Page 61 of The Thief and the Traitor Bride

“Thanks,” Nore only barely managed to mutter.

Her mind was still reeling as he grabbed her by the arm and dragged her bodily to the back, then up the stairs and down the hall to their room. He didn’t stop until he levered her down to the bed with both elbows and knelt in front of her.

“I’m okay, Cas,” she insisted, pressing the cloth to her bleeding nose. “I’m okay.”

He only sighed, gently removing her hands—and despite the blood, she couldn’t say she minded this. Him looking at her. Having an excuse to look back. His inspection didn’t deem it necessary, but her muddled brain did: she raised her hand and very lightly touched the edge of his jaw.

Thirty seconds of fantasy could do nothing to prepare her for this turn of events. For the reality of him kneeling before her, looking at her like that.

His mouth on hers. His blood on her hands. It was all the same fantasy sometimes.

“I don’t think it’s broken,” he said finally after touching her face in a few different places. “But there might be bruising tomorrow.”

“Can you mask it?”

His expression flickered. Cas stood, going into the bathing room. “Not here,” he said. She heard water as he poured it from the ewer. “Idistran magic is more specialized. If I were an anatomist, maybe, but I’m not. I can’t impact organic matter the same way I can at home.”

He came back bearing a pitcher with a few towels slung over his shoulder. Nore tried not to let her thoughts snag on the fact he’d called Lindan home.

“What’s this?” Nore asked.

“Let me clean you up,” he said, kneeling again. Some part of her brain registered that this was inconvenient, as far as angles went. She slid down onto the floor with him, her back to the bed. Caspian started to say something, stopped, and shook his head. He dipped a cloth in the pitcher and Nore realized that he’d taken his gloves off in the bathroom, leaving him barehanded. She looked away quickly, swallowing any words that threatened to escape.

“Finch,” he said, hesitating, the cloth so close to her face that she felt the warmth of the water already. “You never look at my hands.”

Nore closed her eyes.

“Why?”

She couldn’t hide the truth. Not now, when he was being kind to her after she’d been a fool—she should’ve listened, should’ve let him drag her upstairs.

“I don’t want to see them,” she said, so quietly it hurt. The night felt fragile, like any word would be too far, like any sentiment too true would break the thin peace they’d constructed. “I don’t want to see what I’ve done to you.”

She heard his quick breath. A moment passed. Then the cloth was on her face, Caspian’s movements gentle as he cleaned the blood away.

“Can I take this off?” he asked a moment later, his hands going to the hem of her dress. “You’re covered in blood, and you should probably sleep off the drink.”

For some reason, it felt like a rejection. Nore nodded. Caspian unbuttoned the clasp at her throat, then pulled her dress over her head. She did not look to see where he put it.

She should’ve been ashamed, sitting there. Nore had always had a taste for the finer things, and that included her underclothes—Caspian was certainly no stranger to the lace, silk, satin, and boning she wore under her dresses. If he appreciated it now, the deep plum silk of her drawers against her pale skin, the black edging of lace that traced her breasts, the nipped-in corsetry at her waist, he made no move to show it. He unlaced the corset, giving her more space to breathe.

“Finch.”

She opened her eyes. He was still there, in front of her. She shivered as his fingertips traced over her bare skin, barely brushing the underside of her breast, tracing over her ribs. Very gently, he touched the scar at her side. “Neither of us is innocent in this.”

She searched for words, but they did not come.

She was briefly distracted by the mournfulness in his tone, the ache of nostalgia. Nore turned, her hands reaching for fabric, for her shift or something else as he finished unlacing her and pulled her bodice free—and she felt the exact moment when he froze. His breath caught. Nore, sluggish with alcohol and pain and exhaustion, realized a second too late what he’d seen.

“Nore.” He pulled the fabric away, exposing her lower back, the gouged marks that had turned to ugly, brutal scars. She didn’t need to look at him to feel the tremor in his fingers as he ran one down the line of one of the parallel scars, to hear the tremor of anger in his voice. “What is this?”

She was so tired, but there was no point in denying it. “Neither of us is innocent in this,” she said, turning his words back on him.

She could almost feel him thinking as his hands splayed across her lower back, thumbs framing the deep scars and then covering them with his hands, as if he could no longer bear to look. Then, a withered sigh. “These are deep, and healed badly.”

Nore didn’t say anything to that. She had only looked herself a couple of times, positioning the mirror to see this secret shame that showed what she really was: a traitor. They were positioned to sit under even the lowest-backed designs of Lindle fashion, to be concealed easily. But she knew they were etched onto her skin—and any time she was exposed in front of someone else, they were unavoidably there.

She remembered again that moment with Tern that could have ended any other way. That question of, Should I stay or should I go? That deep, searing shame of knowing exactly what he would see if he took her to bed—that he would remember the worst parts of her. That he would remember how weak she truly was.