My gaze roves down, breath catching.
Heart stilling.
Every visible inch of Baze’s pearly skin—aside from his unfamiliar, statuesque face—isscarred.Riddled with bite marks big and small. Some are perfectly mirrored crescents, as though teeth were simply stamped upon his flesh. The rest are so messy, I can’t imagine how long they would’ve taken to heal.
But hisneck...
The skin there is puckered and bunched in places, gouged in others, as though it was wrapped in a barbed wire collar years ago. Like he fought against it, shredding himself beyond repair.
My insides gutter, stare shifting from the man I thought I knew to the castle casting us in its big, boastful shadow.
Did Rhordyn have anything to do with this ... thistortureBaze has sustained over the years?
I blink, feeling a warm wetness dart down my cheeks. “And you had the nerve to callmea liar,” I rasp, and the voice is not my own.
It’s fragile.
It’s the voice of a girl who just realized how lonely she’s been for the past nineteen years.
I regard the dazzling pits of his eyes. “How very hypocritical, when you knowexactlyhow it feels to be living in a skin that doesn’t belong to you.”
He’s crestfallen, trying to cover his torso with the scraps of his shirt.
Part of me feels guilty for stripping his mask without his consent, but the feeling swiftly disintegrates the moment he opens his mouth.
“He won’t let you go, Orlaith.”
I retreat another step, eyes hardening. Trying, and failing, to picture this beautiful, broken man as the Baze I’ve come to know and love.
The Baze I thought wasunbreakable.
“He’s already lost me,” I respond in a voice too soft and vulnerable. I lift my chin to counter the weakness. “At least this way I’m securing those ships for the people who really matter.”
“Sonaïve,” he spits, shaking his head, top lip peeling back—blue from the cold. “You get on that ship, and he will hunt you. You havenoidea what he’s capable of.”
An oily blackness spilling out in vicious, torrential spears.
Burning.
Silencing.
“Yeah, well, I think that sentiment works both ways,” I rasp past a smear of bile, pushing the probing image deep into that chasm of death and destruction and heart-impaling regret.
I look at the ring sitting in my palm; the perfect mask to hide his pain. Just like my necklace, it feels too light to be heavy with so many secrets.
Right now, it’s my only guarantee he won’t chase me to the boat.
I swallow, waving the piece of jewelry at him. “I’ll leave this on the jetty, and if you want to keep your ... yoursecret,” I push out past the lump in my throat, “I suggest waiting until we’re gone to collect it.”
His lip twitches, and he stabs his gaze at the sand beside him, as if he can’t bear to look at me.
Taking that as my cue, I spin, stalking toward the quay. “And someone needs to water my plants,” I throw over my shoulder, rolling my sleeve and concealing my torn-up wrist.
Feeling like a boulder has landed atop my chest, I climb the stone stairs that rise from the sand and merge with the elevated wharf, keeping my shoulders back, walking with the ruse of a certainty I don’t possess.
I scale aged, weather-beaten planks slippery from the rain, chin notched high, ignoring the odd flick of silver frills through the waves to my side.
I hope Kai doesn’t try to accost me ... If he does, I’ll fall apart. Scatter on this dock and refuse to pull myself together again.
