Page 73 of The Faceless Mage

“You’re asking me to trust humans. To risk myself among them again.”

She was. Leisa realized abruptly that her request was blindingly naive and unfair. She had no right to ask it of him, no matter how urgent her errand.

But she also wasn’t willing to risk her kingdom’s safety for his sake.

“I’m sorry,” she said again. “But I have to do this. I can’t afford to wait until I’ve fully recovered, or everything I have risked to this point will cease to matter. All of our people will suffer, and mages most of all. But I won’t ask you to go with me. I will go alone and tell King Soren what I learned. My debt to him will be resolved, and then I’ll be free to come find you and help you.”

“And now you’re asking me to trustyou,” he said softly, tilting his head and pinning her with that strange, glowing gaze.

Leisa didn’t know if she could convince him, but she had to try.

Somehow, she found the strength to stand. Balanced carefully until her knees stopped shaking, then crossed the distance between them and willed her arm to stop shaking as she reached up and placed one hand on his chest. It felt different now, without the armor, but the muscles beneath were nearly as hard as steel.

He was so close. So tall. So beautiful and deadly. He could kill her with a breath. Destroy her with a twitch of his finger. And yet she felt no fear.

“I know we’ve barely spoken to each other,” she said. “And for most of the time since we met, we were bound to different sides. But despite that, I believe you’ve inadvertently seen more of my heart than I’ve ever shared with anyone else. Even with the people I call friends. You know my hopes and fears, even the depth of my wounds.”

Perhaps it was a mistake to make herself so vulnerable, but if she wanted him to trust her, she could do no less. “You’ve seen me at my weakest and most afraid, so perhaps you could find a way to think of me not as a human, but as a person. Someone you know. Someone who does her best to fight for those she cares about. Someone who would never betray you.”

He was still beneath her fingers, but for the beat of his heart, and when he did not respond, Leisa began to believe she’d failed.

“Perhaps,” he said at last, but reluctantly, as though the words were being wrenched from his chest. “I don’t know that I can ever bring myself to trust, but this much is true—you are not just another human.”

Chapter 22

She was so much more.

And he didn’t know what to do with that.

He wanted to resent her—for being kin to those who enslaved him, for having seen him at his weakest, for having the power to free him when he could not free himself.

But she had somehow destroyed his defenses and sneaked inside when he was too alone, too eaten up with anger and despair to realize what was happening. She had been the only bright and beautiful part of the last ten years of his life.

Bright. Beautiful. Was that really how he saw her? It should have been impossible. Like all humans, she was short, soft, and pink. She was noisy and stubborn and had no idea how to move through the forest. She wouldn’t last a day among his people, and she shunned her own magic instead of embracing it as the gift it truly was.

But courage was a language they could both understand, and hers never faltered. Neither did her compassion, and that was perhaps the most difficult thing of all. Because amid the darkness of his desire for revenge, he, too, felt compassion—for this lonely human with nothing to cling to but her duty to a kingdom that had been so blithely willing to risk her life.

She felt alone, and that was not something any creature should be forced to suffer.

“If I wait for you,” he said suddenly, “after you return, would you come with me?”

Her face went blank.

“Come with you where?”

“Home,” he said, not really comprehending the reasons why he asked such an impossible thing, only knowing that he wasn’t ready to walk away from her yet.

And then he instantly felt a fool. No human would willingly go to a place where they would be surrounded by creatures that probably populated their darkest nightmares.

But before he could brace himself for her reaction, she smiled as though he’d offered her the moon.

“Yes.”

“You… would?”

She nodded. “I’ve been planning to leave Farhall after I deliver my report. I just didn’t know where I might go. If your people would have me, I would love to visit your kingdom with you. At least until we figure out how to free your magic.”

Visit. His kingdom.

---