Her hair slid down her back, a bronze waterfall catching in the grooves of her shoulders. Rogue curls beckoned him closer with every sway as she lifted a hand, coaxing him into the sea with her. His flames had nearly eaten him alive the first time he had seen her like this at the banquet hall. Not cloaked in mud-stained leathers, not with braids coming undone in the heat of battle.
Verena was fearless, deadly. She always looked striking drenched in violence, always magnificent as the woman who tore the world apart. But here, hair unbound, body molded into only skin, curls dripping into luster, she was something else entirely.
She raised a brow, turning her back to him as he stripped, his pants slapping across stone. He waded forward, the water rising against him until he dipped beneath its toasted caress.
Her hands met the stone’s rim, pinning her curls high before folding together as she tipped her face, so her chin rested atop them. Only the tips of her shoulders broke the water, leaving the vulnerable slope of her neck visible. Until the tide shifted, the sea drawing away, peeling water away from her back.
And he saw.
Before the water could hide them again, before her hair could fall, he saw what lay gouged into her flesh. The branded impressions. The reddened streaks flayed across her.
Hundreds of them. Thin and merciless.Unhealed.
The world fell obediently out of focus as he went still, smoke moving from his skin, flooding the walls. Shadows thickened, pressing into every corner, swallowing the lunethmoths’ glow one by one until the cavern trembled in darkness.
Low, he asked, “Who did that to you?”
Verena lifted her face, curses hissing under her breath, though she refused to meet his eyes. She knew what he’d seen. His outrage tore unbridled down the bond as shame from her end floated to meet it.
“It doesn’t matter.”
His breath shuddered out, water trembling in its wake. “Who, Verena?”
Her voice came quiet. “You know who did it, Ronan.”
Hedidknow who had done it. Had smelled it on her the night she was dragged from the dungeon, Reve’s stench woven thick through her skin. Had smelled it again before Reve sifted from that cliff.
And he remembered how she had shrunk that day. How she hadflinchedwhen Reve reached for her. Ronan hadn’t understood it then, but this, seeing the scars, this was a darker breed of rage.
He would rip Reve apart piece by piece. Then stitch him back together only to tear him down again. Endlessly. Until eternity itself went dry.
Verena tilted her head back, eyes fixed on the ceiling where a funnel of lunethmoths went bright. They wheeled and clustered like a false night sky, their wings painting stars that weren’t real. She let herself be still beneath the illusion, as if it could carry her far from here.
“Why aren’t they healed completely?”
He wanted to touch her. Flames burn him, he wanted to. To press his palms over them, to prove she wasn’t alone. But what if she flinched? What if his touch dragged her backward into memory, into the hands that had left those wounds?
“It’s been months,” he ground out. “Monthssince you escaped.”
Her shoulders lifted, then fell. “They were…deep.” Her voice cracked. “Before I was rescued, they put something on it. I think it’s stopping them from healing completely.”
The clench in his jaw was so hard it could shatter. “Gemma never taught you how to mend wounds like these?”
Her expression twisted at the name, fingers twitching beneath the water’s surface. “I haven’t had the resources to even try.”
His thigh brushed hers as he moved closer, lowering beside her. “We have endless resources in Ryuu. Better than any kingdom.”
Verena had never asked about the Kaida, even now. Maybe she knew. Maybe she didn’t care.
She reached, her fingers finding his, tangling then squeezing. “I don’t think I want them erased,” she whispered. “Not yet.”
The map of scars on Ronan’s body allowed him to understand. Each one he could have burned away with smoke and flame, yet never did.
“A reminder, then,” he murmured.
Her back was no different. Not to her.
“A reminder,” she echoed, the sea’s flare wavering through her eyes.
