Page 140 of Winter Gods & Serpents

Speechless—she had left me completely speechless. What she must have gone through? In this time and day, slavers still roamed Adriata right under our nose. We had allowed that to be done to Nia, she was right to hate us the way she did.

She attempted to straighten. “It is fine though, they feel like my own, it’s crafter metal, blood crafted to fit me. Snow bargained for it, it is rare apparently.” She attempted to give me a short smile but her eyes didn’t let her, betraying her sadness rooted in pain and fiendish memory. “They don’t hurt or anything.”

“Nia, I…I am very sorry. Truly and deeply.” An apology that would never meet the end or even the beginning of her suffering. What she’d been through I couldn’t begin to grasp what to feel or do.

She slowly put both her gloves back on. “I have moved past that Kilian, can’t entirely tell you it still doesn’t hunt me, but there is no one without scars from their wounds. Snow wears them as reminder, Cai gets over them, I bury them to forget. I suppose it shows how strong one is.”

“One’s strength is not measured from their worst, don’t let it still define you.”

She frowned again, but this time a smile stretched across her face. “Again, I beg of you, do not tell that to Snow.”

We both exchanged smiles at her words, again I would not dream of it though I’d never want anything more than see her shoulders relieve from the weight of what she was juggling. However, she was too headstrong, using those corrosive weights to level and ground her, it terrified me to know what would happen once she took those off, once unleashed.

“Did you have family back in Adriata?”

“Relatives, not family. It doesn’t even get close to what I have now. They were from Lyra. I am bastard born, but I did have a father, a mother and,” she stopped, for a long while, “a sister too.”

“Do they know of what happened?”

She let out something between a laugh and a sigh. “It was my mother who sold me, my father who fell to relief for saving his marriage and the sister who lost a toy.”

Air burned my lungs. “Give me names, Nia,” I demanded. “And I swear an oath on Cynth—”

She rested a hand on my arm. “I bury to forget, remember? Taking a deep breath she nodded and said, “We will not tell her about my training….at least for now.”

“She will understand.” I knew Snow would not disagree, knew she’d respect her friend’s wishes.

She lowered her head, pensive and already regretful. “She might, but not without upsetting her.”

* * *

After a whole ten days of sitting, waiting, countless sleepless nights by the library studying gods know what and impatiently prancing around, Snow had called all four of us to the stables. She wore a deep emerald dress, thicker compared to the ones she wore around the castle. Her hair in an unusual braid and a thick fur lined brown cloak keeping her warm. Her attire was not for any of her missions, she never rode in anything except her uniform. She jollily chatted away, her smile bright, her guard loose. After what she’d said to me that day, I’d tried to keep my distance, keep words to myself, deny myself glances of her. It seemed she was doing the same, and somehow I loathed it.

Talk to me first, come to me first, joke to me and make me laugh again. Those words repeated all the time, but they were unheard pleas just as they were unspoken.

Damned be all. I reached a hand stroking Memphis, and she struck still taking in my presence. “Trying to see if killing in a dress is equally as easy?”

A shy small smile tugged at the corners of her lips. “Tried, tested and approved, it is as easy.”

“I have no doubts.”

Caiden approached and pulled on her braid making her yelp. “She has never killed in a dress before, if she intends to get near blood it’s usually done in breeches.”

“You don’t know that,” she grumbled, fixing her hair.

He threw an arm across her neck before turning to me. “Once, there had been a fight in a tavern, she refused to help part it or even get near it till she unlaced her dress, carefully folded it atop a chair and took three men down in her shift, half naked.”

“It was a shame—”

“Shame to get the silk dirty, blood is notoriously difficult to get off,” he finished her sentence and she gapped at him. He gave her a serpentine smile and they exchanged a look before he flicked her forehead making her stumble a step back. “Get on the horse, people actually sleep cakes, Amerie has a child. She can’t cater your royal arse at midnight.”

“The two of you are close.” My words a strong statement more than a question. There was something between the two of them but not in a lovers way. Caiden’s shadows read strong in her presence, but it was a discoloured mix of care and love, too entwined to tell.

“Jealous?” Her features alight in amusement.

I ran my fingers atop her forehead, over the red spot Caiden inflicted. I should have cut his fingers for that. “Curious, little beast, just curious.” I was learning to let lies slip so easy out of me, interesting.

She rose her brow, letting out a sigh almost in disappointment. “No need to be anyway, not of him at least. He thinks is funny to tease me like that, it’s the only reason why he does it.”