“He’s so handsome,” says Vesper, her eyelids fluttering in a way that sends a jolt of jealousy through me. “I begged the guards who took us out of there to let me thank him myself, but they wouldn’t. I’m going to the palace for the feast later to try to find him, but first, there’s Grandpapa—”
“I have something for you for that,” says Ronan, trying to hide his blush by distracting them with the box. “For your Grandpapa.”
“Oh!” says Vesper’s mother, clapping her hands together. “Let’s see what you have there.”
She lets us come inside then, leading us up the stairs from the shop into a small set of private rooms. Only once we’ve entered does Vesper notice that I look familiar. “Aren’t you…weren’t you there too? Were you one of the shadow-born?”
“Me?” I ask, looking to Ronan. I’m not sure if I should tell them.
“I didn’t see many of their faces until the night God-King Ronan saved us. They kept us in separate cells so we wouldn’t work together to escape. Although we did manage it once anyway—Mery told me he talked to you, Soren.”
“He led us to the place. And then I convinced the guards to keep an eye on it. They finally saw someone go in there that night. It just so happened that Ronan was in the neighborhood, on the way back from the play.”
“Gods, can you imagine how it felt to see those guards of his show up? And then there he was himself, in all his finery, all covered in blood. I’ll never forget that. Not for as long as I live.”
Ronan shoots me a look that says he’s going to be insufferable about this later.
“Can I help you with that?” I ask Vesper’s mother as she removes something large and heavy from the box. A pot of stew with a lid that screws on to keep it from spilling.
“Not unless you’re fire-born,” she says, gesturing to the cold fireplace.
“Soren is,” says Vesper.
He must have told her that to explain his magic, just as I’d assumed he was nature-born when I met him.
I distract them with questions about the jewelry their shop sells while Ronan ignites some firewood with his light.
Vesper’s mother heats the stew on the fire, and then she insists we join them for a bowl after she feeds her father. Ronan offers to chop some vegetables to go in it, and to my surprise, he knows his way around a kitchen knife, far better than I do.
“From the battlefield,” he explains as I watch him. “Come here.” He waits until Vesper and her mother are distracted by the fire and pops a bite of radish into my mouth. It’s deliciously fresh, tangy with just a bit of heat. And the act of his putting it into my mouth, well…
“How are those radishes coming? We’re about at a boil over here.”
I bring them the chopped radishes as Ronan starts on some carrots, thinking that it’s a pity I can’t play suggestively with the carrots in front of him, and to my surprise and delight, that feeling is reverberated between us. We both laugh, which I’m sure looks insane considering nothing has been said or done and we’re nowhere near each other, but Vesper and her mother are too polite to say anything about it.
I sit with Vesper while we wait for the vegetables to cook, listening to her tell the story of her rescue at least three times, with the king becoming magically more handsome in each retelling. Ronan’s ears are so red by the end of it, I’m sure she must have figured him out.
But if she does, she never lets on. “That’s the shadow-born for you,” I tell Ronan as we’re leaving the house. “We’re so good at keeping secrets, sometimes you can’t even tell whether we are or not.”
“That’s certainly true,” he says.
Then he pulls me into an alley and pins me against the wall, covering my mouth.
My chest tightens in alarm. My hand is reaching for my sword when he winks. “Remember this?”
“Fuck!” I push him, but he grabs me and pulls me to him.
He pins me against the wall again, an echo of the encounter from the first night we met, but there are no bells to stop us. He kisses me, and I melt instantly, my knees buckling. I brace myself against him for support, running my hands into his hair and onto his smooth, unscarred cheeks.
I break from the kiss, and he pulls back. “What’s wrong? Soren not doing it for you anymore?”
I trace the lines on his face, the deep scars that exist in appearance only. The skin beneath them bears no mark, but these scars are real.
These are the scars my mother’s people gave him.
These are the scars my mother gave him. Her actions. Her death.
I know it before asking. “When did this happen to you?”
