Page 63 of The Prince's Mage

She’d heard him say that word countless times now but it was still one of the ones he hadn’t explained to her yet.

But Aimilia just had. Beautiful.

He blinked, cleared his throat and stepped into the room, switching to her tongue. “What’s wrong? What are you looking for?”

Beautiful.

All this time he’d been calling her beautiful. Since the second morning on the road.

All her life she’d only been beautiful because she looked like Hypatia. She’d never just been beautiful to someone simply for the sake of it.

And he thought she didn’t know what it meant, so he had no motive to lie to her. Especially now that she had the scars from the table all over her. She wrapped her arms over each other, hiding the scars as best she could. She said, “Aimilia, she gave me this and took everything else.”

Gavril scoffed. “That sounds about right. What is it? I’ll go get it.”

“Sleeves, something to—” Marcella started to gesture to the thin scars but abandoned the gesture and looked down at the floor. “Let your people say whatever they want about me but that.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Gavril soften as he walked up to her. His hand on her bare shoulder had her startling, but instead of moving away from him her traitorous instincts had her stepping toward him. He whispered, “These marks are not yours to be ashamed of. They are the shame of my brother and my people who are so depraved they think peace can only be brought by those who are willing to violate and brutalize their enemies in the name of it. They call their deserts peace.”

She nodded, but her throat was tight and she still didn’t think she could make it out that door even though she knew it was the only way she was going to escape and truly be free of ever ending up back on that table.

“But Aimilia didn’t choose that peplos for you to have to expose yourself to our people’s twisted tongues. She is—she knew I would be the only one to see you in it like this,” Gavril said, his hand trailing down her arm before pulling back completely as he held out the folded fabric in his other hand. “She knew I would be bringing you this to wear tonight as well.”

Marcella reached forward and took the red fabric, letting it unfold, and her lips twitched to see it was a cloak. His cloak, bearing the same trim and clasp with the same rune that was on the metal band on her wrist.

“I—I didn’t realize until recently you—You don’t know—Our people, we do not just give our cloaks to anyone to wear. It is a symbol of—To wear my cloak, why I made you wear it before returning to Areator and why I asked you to wear it when I left, it shows everyone else you are under my protection. That to go after you would be to go after me. It is not done lightly or to anyone but the most—” Gavril paused. “Well… a man only gives a woman his cloak after—after there is a… um, bond. A romantic one.”

Oh. That made a lot of sense.

She could feel her cheeks flooding with heat as she held the cloak with one hand and the clasp with the other.

He’d certainly been making himself clear about that lately.

“Tonight, I—Please wear it. I know how useless an exercise it has proved in the past, but I—” Gavril pulled his hands back. “Please wear it tonight.”

“Of course,” Marcella said, her voice breaking. She shouldn’t. She should ask for something else to cover her arms, but she couldn’t. If she succeeded tonight, she was going to be leaving Areator forever in these clothes. If this cloak was the only thing she was going to have left of Gavril, she would take it and keep it forever.

“Help me put it on?” she whispered and hated herself at the way Gavril lit up.

He took the fabric and pulled it around her shoulders, fussing and draping it until he was satisfied and secured the clasp over her heart. Once he was finished, he brushed his hands over her shoulders and arms, smiling down at her and saying, “Pulchra. With or without it. But I will not pretend I do not adore you choosing to wear it.”

The ferocity with which he loved and the ease in which he said things like that were so strange to her. Even when she had imagined one day being married to a man, she never imagined he would ever say things like that to her. She’d always imagined something comfortable and companionable, but not to be so openly… pursued.

She just pulled it closer and said, “We should go or we’ll be late.”

Gavril nodded and gestured for her to go to the main door first, his hand on the small of her back as they walked.

Marcella had to keep reminding herself what his cloak was hiding even from her own sight and what they were about to do.

She could not stay there. She could not let Inimicus like Nikias have an advantage over her people when they marched to war.

She could not let the Inimicus have Nikias.

Chapter22

MARCELLA

Marcella walked out into the courtyard on Gavril’s arm to see it was lit by runes and braziers of fire as the Inimicus nobles mingled in the open air. She spotted a plethora of commander’s cloaks, but there were still a fair number of Inimicus without them. According to Gavril, only a few of the Inimicus nobles ended up commanders.

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