19. Kiera

Chapter 19

Kiera

“Aiden?” I gasped, sinking lower into the water.

“Forgive me for intruding,” he said, his gaze fixed somewhere above my head. “Ruru told me you went for a bath, but you didn’t bring fresh clothes. So, I... I brought you some.” He cleared his throat. “Sophie laundered them.”

I blinked. Why hadn’t he just sent Ruru with them? Holy Four, had he seen me leaving my mark for Renwell?

“How did you know which bathhouse I would be at?” I demanded.

“I tried the one closer to our place first.”

I shrugged, trying to look nonchalant. “Ruru said this one was bigger.” Which was true.

“Right. Well, then. Where shall I leave your clothes?”

Careful to keep my breasts underwater, I pointed toward my curtained alcove. “There.”

He strode over to it and laid a canvas bag on top of my dirty clothes. “Do you need more soap?” he asked, still averting his eyes. “The attendant wouldn’t let me in without paying for soap and a towel.”

“Yes, thank you.”

He knelt next to the pool and laid the extra towel next to mine. Then he handed me the soap. Our eyes finally met as our fingers touched.

Something burned in the depths of his gaze that stirred a nest of embers in my stomach.

We stayed locked together until the soap slipped from our fingers.

It fell to the floor, too far for me to reach. Ignoring it, and him, I turned away and dug my fingers into my snarled hair to comb it out. The scar on my chest pulled, and the tender spot on my head prickled with pain.

Biting my lip to keep silent, I dropped my hands back into the water.

“Do you need assistance?” His voice was like a deep, sensual song to my ears. Gods help me if he ever did sing as Maz was always trying to get him to do. His voice mesmerized me like it had that first night when he helped me with my boot and checked the bruising on my ribs.

I nodded.

“Give me a moment.”

Clothing rustled. The embers in my stomach burned hotter. How many clothes was he taking off? His soft footsteps stopped behind me.

Gods, what was I doing? This was treading dangerously close to a line I couldn’t cross. Not with him.

Bare, muscled legs lowered into the water on either side of me.

Heart in my throat, I whipped around. My eyes widened, trying to consume the naked man in front of me. Well, mostly naked. He still wore his undershorts. But the rest of him was like a living, breathing, heated work of art. His waves of black hair—damp from the steam—curled at the ends over his forehead and neck. Contoured muscles rippled under bronze skin as he pulled himself closer.

And I had been right before, on the cliff road—his thighs were magnificent. I wanted to place my hands on them and lift myself toward him.

His jaw tightened at the look on my face. “Turn around, little thief,” he rasped.

What? Oh. My hair.

I turned around and closed my eyes tightly, my body quivering under the water. I heard him squeeze the soap between his hands. Then he trailed his fingers over my hair.

I bit my lip harder as he slowly worked through the tangle.

“How are your wounds?” he asked.

I had to swallow twice before the words came out. “Healed. Mostly. You seem to be doing that a lot for me lately.”

He hummed. “You seem to get into trouble a lot.”

I snorted. “And you don’t? Do you not recall how we met?”

“When I helped you escape prison? Of course, I remember.” There was a smile in his voice that I wished I could see.

I laughed. “That was a mutual effort, I believe.” An effort that had left behind two other Shadow-Wolf bodies in that cave.

My humor dampened. Why did everything have to remind me of Renwell and what I’d done?

Aiden tugged on a hard knot, and pain shot through my scalp. I flinched.

“Forgive me,” he whispered. His touch gentled, and for some reason, my heart ached.

Silence swelled and thickened like the clouds of steam around us as he continued to methodically comb and wash my hair. His fingers stroked my head and brushed my ears and my neck, building a delicious sensitivity. When he lightly raked his nails over my scalp, a moan escaped my throat.

His fingers stilled. Then he gathered my heavy hair and draped it over my shoulder. “Done.”

But before I could turn around, he swore and seized my shoulders. I froze.

Fucking Four. I forgot.

“Who did this to you?” he snarled.

I tried to breathe calmly through my nose. I knew what he must’ve finally seen in the low light. A thorny mess of scars etched across my shoulders.

He turned me to face him. I recognized the fury blazing across his face. From when the Shadow-Wolves were chaining me in the cell. And when the cattle herder had leered at me.

My heart fluttered like hummingbird wings.

“Who gave you those scars?” he demanded.

“Does it matter?” I whispered.

“It shouldn’t. Gods damn it, but it does.”

“It was a long time ago. In truth, I forget they’re there because I never see them.”

“Who?” he bit out.

“Korvin.” Saying his name was like pulling the cork from bottled memories. Memories that now flooded my mind.

Korvin’s cold, dead eyes. His monstrous grin. That whip of shattered night.

Father ordered it. Renwell allowed it.

Mother begged Father to change his mind, but instead, he forced her to watch as Korvin flayed my back with his whip. And Renwell... Renwell never took his eyes off me. Then he collected me afterward. Cleaned me up. And swore he would never let Korvin hurt me again.

All because I fell in love with a boy my father considered a traitor.

“Kiera . . . Kiera?”

I heard my name as if from beyond the Abyss. Darkness clouded my eyes. I felt my body lifted with ease and quickly wrapped in a towel. Then I was being carried. Again. Safe. In these arms.

Aiden.

Aiden held me tightly, rubbing his hands over my shuddering body. “Breathe, Kiera. Breathe. Focus on my voice. Listen to my words.” His lips pressed to my forehead, a warmth that branded my soul through my skin. “Come back to me. You are not there anymore. You are here. With me. Breathe.”

Slowly, the darkness faded. Air returned to my lungs. In and out, like calm waves.

Aiden cradled me in his lap in the curtained alcove surrounded by our clothes. My cheek was pressed into his neck. My fingers dug into his shoulders.

Tears burned behind my eyes, but I refused to give any more to that monster.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

“You have nothing to be sorry for. It’s him who should feel this pain. I pray that I am the one to inflict it on him one day.”

All dignity forgotten, I burrowed my face deeper into his neck. “I don’t think a monster like him can be defeated. Not like I can.” My words grew fragile. “You said I wear victory beautifully. I’m afraid I don’t wear defeat quite as well.”

He grasped my chin and lifted my gaze to be devoured by his. “I’m beginning to think there isn’t a way you are not beautiful.”

My breath caught.

And I was beginning to think that repeating my history was more than a dangerous possibility.

But I couldn’t let him destroy me this way. I could choose to resist this... this lure between us. The pull of his gaze as it dropped to my lips. The breathless urge to surrender to what my whole being cried out for.

I needed a distraction.

My fingertips brushed over a patch of uneven skin on his shoulder. Of course. His scar.

“What is this from?” I asked softly, hiding from his gaze by peering over his shoulder.

The skin looked deeply burned with odd divots and whorls in it. The image of a falcon in flight had been inked over it with the breast of the bird embodying the scar.

For a moment, I didn’t think he would answer. A part of him seemed to withdraw from me even as he continued to hold me.

“The mine,” he finally said. “They brand all prisoners in such a way by heating up a chunk of raw sunstone and pressing it into the prisoner’s shoulder.”

My jaw dropped. “The Calimber mine? But you said that no one ever left there except in death.”

A muscle in his cheek twitched. “We escaped.”

Understanding dawned on me. “Maz. That’s where you met him. He has the same scar.”

Aiden nodded. “He arrived a few months after me. We shared a cell.”

Suddenly, many things made sense. Why he hated being shackled more than beaten. That he’d been in darker places than the tunnel. Why he and Maz were so close.

I pressed my hand over the scar, the bird in flight. “Did the Dags give you this tattoo after you escaped?”

“Yes. Maz has a bear—the chosen animal of his Yargoth clan—over his scar. It was our way of commemorating our victory in survival.”

I traced the wing tips of the falcon. Aiden sighed deeply into my hair, but he didn’t stop me.

This must be another of his reasons for hating my father. Being imprisoned and forced to work in a mine. Why had they put him there?

And why hadn’t Renwell mentioned the connection? Surely he had noticed during his “thorough” interrogation. He would’ve known what this scar meant, having been to the mine many times.

Unless Aiden was lying.

But something deep in my gut told me he wasn’t.

I couldn’t promise him revenge as he had done for me upon seeing my scars. He’d already avenged the one across my chest. But I wanted to give him something. A moment of peace. As he’d given me.

I leaned forward and pressed my lips to the middle of his scar, inhaling his warm, spicy scent.

His body tensed around mine. His hands fisted in the towel separating our skin.

I pulled back. The dark, hungry look in his eyes made my heart take flight.

“Be careful what you steal, little thief,” he growled. “Or I might take back what’s mine.”

A shiver ricocheted down my spine. My breath turned ragged once more. But this time, it was a wild excitement rather than fear. A desperate desire.

Perhaps destruction wouldn’t feel so terrible with his lips on mine.

Our noses brushed together. Our mouths were a few frantic breaths apart.

A loud crash shattered the moment.

We jerked apart as a clamor of voices entered the bathhouse.

“Do you have to be such a gods-damned bumbler?” a male voice grumbled. “If you broke a single one of my jars?—”

“Eh, quit your griping, old man. Your precious oils are intact. You’ll still smell like a peach in summertime for your wife.”

The men kept sniping at each other as they splashed into the water.

I looked at Aiden and clapped a hand over my mouth to keep a hysterical giggle from bursting out. His eyes brimmed with mirth as he grinned back at me.

He looked so beautiful in that moment it made my heart hurt.

“I should get dressed,” I whispered.

He nodded. “I’ll move to another alcove so we don’t get banished for... touching.” My cheeks burned. “I’ll wait for you outside.”

He gathered his clothes and slipped around the curtain.

I tied my hair into a knot on top of my head and dressed myself in moments. After shouldering the bag full of my dirty clothes and making sure my knives were hidden under my cloak, I stepped out.

Neither of the two men soaking in the pool looked up as I walked past.

Outside, Aiden leaned against the wall, resting in the shadows. His eyes warmed when they spotted me.

That subtle change unnerved me.

Even though we were now both fully clothed, I felt like I’d exchanged a piece of my armor for his, leaving me vulnerable. The more he knew me, the more he could use against me. But I could do the same to him.

I wasn’t sure I wanted that power.

“Headed home?” he asked.

Home. I had no home. “I told Ruru I would meet him for a treat at the market.”

Aiden dipped his head. “I will leave you to it, then.”

I blinked in surprise. “You’re not going to follow me? Have I finally earned your trust?”

“Trust.” His expression twisted as if he didn’t like the taste of the word. “Trust is knowing the sun has risen thousands of times, yet never being sure of tomorrow. It’s a promise, yet always a question.”

“Then you don’t trust anyone, truly. Not even the sun.”

His cheeks furrowed with a small smile—one so bittersweet my heart prickled. “I can hope for sunlight while still guarding my own flame should I find myself in the dark.”

His words soaked into my mind like ink into parchment. Like a letter written from his heart to mine. Words that I understood without having to think of them.

“Then I will do what I can to be a light,” I said.

Even I didn’t know if that was a lie.

Aiden simply nodded, his features stern. But his fingers brushed mine as he walked past me.

I stood there for a moment in a daze, unsure of which way to go. But eventually, my boots tread back to where they knew I had to be. In the alley behind The Crescent Moon.

Every other thought abandoned me as I stared at the wall where I’d left my mark.

A horizontal line was slashed through it. Deeper and longer than my scratches. The ferocity of it made my stomach quiver with unease.

I had to meet Renwell tonight.