Page 71 of Deadwood
Bowen gestured to the door. “Enjoy the weather.”
Lander and Paxon stood, but while Paxon immediately headed for the exit, Lander looked down at me.
“I’ll catch up,” I said to him. I didn’t want to hear their recounting of the evening and the nasty things they were sure to say on the walk back.
He nodded, giving Bowen a wary glance before following after his brother. On his way out, he grabbed a bandana from the small table by the door. I wasn’t sure if Paxon had done the same.
I stood from my chair and the others did the same. I looked at all of them. “Thank you for dinner. It was lovely.”
“Do you want some food sent to your home?” Siara asked. “You barely touched your plate.”
“Siara,” Flynt warned, sending her a look.
“She must still be hungry,” Siara defended.
I gave her a small smile. “I’m okay. Thank you, though.”
Siara nodded, then headed for the door with Flynt. Raiden had backed toward the wall so he was cast more so in shadow than the lantern light. I turned toward the door, wondering how painful it’d truly be to have magic in your lungs.
“Auria,” Bowen said from behind me.
I twisted, careful of my ankle, despite it feeling slightly better, and found him standing by the corner of the table. We were maybe four feet apart, but it felt like mere inches.
“What happened before dinner?” he asked.
I swallowed the surprise at his question. I wasn’t expecting him to ask aboutthat.
“What do you mean?” Had he seen me? Had he been out near the fissure when Paxon dangled me from the ledge? “I bathed, and?—”
His lips pursed into a thin line before he interrupted, “Not that. You disappeared with Paxon.”
I blinked a few times, pasting on a smile. “Right. That. We only went for a walk. I hope that’s okay?”
Bowen shook his head. He wasn’t dumb, and yet here I was pretending he would take nonsense answers. “You came back alone.”
“I tripped, so I was a bit slower on the way back,” I said hurriedly.
As if on instinct, his gaze fell to the bottom of my dress, like he could see through the fabric and gauge how injured my ankle really was. His lips pressed together. He wasn’t believing it for a second, but making the story believable wasn’t my concern. It was the way he asked, like he truly wanted to know what had happened, that worried me more.
“You don’t need to feel guilty, Auria,” Bowen said, his eyes finding mine again.
“Guilty for what?”
“It’s written all over your face.”
It dawned on me he was no longer talking about the walk, but rather what Paxon had said during dinner.
My father, nor Paxon, had any right to bring up what had happened when I was younger. But rather than being angry, it mostly hurt me that my father would share my secrets so easily with someone else. A stranger, nonetheless.
It wasn’t my fault the boy had been killed either. He’d been visiting the castle with his father, who’d come to show the king his newest perfume scent. He had snuck off, and I’d found him in the halls. We’d…clicked.
The act was innocent, yet my father made it out to be my fault. He’d been irate to find him in my room, watching as I filled a vial of ice magic. My father hadn’t hesitated to kill him right there on my bed, shoving a sword right through his chest. The image of his lifeless body visited me some nights when I was weakest from the pull of my magic, and I wished sometimes I could erase it from my memory altogether.
He hadn’t deserved to die.
“I won’t pry into your life, Auria. But little piece of advice?” Bowen said, interrupting my thoughts. I was thankful for his voice in that moment, for it pulled me from a place I didn’t want to be. Not when I was vulnerable in a room full of people I didn’t know I could trust.
“What’s that?”
