“Scrambled, please.”
“Gotcha. Scrambled eggs and a Beef Boy plate for the princess.” She gave Atria a megawatt smile before she turned to Kaz, those shimmering gossamer wings buzzing just a little. The smile vanished as soon as she spied the dark, narrow-eyed look on the half-orc’s face.
Clearing her throat, she asked, “Uh, and you?”
“Same thing,” he grunted, his gaze moving back to Atria. “But make it all protein. No bread or potatoes.”
“Okidokey. Extra bacon and sausage, then.” All the buzz had gone out of her by the time she hurried away from their table.
When she disappeared through a door behind the counter, Atria gave Kaz’s boot a small kick. “Don’t be rude to our waitress.”
“I wasn’t rude,” he argued, expression smoothing out once more.
She kicked him again. “I didn’t hear a please or a thank you. Service jobs are bad enough without people forgetting basic manners, you know.”
Kaz eyed her. “I wouldn’t know. Never worked one.”
Of coursehe hadn’t, she realized, feeling suddenly quite foolish. She kept forgetting that her companion was the sovereign’s brother. She couldn’t begin to guess how that worked out, but it made sense to assume he’d grown up with the opulence she’d briefly experienced during her dinner with Margot.
No doubt he’d never had to wipe a table, whip up a latte, handle a belligerent customer, or stock shelves in his life. Because he was, for all intents and purposes, aprince.
Atria rubbed her eyes and let out a deep sigh. “Yeah,” she said, sounding exasperated to her own ears, “that makes a lot of sense, actually.”
“I’m assuming you have.”
She dropped her hands back onto the table. “Yes. Many times.”
He tilted his head and briefly dropped his eyes to her wrists. “Tell me.”
Atria, choosing to misunderstand his request, answered, “I was on my own as soon as I turned eighteen, so I had to get a job. I stayed at a communal home for a while, but it wasn’t— it wasn’t the healthiest environment for me, so I ended up taking on two jobs to get my own room somewhere.” She shook her head, as if the motion could send the memories of those sleepless nights, exhausting days, and aching muscles back into the abyss where she normally kept them.
“For the first year I worked as a barista in the mornings and bussed tables at night. I switched jobs a lot, trying to accommodate my school schedule — waitressing, bartending, retail. My last job before grad school was at an ice cream factory. Believe me, it’s way worse than it sounds.”
“Why didn’t your family help you?”
Atria lifted her hand to show off her tattoos. Sometimes she thought of them as bracelets, but mostly they felt like shackles. “My mother is a priestess, just like her mother was a priestess, and so on. Even if she wanted to help me, she has no money to do so.”
Kaz’s expression darkened. “Why wouldn’t shewantto help you? And where was your father in all of this?”
She hated talking about this part, but she was also so used to it that she could recite the words almost by rote. The practiced nature of it helped distance her from the sharpest edge of the pain. “I was never a… good fit for the Sanctuary. I tried. I tried very, very hard for most of my life, but I just couldn’t do it.”
Atria swallowed the lump in her throat.If I could have broken myself into pieces and remade my heart into something better, I would have.But no amount of fasting, meditating, sleepless vigils, and self-deprivation could cure her of what her mother simply called adefect.
Pushing those brutal memories aside, she quickly finished, “Burden’s Bonded is a hereditary order. My mother wanted to continue the line and chose to become pregnant twice: once with a pilgrim who sought her out during her residency in the Luxor Sanctuary, and again during her residency in Buenos Aires after I proved… insufficient. Our fathers were honored to be chosen by High Priestess Desdemona, but they have no parental rights, nor responsibilities.”
“So you were on your own when you left.” His expression was hard but revealed very little. His aura, on the other hand, crashed around her in white-capped waves of righteous rage.
His outrage didn’t heal her, but it was… nice to know he cared enough to feel anything.
Dropping her eyes, she said, “I made it work. I chose my path and I was determined to walk it, even if I had to do it alone. But once I left the Sanctuary, I also learned that I don’thaveto. I started making friends. I met Ruby in the cafe I worked at for a while, and that was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
Ruby was her only family. Atria was thankful for her vivacious, loud, brilliant friend every single day. Thinking of her sent azingof worry through every nerve, but she quickly smothered the feeling.
Her friend was a genius. A half-feral, gorgeous, sigilworking madwoman. The idea of someone attempting to kidnap her was laughable. No doubt she was sitting in her hotel room just then, on the phone with Margot getting the details on Atria and Kaz’s flight. She’d probably find it hilarious.
Shaking off her worry, Atria turned her attention back to the gorgeous half-orc watching her with a disturbingly predatory look. Kaz was quiet for a moment, the gleam in his dark eyes calculating, before he finally asked, “Is that where you metNorman?”
“No,” she answered, chin jutting. “We met in our undergrad physics class.”
