“Did you put it back,” Merc demands in a rough voice. “Can I turn around.”
My eyes return to the heft of him. His torso is twisted about on his hips, the leather surcoat stretched tight across his shoulders, his thighs thick with leashed power. In the moonlight, his black hair gleams in shades of navy blue and brilliant silver.
Hide.
Suddenly, I feel as though I’m back in the water of the moat, my body flailing and weightless, my lungs burning with suffocation: For all my life, I’ve listened to the voice in my head, I’ve heeded the warning. I have… behaved.
But now I’m here, in the night. In this burned-out village.
In danger from whence I came, facing only danger to which I go.
I’m done with the hiding.
“Sorrel, is your veil back in place?”
“Yes,” I whisper, as, for reasons that make no sense, I suddenly feel more calm than at any other time in my life.
Merc exhales a long, deep breath, and the tension in him eases as he uncoils and turns back around—
He freezes once more.
I can tell nothing of his expression, for the illumination that streams in from behind him turns him into a shadow, and blinds me where I stand.
“You lie,” he says in a voice so deep, it’s nearly inaudible.
There’s a long moment, and I have the distinct impression he’s giving me time to reconsider and re-cover. Keeping my eyes on his boots, I lift my chin, by way of answering.
Merc continues to stare at me as he reaches behind himself and shuts the door. The moonlight is cut off by inches, as if it’s a living thing and being slowly killed, and when the darkness consumes us both, I find myself shivering again.
But it’s not from the cold.
I’m ashamed.
I know how odd I look. I kept a shard of mirror in my nook beneath the stairs, and from time to time, I’d take a glance at myself, expecting something to change: Colorless, wavy hair, that I have never cut, not once, and keep pinned up in a knot at my nape. Skin that is freckled. Features that are unremarkable. Eyes that are such a pale gray, only the rim of them defines the iris.
Never have I seen anyone who resembles me. Clearly, that’s the same for Merc, and as things remain silent between us, I regret revealing myself. Did I honestly think that my attraction to him meant he’d feel the same as soon as hesaw me? As if there aren’t enough undercurrents in our awkwardly constructed partnership—
“Why.”
The word he speaks lingers between us like smoke in a cave.
“I don’t know,” I mumble.
“Yes, you do.”
His voice has a different tone than I’ve heard, and not just because it’s a full octave lower than usual. No, this is something else.
“At least now I know why you hide yourself.” There’s a long pause. “You are…”
When he stops there and clears his throat, I touch my face as if it’s someone else’s. The idea he thinks I’m ugly has me backing up, bending down… picking up the thin blue cloth from where it drifted into the soot.
“There’s no reason to put that back on.” His tone is brisk now, and I hear the weapons he wears on his body shifting in their metal holsters as he resettles on the floor against the door. “Besides, it’s dark as the inside of a hat in here. I see nothing.”
Before I can sit back down in my own spot, I go over to where the coats are hanging on pegs. I know that the night will only grow colder as it goes on, so I take one of them off its wall secure. The folds of wool smell like smoke, and there’s something that seems all wrong about putting on a stranger’s clothing. But I have to get some sleep, and it certainly seems like winter as I lower myself back down and tuck my knees up to my chest.
Silence. So much… silence.
The weight on my shoulders reminds me of my cloaks, and I look at the length of cloth I’ve used to cover my face. It’s thin as a wisp in my hand, and I marvel at how such a delicate thing can be so powerful. Shame makes me want to drape myself in bolts of heavy fabric, but something deep within me rebels at that.
