“I didn’t—”
She cut him off by clinking her glass against his, and her lilting laughter soothed his anxious soul.
Good gods, he had no idea what he was doing. All was going well until he told her, “I won’t take back what I said about wanting to protect you. In fact, I refuse.”
Her brows went up as she set down her fork.
That hadn’t come out quite how he intended, but he muddled on, “I can’t take it back, not in good conscience anyway. Because it’s true.”
She opened her mouth.
He held up a finger. “I don’t mean it in an ownership way, I mean in a partnership way... watching out for one another, caring for one another, protecting each other.”
She closed her mouth and blinked.
“Will you consider having me?”
He aged fifty years waiting for her response. It was as if she was intentionally torturing him by cutting a bite of steak, popping it in her mouth, and chewing for far, far too long.
“I need to think about it.”
It was his turn to sigh.You tried, Kas.
“It’s— You don’t understand. You’re adukeand I’m a tutor.” She peered out the window into the rising night. “Father always drilled into my head, over and over and over again, that I should make a good match ‘within my social class.’ He was harsh at times. ‘Touched by a severe lack of morality,’” she echoed her father’s words. “‘Cruelty that runs bone deep.’ He thought poorly of the aristocracy. But... he wasn’t oftenwrong,you know?”
Whatever happened with the late queen certainly colored the man’s opinion.Kas’s chest ached beneath the weight of the secret he was keeping from her. It had grown heavier over the past days in light of their arguments regarding his lies.Add another one to the pile. Though, Nesrina parroting Hothan’s beliefs on nobility shed light on theirotherissues, the ones Kas hadn’t caused himself.“Gods, and here I thought I was friends with your dad,” he said lightly.
Nesrina scoffed, laughter coloring the edges of her voice.
“Do you not know about my grandparents?”
“Why would I know about them?” Her attention was back on him. He liked that.
“You’re studious, knowledgeable on history. I guess I assumed you’d have read up on the kingdom’s nobility.”
“Yes, Kas, because it’s normal for plebeians like me to study the family trees of aristocracy.”
He threw his hands up in defeat and pushed back his chair, chuckling as he stood and drifted over to his bar. “Gods, Nesrina. Must you make everything so difficult?”
She exhaled loudly.
When Kas returned, he held two tumblers of deep amber whiskey. One for himself, and one for her. She accepted hers carefully, and he was sure she was avoiding his touch. He took it as a good sign: He affected her.
Kas retook his seat and swirled the whiskey in his glass for a long while. “You really have no idea, do you?”
She pierced him with a glare.
He threw up his empty hand in surrender. “All right, all right. How fun, I get to become the teacher.” Kas grinned, and she rolled her eyes. “Let me tell you a tale.”
“Get on with it already!”
He chortled. “Many years ago, there was a young man, Cafer, the son of a baker from the quaint seaside town of Kashuvol—”
“I’ve never been there, but I’ve heard it’s beautiful.”
He leveled her with an exaggerated glare.
She sipped her whiskey, and he continued, “As I was saying... Cafer, the baker’s son, grew up in Kashuvol at the southeasternmost corner of Selwas. When he was twenty years old and done with his apprenticeship, he ventured north to Rohilavol to try his hand at opening his own establishment. But alas, Rohilavol had several bakers and no need for another. This unfortunate turn of events led him, now twenty-four, penniless and nearly destitute, to continue his journey north to Kahovirib. He was a proud young man who refused to return to his father in Kashuvol untilhe’d made something of himself.” Kas paused to take a sip of his drink.
