Page 70 of The Prince's Mage

“I don’t understand.” Marcella started, lifting her head up and shifting her shoulder until Gavril lifted his head as well. He blinked at her and she continued, “You thought I was Hypatia for at least a little bit, but from the start you were—”

She remembered how he had healed her that first night, showed her the food and water wasn’t poisoned, told her his name.

“Why were you so kind to me when you thought I was Hypatia, knowing what Hypatia did to Faustina?”

Gavril sat back and considered it for a moment. “Well… I was under the impression I was capturing Hypatia so she could be a bargaining chip. If we wanted good relations, treating you or Hypatia, if you had been Hypatia, well would ideally go a long way, and—it’s war. I was sent to kidnap someone. We send our people to kill each other every day. The things I have done to try to end this—” Gavril’s eyes landed on her left wrist, sitting in her lap. “I hope that the people I have done them to will find a way to forgive me for them. So I try to forgive first.”

It was so very Gavril.

She nodded, satisfied with the answer, and moved to shake loose the last of her curls that were now free. She could see him stifling a yawn and he looked exhausted, so she started to reach up to unclasp the cloak and give it back when his hands stilled hers. He whispered like a prayer, “Keep it. Wear it.”

“All night?”

“Always.”

She nodded in spite of herself. Then he leaned back, pulling her with him until she was in his arms as he laid on her bed. He whispered, “If you tell me to go, I will go. But I would rather stay. We end up here anyways by dawn.”

Marcella laid her head over his heart and muttered, “You say that, but watch tonight will be the first we do not wake up screaming.”

“That is rather the idea.”

Her hand was on his left wrist, tracing the lines and making them glow, her vitae under his skin rising up to her, before coming back up to the band and tracing the rune there. She could feel he wasn’t quite asleep yet and she asked, “I saw other Inimicus with these bands and lines peeking out of their sleeves. What do the runes translate to?”

Gavril’s hand on her waist tightened. He turned his head down into her curls and said, “This rune on my band. It is you. Your name. Marcella written in my people’s runes.”

Marcella wasn’t entirely certain she’d actually heard the answer or had just imagined it as she drifted off. It might have been a dream entirely.

Still, if it had been real… what did it mean? What did it have to do with the promise they’d apparently made?

Even if she’d just imagined the response, there was a strange warm fluttering in her at the thought. The idea that while she wore his cloak, a declaration to his people she was under his protection and marked as his, he might also be marked with her name on his wrist for all his people to see.

Chapter25

MARCELLA

For the first time since coming to Areator, Marcella didn’t wake up screaming.

She woke up in Gavril’s arms, his left arm curled around her back and a smile on her face as at some point in the night one of them had pulled the sweeping fabric of his cloak over him too while his arms were wrapped around her beneath it.

She believed it. She believed in him.

They were going to have peace, and she was going to get to keep him and she wasn’t going to end up on one of those horrific tables again.

Eventually Gavril woke up as she felt him shift under her. His arms started to pull back from her waist and she wasn’t able to stop the disgruntled, soft noise she made as he started to push himself up, which earned a laugh from him. She felt his lips brush the crown of her head and he said, “We must rise. Long day ahead.”

Marcella grumbled as she slowly pulled herself out of bed while Gavril ducked into his room to change. Marcella pulled at the drawers that someone had put back into the dresser last night after her little fit and the clothes from before were back in them. She shed the peplos from the night before, scrubbed at herself with the rag and water—she was not going back into that strange bathhouse ever again if she could help it; she would go find a creek before exposing her scars to an Inimicus woman to see—and put on fresh clothes.

There was a soft knock and she called out for him to come in. The door opened slowly as Gavril peered back into her room while she was reclasping his cloak onto her shoulders. His eyes trailed over her and his grin was wide as he looked up, and there was something hazy in his gaze that had her heart stutter and heat rush to her cheeks.

She did not know if she would ever get used to being so openly wanted.

But Gavril blinked and his grin softened as he said, “Ready,deliciae?”

She nodded and he took her arm and they headed off. Now it was Marcella’s turn to learn how to cast foreign runes.

She did not let herself fear that maybe Gavril was the exception or that only powerful, skilled mages could do this miracle. This was the only way to peace, the only way Marcella could be safe and have Gavril. So no matter what she had to be capable of it. Failing was not an option.

It was a lot of pressure for a girl who thought she’d be long since dead by now and even in life before that hadn’t been anything noteworthy and was less so now.

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