“At the time.” Cindrissian’s eyes fixed on mine, intense and unwavering. “He sent hisdaughteraway.”
I blinked. “What do you mean?”
“I mean I was born in a female fae form.” His voice was steady, clinical almost, as though he was reciting facts about someone else. “And I found it profoundly unfitting of who I was. By the time I was seven, I knew I was different, though I didn’t yet have the words for it. When I was thirteen, I knew. I made the mistake of confiding in someone I thought I could trust.”
He paused, jaw working.
“They informed my father, who only saw me for my value as a bride. He attempted to marry me off, to correct thedefecthe saw in me. I was...” Another pause, longer this time. “Averse to the marriage. And made an attempt to bring the situation to a very permanent end.”
My breath caught. “Cindrissian?—”
“My would-be husband found out and called off the wedding. My father was furious. He sent me away as punishment.” An almost amused huff escaped him. “Turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me, though I suspect that wasn’t his intention.”
The admission punched all the air from my lungs. “That’s—gods, that’s?—”
“Ancient history,” he finished, but there was nothing casual in his expression. “Once I was in that place, I realised it wasn’t what my father had assumed. I was able to embrace who I was. But I learned my lesson about trust. Haven’t made that mistake again.”
I tried to process, failed. Tried again. The image wouldn’t reconcile, this smirking man in front of me, trapped and desperate enough to?—
I cut myself off before the thought could finish.
“I’m glad you made it out,” I said, and meant it. “That you found—” I gestured vaguely at him, at the deliberate swagger and the easy confidence that I now understood was armour forged in survival. “Yourself. Casual stalking tendencies aside.”
His smirk returned, but there was a softness underneath it now. “Noted. I’ll try to be more obvious about my lurking in the future.”
“Appreciated.”
We stood there for a moment, the tavern noise bleeding out into the night around us. I shouldn’t have felt comfortable with him, with anyone who admitted to being a mercenary with conditional loyalty. But there was something about the rawness of what he’d just shared, the deliberate vulnerability of it, that shifted something in my chest.
Trust was stupid. Trust got you killed.
But maybe there were degrees of stupid.
“Can I ask—” I hesitated, trying to figure out how to phrase it without sounding like an idiot. “Is that a fae thing? Being able to change your form like that?”
He laughed, but there was no humour in it. “No. I had to see someone with a specific magical skill set. They changed my form for me when I was thirty.” He sighed, and gods it sounded tired. “But it was seventeen years of knowing exactly who I was and being trapped in a body that disagreed. Seventeen years ofbeing called the wrong name, stuffed into the wrong clothes, told I would make someone a lovely wife someday.”
Seventeen years. He’d been thirty when his body was made right. Which meant he’d spent more than half his life before that living as someone he wasn’t.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry your father was a coward who couldn’t love you for who you were.”
Cindrissian went very still. Then his eyes narrowed. “Just like that? No questions about how it works, or if I’mtrulymale, or?—”
“You just told me you are,” I shrugged. “Why would I question that?”
The silence stretched between us, taut and strange. He was staring at me like I’d grown a second head, like I’d spoken in a language he didn’t recognise.
“That’sreallyit?” he finally asked. His hands clenched and unclenched at his sides. “No interrogation about the magic, no uncomfortable curiosity about my body, no?—”
“No.” I cut him off. “You told me who you are. I’m taking you at your word.”
“Most people have questions,” Cindrissian said, his hands clenched tight now. “Doubts. They want to know details that aren’t their business, or they look at me like I’m a broken thing that needs fixing. Or worse, they smile and nod and then refer to me as ‘she’ the moment they think I’m not listening.”
The bitterness in his voice was sharp enough to cut.
“Is it not common, then? In fae society?” I asked. “Changing form, I mean.”
“You’d think.” His laugh was harsh. “But no. It’s not common. The magic required is rare, for one thing. Expensive. Difficult. Most people who might want it can’t access it. And culturally?” He shook his head. “Fae society is just as rigid as any other when it comes to certain things. Someone like me, who refuses the role they were born into, disrupts all of that.”
