Page 36 of The Thief and the Traitor Bride

“My job and my feelings about it are both none of your business.” Nore gritted her teeth. “And you can’t fault me for mistrusting you—you robbed me. More than once.” She tried to keep her rage in check, tried not to let the hurt slip through when she said, “I know you used me to escape from Celestine all those years ago.”

“I stole a key for my freedom and my life,” he said, a note rougher. “I’m sure you would’ve done the same thing I did if you were in my position. You can’t fault me for that.”

Nore turned away before he could see her face. She crossed her arms over her chest. “I want to get this assignment over with as much as you do. Just… play along, and if we get this over with, you’ll never have to see me again.”

His eyes were dark, molasses without any sweetness. “I don’t believe that.”

Nore frowned—because he was right. She’d already asked for his death, and she would do it again. But she needed him to work with her now, and she needed him docile.

She knew what hung in the balance: if she did this, she would never have to worry about Caspian again. She would become Celestine’s rightful heir. Everything she’d ever worked for, everything she’d ever wanted—no, because to want was to presume worthiness, and she didn’t dare assume Celestine would ever choose her as her successor.

But if she did this, finished this mission, she would be free of Caspian forever, and she would belong fully and wholly to herself. No more oversight. No more stumbling, trying to make the pieces connect. No more debts owed to her aunt, to the crown. She was desperate for control, and if she went through with this, she would have it.

“If you promise to cooperate,” Nore said, the words bitter on her tongue, “and swear that after we’re done, you will never return to Lindan, I will ask her to set you free.”

Caspian regarded her. His skin was flushed with fever, his eyes shining with it. “How can you expect me to trust your word?”

He had a point. After everything, he couldn’t. Just as she couldn’t trust his.

Someone knocked on the door, splintering the tension between them. Nore sighed, rubbed her hand across her eyes, and went to get it.

“I have your bath, ma’am,” the sailor said. There were two of them, carrying a heavy tub half-filled with water between them.

“Thank you,” Nore said shortly, moving aside. One of them glanced at Caspian on the bed, but neither spoke. When the bath was in place, the sailors left, shutting the door. Nore locked it behind them.

“If I cooperate,” Caspian said, his voice more measured now, “you promise that I can keep my freedom, and that my path will never again cross with yours?”

Nore drew a breath, relief coursing through her. She gripped the edge of the basin. “I promise,” she lied.

“Then I shall be your puppet husband, and your thief, and your mage,” Caspian said. His voice was rough with an emotion Nore did not understand. “And I hope to never see your face again once it’s over, Finch.”

Nore nodded. “Good. Then let that be so.”

And yet, for some reason, she felt much like she had the morning she’d been questioned for his treachery, after it was discovered he’d stolen a key from her to escape prison. She felt a weight on her chest, like there was no true way to outsmart him.

He sat up stiffly, swinging his legs over the bed. Nore stood by the basin, unwilling to help him unless he asked for it. She was grimly unsurprised to find that he’d somehow managed to untie himself while she was helping with the bath, even though she’d checked her knots twice.

She looked to the corner of the room as Caspian stripped, leaving his clothes in a pile on the floor. His gloves went last; these, he placed on her dresser. Nore moved aside to the table, sitting down as Caspian made slow progress to the basin.

“See something you like?” Caspian asked, stepping over the edge of the basin. He was unconcerned with his own nakedness, and Nore supposed, in some ways, she was, too. Only a few years ago, Caspian’s body had been one of the few constants in her life.

“Not particularly,” Nore said, forcing herself to look, to rake her gaze over his body. It was a lie—no matter what had happened between them in the past, it never impacted the way he’d made her feel when she looked at him. Like there was kindling in her lower belly, and one single spark would set her ablaze.

There was no point looking, just as there was no point not looking: Caspian was right. She’d seen it all before.

Except for the new scars.

There were just so many of them, some of them looking like regular healed scars, a few shades lighter than his skin. But there were others that gleamed dimly over his forearms and biceps, down his chest, on his thighs. War or not, Nore could not understand how they had all come about. Worse than that: something about them was oddly familiar, prickling at the back of her brain—

Then it came clicking into place. They were not scars. They were marks of past magic.

“You went to Nadira,” she said. “You went to the Inkmen.”

“I did,” he said, and she realized her misstep: she could not reveal to him any information she did or did not have. It was best for both of them if he thought she knew everything, and she had just fumbled that.

But she remembered the things they spoke about back when he had been her Caspian, late at night: how desperately he wanted to go to Nadira, to learn his father’s magic in earnest, to find his family who still lived there. It took a skilled magician to wield the powerful ink that carried Nadiran magic, formulated and nurtured by Inkmen in their mountains. But clearly, he had; no one untrained could use Nadiran ink and survive.

Worst of all, a reaction that she could not avoid: she felt, in her heart, the tiniest thread of pride. That he had gone and done it, after years of wanting. That he had mastered it.