Page 30 of A Kiss of Embers
“It was necessary to convey the gravity of my disposition. I was willing to wound you before taking you. It would make your friends think you were in grave danger if they didn’t hurry.”
“I don’t feel like I’m in grave danger.” He swam slowly toward her, but she flinched away.
“No!” she gasped. “Don’t come any closer.”
He paused upon noticing the hint of a tremor in her voice, the smallest inkling of fear in her eyes as she held up a hand as if to erect a barrier between them.
Rather than advancing farther, he swam backward to put more distance between them. “All right. If you really don’t want me to see your nasty mole, I won’t come any closer.”
The fear in her eyes disappeared in favor of amusement. “I don’t have a nasty mole.”
He laughed, which promptly turned into air bubbles when he dunked his head beneath the water to clean the mud from his hair, and then he flipped his hair back so it lay slick against his scalp.
“Why do you keep your hair long?” Seraphina asked as she studied him.
With a shrug, he answered, “Culture, I suppose. My father keeps his shorter to defy the constraints of our culture. Don’t tell anyone I told you. Everyone else simply thinks it’s easier for him to manage when…”
He trailed off and turned his head to avoid looking into her eyes. He didn’t want to speak more on the subject. But at the same time, he wished to share his thoughts with the woman he once called his enemy.
No, she was still his enemy.
Then why were the lines blurring so rapidly? Why did confusion swirl in his mind each time he looked at her?
Because he realized she didn’t feel like the enemy. Not when his people had wronged her so greatly. Just like they’d wronged him and his father, too. Perhaps he was not looking in the mirror like he should.
“When…?” she prompted softly.
Releasing a long sigh, he focused on scrubbing the mud from his skin rather than witnessing her reaction. “The council maimed my father’s legs because he’d attempted to make contact with my sister outside the settlement.” He paused and glanced up with a tortured expression. “I’m sorry my people took your…Pri. If it’s any consolation, I wish to kill them just as much as you do.”
Stunned silence.
And when her open-mouthed gape became too much to take in, he returned his attention to scrubbing his body down. “When my father dies someday, they will kill me next. I’m planning on killing as many as I can before someone cleaves my head from my shoulders. It will be a glorious death filled with justice for what they did. My only regret is I won’t be able to see my sister, Nyana, one last time.”
“You will kill your own people?” she asked in a raspy tone.
“Don’t mistake my words. I want to kill thecouncil. No one else. They’ve done so many terrible things. Maiming my father’s legs. Blinding a family friend. Beheading a woman who had run away from an abusive marriage. Hanging a boy who had just come of age because he’d befriended an Ember Fae.” He squeezed his eyes shut to try to block out the image of the last death, forever imprinted in his memory. “If those things don’t anger you, then you should know they also killed the Ember Fae friend.”
He opened his eyes to find Seraphina’s fists clenched where they floated in the water in front of her. When he realized he could see the distorted color of the rest of her body beneath the surface, he looked away and instead studied the way water droplets rolled off her wings, similar to that of a bird’s feathers.
“Well then.” Seraphina spoke quietly enough for him to have to lean forward to hear her words. “Perhaps we do have more in common than I realized after all.”
When she began swimming toward the shore, this time, he turned his back to give her privacy. Besides, if she wanted to hit him with a poison dart, then she’d have to be ready to search the entire lake for his body when he lost control of his limbs.
Still, the thought gave him little reassurance. Seraphina played dirty, and he still wouldn’t put it past her to do such a thing.
“I have spare clothes for you,” Seraphina called to him. “I’ll set them on the boulder.”
“Where could you possibly be keeping those?” he gasped, but she only laughed.
“In the same place as all my other stolen items. I’ll never tell.”
Temptation tried to coax him into turning around, but he forced himself to keep his back turned. Perhaps she wouldn’t tell, but he planned to find out one way or another.
Fire crackled in the cool night air as Seraphina watched Bastien turn the pheasant they’d hunted on the spit over the flames.
Usually, the warmth, the light, the crackling soothed her spirit. Today, it did nothing as she contemplated the mysteries of the man beside her. What was she supposed to do with him? For her entire life, the Forest Fae of Attleglade had been her enemy. But she couldn’t very well drag him the rest of the way to the Burning Cliffs. Not after everything they had endured.
And the things he had confessed…
