his bloody, mud-stained clothes.
But Winter didn’t seem to mind his haggard appearance.
“Look,” she said, tipping the tankard his way. “The dregs along that bottom portion, do you see? They have the same horseshoe shape as the persuasion hex.”
The persuasion hex—commonly known as The Charmer—gave its bearer the ability to intuitively read others and thus respond to their needs and desires.
Valenden set down the mead bottle and rolled up his shirt sleeve to his bicep. On the inner portion of his arm was a horseshoe scar.
Winter ran her fingers over the hexmark, eyes lighting up. “You already possess The Charmer. So, that means that you’re destined for a lifetime filled with merriment and often surrounded by many people.”
Valenden heard her words but was far more interested in her hand on his bicep. Her fingers were calloused from scrubbing tankards, not soft like Maira’s. And yet he found he liked the extra bit of friction.
He cleared his throat. “I’m not sure I needed magic to tell me that.”
Winter ignored him as she frowned back into the tankard. “There are more shapes. This one here. It mimics the hexmark for knowing people’s names before they tell you.”
Valenden peered at a murky shape like an apple blossom at the bottom of the glass. “I don’t have that hexmark. So, what, I’m destined to have to ask people’s names? How dire.”
Winter didn’t respond to his joking tone as she clutched the tankard between her hands. “That isn’t what it means, Val. That hex symbol discerns if someone will be close with others.”
He frowned. “That last prediction said many people would surround me.”
“Having people around you isn’t the same as beingclosewith anyone.”
His heart thumped uncomfortably in his chest. “So what are you saying?”
Her lips flattened into a line. “That ultimately, you will be alone your entire life.”
Valenden’s mind pulled between various courses of action. His instinct was to laugh off her words with another joke. But Winter looked serious, and the truth was, her words had stung him somewhere deep. It felt like she’d confirmed something he’d already long known in his soul.
That look in her eyes wasn’t pity. It was understanding.
Gods, this girl…
Still feeling the tinges of panic, he cupped her jaw without thinking and pulled her into a kiss. Winter’s hand clamped onto his wrist, surprised, but she didn’t pull away. Her lips yielded under his. A surge of panicked desire made Valenden deepen the kiss feverishly. He fisted his hand in the back of her hair. Thrust his tongue along her teeth. Placed his other hand scandalously high on her waist, almost grazing her breast. His heart was stampeding. For some wild reason, he felt Winter was his last chance at a connection.
At not being alone.
The kiss went on for some time before they finally broke apart. Valenden was breathing heavily, eyes searching hers. He needed something from her, he realized.
Approval? Love?Something.
She cleared her throat, keeping her eyes aimed down at her lap, but her pink cheeks revealed she hadn’t exactly hated the kiss.
Valenden felt another surge of triumph. See? He wasn’t a hopeless case. He’d won over someone as even-keeled as Winter. Gods, he could see it all now. They’d keep their affair secret for a few weeks before revealing it to the public. He—the disreputable, silly, promiscuous middle son—would have agirlfriend. He’d help Winter run the tavern in the evenings. Of course, he’d have to drink less to be functional, but so be it. Maybe some of her good sense would even rub off on him…
