“Any question?” Adrian pressed. “You’ll tell the truth?”
“Of course.” Why not? What did he have to hide from Adrian? They were mates. One day, they would know everything about each other.
“Fine.” Adrian dropped onto the log and rested his elbows on his knees. He stared at his worn and calloused hands for a moment, and Haru watched him, happy to just be in his presence. “You say that you want to know about my bad-boy years, but they’re not something I’m proud of. At least not anymore. I guess I started running around and getting into trouble when I was about twelve or thirteen. I was small and incredibly skinny for my age. It was easy for me to sneak into places and get past people without anyone noticing. The only reason I did any of it was out of boredom. My dad left shortly after I was born, and my mom was always working. Lots of long hours for little pay. With no siblings and no one to watch out for me, I got into trouble just to pass the hours.”
Haru cocked his head to the side, catching Adrian’s eye as he smiled. “It wasn’t the thrill of doing something bad and getting away with it?”
An answering grin spread across Adrian’s lips. “That was probably some of it, too. I stole, but it was usually cheap shit or bits of food. And I never stole from anyone who couldn’t afford to lose it. Lied constantly without an ounce of shame. None of it mattered. To me, it was all a game. When I was about fifteen or sixteen, I finally bulked up a bit and looked closer to my age. I started running with this guy named Diogo Borba. He was a few years older and was constantly working some angle or another. He used to run these scams of buying up cheap products from Ilon and bringing them up to Stormbreak and some of the surrounding towns where he’d resell them as high-end merchandise. Used to brag that he made a mint.”
“And you agreed to help him,” Haru interjected. He wiggled closer on the log, soaking in every word Adrian said.
“Of course. I was skeptical of his bullshit, but I’d never been to Brightspire in Ilon. I hadn’t even been out of Stormbreak yet. At that age, running wild with no one caring what I was doing, I thought I knew everything about everything. There was nothing I couldn’t handle. We got to Brightspire, and I loved it. The city differed completely from Stormbreak, and that made it perfect. We explored for a bit, then got to work. We were loading up his van with cheap shit when the local police swarmed us.”
Haru gasped. “You were arrested? Did you even have papers to be in that country?”
Adrian snorted and shook his head. “Papers? I didn’t have a single legal ID on me. Everything was fake, and not good fakes. We scattered, escaping the cops. Of course, I didn’t know my way around Brightspire, and the city is huge. I wandered for the better part of two days before I finally got back to where I’d last seen Diogo’s truck, which was now long gone. I had no way of contacting him, and there was no way in hell I was going to tell my mom I was trapped in Ilon.”
Haru frowned. “Why not?”
Adrian groaned and swiped a hand across his face. “Because by that age, she’d been called to the police station or had to see the cops drag my ass home plenty of times. She knew what kind of scoundrel I’d turned into. She would have told me to figure out my own way home since I got myself into that mess.”
“You didn’t think she’d be worried about you?”
“Can’t say I gave it much thought at the time.” Adrian looked at the fire and sighed. “I was a self-centered little shit. I took it personally that she wasn’t ever around to be my mom. What I didn’t consider was that she was working herself to death, so I had a roof, food, and clothes. Whatever. It took me two months of odd jobs, begging, and stealing to scrounge together enough money to buy a train ticket that would take me all the way to Stormbreak.”
“That long?”
Adrian grinned at him. “I wasn’t saving up the entire time. During that time, I was on my own for the first time. I made questionable friends, crashed on couches, and partied far too much. When summer was almost over and I knew I needed to at least appear at school, it took me only three days to pull the money together.”
“Was your mom happy to see you were still alive?”
“Relieved and so pissed. She had reported me missing, but none of the cops took it seriously. They were convinced I’d just run away, and I’d show up again when I was ready. After that incident, my mom stopped talking to me until I joined the Royal Guard. I think she’d lost hope that I’d ever turn into anything worthwhile. It hit me then that I’d let her down, but it took another couple of years for me to fix the mess I’d made of my life.”
Adrian’s voice sounded so desolate that it squeezed Haru’s heart. Even years later after he’d made his mother proud, he still hadn’t let that failure go.
Haru reached out and placed his fingers under Adrian’s chin, forcing him to turn his face to meet his gaze. “The difference between you and many hopeless people out there is that you took steps toward a better path. I am sure it was hard, but you persevered because you wanted better for yourself and your mother.”
“I laugh and make jokes about being a sneaky thief, but those years aren’t something I’m proud of.”
Haru adjusted his hand so he could rub his thumb along Adrian’s cheek in a gentle caress. The man closed his eyes and relaxed in his touch. “You can be proud of surviving those years.”
Adrian’s eyes flicked open, and he met Haru’s unwavering stare. “How old are you, Haru?”
Not the question he was expecting Adrian to ask, but he was still unwilling to dodge it. He’d made a promise, and Adrian had dared to reveal something very personal about himself.
“I am four hundred and twenty-three years old. Compared to human years, we are close in age.”
Adrian sighed again and sat up, pulling free of Haru’s touch. “That’s a big age gap. I—” Adrian stopped speaking suddenly and frowned.
“What?”
“We need to get moving. We need to find Shey,” Adrian announced, shoving to his feet and moving away from the fire to step into the deeper shadows around their campsite.
As much as Haru wanted to continue their conversation, he had a feeling that it was headed to a place that would end in an argument, which was not what he wanted. It was better to turn their minds back to the job ahead of them—finding the missing prince.
CHAPTER 6
Omari Haru
