Page 24 of Veiled Fate
“Liar,” I spat. “You know more than that.”
“I am not a liar,” he said stiffly.
“So careful with your words. Don’t think I didn’t notice you not responding to my actual point. You know more than you’re letting on.”
Kiel was silent, his eyes boring into me. I glared back, hard and impervious to his efforts to calm me.
“Just leave,” I said with a sigh, suddenly exhausted. “Seriously, just get out. I don’t want anything more to do with you or your secrets.”
He made no move to go.
“Fine,” I said, knowing I stood zero hope of actually moving him myself, “then I’ll go.”
Before he could say anything, I stormed out the door and down the stairs, leaving him behind.
The older, grizzled innkeeper who had been tending the bar and other business when we had arrived was gone. In his place was a younger man, somewhere around my age. He was wiping glasses with a damp rag, but he casually tossed it over his shoulder with practiced experience when I slid into a stool opposite him, keeping my robe pulled tight around my waist.
“What can I get you?” he asked just a bit softly, perhaps recognizing the mood hovering over me like a thundercloud.
“Nothing,” I said, trying to keep from taking out any of my anger on him. “Don’t have the money for it at the moment.”
“Oh, that’s no problem. It’s on me,” he said, flashing me a smile.
I hesitated, torn between wanting a drink and not wanting to be in the man’s debt. “No, thank you,” I said.
“I insist.” He started pouring me a glass of wine from one of the casks behind the bar. “Besides, it’s already in the glass, and I can’t drink while I’m working, so ….”
I didn’t bother following his gaze as he swept it over the rest of the empty downstairs of the inn.
“Thank you,” I said gratefully, though I didn’t feel like drinking. Nor did I want the young man to think that I would repay his flirting with anything.
I wasn’t that type of girl. Not to mention, the last man I’d let into my life had turned out to be manipulating it from the start. That would take some time to get over. A lot of time.
“Where you from?”
Swallowing a grimace, I looked up. The man had an almost childishly eager smile on his face.
“Tegean area,” I answered before looking back into my drink, hoping he would get the hint.
I didn’t want to talk.
“Nice out there. All that farmland,” he said genially.
“Yep. Lots of farms,” I said deadpan.
Get the hint, kid. Please.
The irony of thinking that the young man who might have been my age or older as a kid never really occurred to me. But it was true. I had been through more in the past few months than most people went through in a lifetime. I was older and far more traveled than the vast majority of our people. And I had seen death. Lots of death.
As I was learning now, looking at his youthful, exuberant face and casual smile, that changed a person. And not always for the better.
“Right,” he said, a slight hitch in his tone the only giveaway my response put him off.
Coming closer, he pretended to busy himself with cleaning the bar right next to me.
“Do you need any help?” he asked so softly I barely missed it.
My eyes flicked up, meeting his. The suddenly serious hazel-ringed orbs flicked to the ceiling at the same time his eyebrows rose. Much of the cheerful childishness had faded from his face as he directed his gaze upward.
