Page 43 of Memory of Ashes

Her hands shook as she pressed the cloth against his warm skin.

He went still beneath her hands. Some of the severity left his face.

“Does it ever stop?”

“The remembering?”

She nodded.

“No.” His gaze dropped to the blood-soaked bandage. “But you realise that forgetting would be worse. My first kill… it was ordered. I obeyed before I understood what my obedience would make me.”

“How old were you?”

His gaze remained on the bloody bandage. “Young enough to follow orders blindly.”

She wondered how many of those orders he’d followed.

“Our parents help shape who we are. Sometimes it’s hard to escape their shadow. I thought that my discovery, finding something no one else had, would make me feel significant.”

“Did it?”

She shook her head. The damp cloth trembled in her hand.

His warm hand gently closed around hers as he eased the cloth from her grasp. He slowly wiped the blood from her skin.

“My father has never allowed me to be insignificant. Some days, I think I might have preferred a life without bloodshed or politics,” he admitted.

“Is that why you keep the broken things?”

His hand stilled.

“They are the only things in the fortress that are truly mine. Things I can put back together. The only things not damaged by me.”

Their eyes locked.

“Earlier… I should never have done that to you. If my father found out…”

“I’m getting a little tired of being your prisoner,” she said.

He placed his hand gently against her face. She’d not seen this side of him before.

“I wouldn’t stop you if you wanted to leave.”

But where would she go?

“And your guards?”

His silence answered for him.

“They would.”

“On whose orders?”

“Mine. The moment I give that order is the moment I defy my father.”

“Then I’m still your captive.”

“Yes,” he said. The admission appeared to cost him. “But I no longer know whether I am protecting you or keeping you for myself.”