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I take a deep breath, closing my eyes as I prepare for what comes next. Roan winds his fingers through my own, gently squeezing my hand. “My luck ran out one day. I don’t know how they saw me,” I shake my head, still in disbelief, “and within minutes of returning home, there was a knock at the door. There were three guards standing there.” Roan stiffens, his eyes dimming as my words sink in.
“They said goods had been stolen from the market, and they saw the thief run into our home. They wanted to search it. My mother knew. She knew it was me, and I had been caught. There was no hesitation as she told them it had been her.” I still remember when her wide eyes turned soft, the tiniest smile turned up her lips as she looked at me.
“They asked for payment. But they knew we had none. They dragged her from our home. I screamed that it wasn’t her. I told them she had been home all day. That I had been the one to take the food. But it didn’t matter. They took her anyway. She didn’t kick, she didn’t fight, she didn’t try to get away. She just went with them. To protect me.” My eyes glaze over as I remember her even steps and her lack of struggle.
“They threw her in prison. Telling me it would take a few days time to process her crimes and sentence her. But days turned into weeks, which turned into months. Winter came fast that year, and each time I would visit her, more of her life had seeped away with the oncoming cold.”
I shudder, remembering the chill that spread to my bones that winter and the blue tinge to her lips whenever she tried to smile at me. “She was dying, I realized. She had been so young and full of life just a few months before, and here she was— her vitality dwindling right in front of me. They gave her a blanket no thicker than a piece of parchment to keep warm. I was fourteen at this point, just coming in to my body and its… feminine nature.” I run my fingers through the air, mimicking the curves of a matured woman.
“The same guards that took her ran the prison, and the desire in their gazes as they looked upon me during my visits wasn’t lost on me.” Roan says nothing as I continue, his eyes now a shade of the deepest blue I’ve ever seen.
“I offered anything I could think of. Doing whatever I could to convince them to release her. But what they wanted, I just couldn’t give.” I pause now, a single tear escaping the corner of my eye. Roan wipes it away, his calloused thumb scraping across my cheek.
“She died two weeks later from exposure. And I hate myself every day that I couldn’t bring myself to sell my body for her. If I could go back, I would have given myself every night for the next fifty years if it meant having her in my life.” Another tear falls, but he doesn’t wipe this one away. The man across from me looks like he might burst into flame if given the smallest bit of kindling.
I don’t tell him that for the next couple months, they haunted the roads in search of me, as if my only protection was now buried in the ground. I don’t tell him how I hardly ate, fearing that if I stepped one foot in the city they would find me. Luckily, Marg found me first. But by the time I had completed her training, they had disappeared. Not even a whiff of them or where they had gone.
“That’s why you hated me, and the Guard,” he says. I can’t do anything but nod, not even looking him in the eyes. “Ari,” his hand clenches into a fist, unclenching again before he continues. “Thank you for telling me.”
I try to smile, to make it seem like it’s not anything important. That somehow in the last five years I’ve gotten over it— the fear and grief. But he sees right through my charade.
“Don’t. You don’t need to pretend you’re ok. No one would be ok after something like that, no matter how much time passes. I know it feels more brave to pretend, for the sake of others.” He runs his hand through his dark hair. “Trust me. I know,” he adds quietly. “But one of the most courageous things we can do is share the truth of our stories.”
His face softens, his muscles finally unclenching as he takes a deep breath. A few moments pass as I fidget with a loose thread on the blanket. When I look back up at him he seems hesitant, as if there’s more he wishes to say, or perhaps something he knows and isn’t telling me.
My numbed mind starts to thaw. “What’s wrong?”
His eyes dart to me, then to his lap. “You don’t, by chance, know who the guards were who took her?” He asks his question so gently, not wanting to push too me too far. I shake my head. If I knew who they were or where they were, they’d already be dead. But I keep that last part to myself. “Do you remember what they look like?”
Now this I do know. How could I ever forget? The red and gold adorning their coats and swords. Their dark eyes. Their yellow smiles as I screamed. Their hair, different shades of brown— one the color of fresh soil, the other of silt, the other like the browned top of perfectly baked bread. “I do. But I’ve looked for them. For four long years I’ve looked for them. After Marg took me in… well… I never saw them after that.” A laugh huffs out of me. “No matter how much I tried.”
He doesn’t push for the description, only nodding his head while he contemplates what I just told him. It didn’t dawn on me until now that Roan might know them. He might have seen these men. He’s been Captain for three years, and there’s a four year training period. He would have been new into the barracks, but he might have seen them.
But I can sense my body has done too much today, just reliving that one moment has drained the last of my energy. Tomorrow. Perhaps tomorrow on the hike up the mountain I will ask him.
Roan looks like he wants to continue the conversation, like every nerve in his body is alert. Instead he lifts his hand, tracing my cheek before tucking a stray strand of hair behind my ear.
His touch feels electrifying, igniting a warmth deep in my stomach. I close my eyes, letting the comfort of that warmth fill the empty holes of my soul. His fingers trail down my arm, grabbing my hand. He turns my hand over, pulling it to his mouth, planting a soft kiss on the underside of my wrist. My breathing deepens as my heart flutters faster and faster.
Gently, he places my hand back on the bed, retreating his own. I don’t think as I grab his hand back, rubbing both my hands in and around it before bringing it up to my cheek, leaning my face into its heated hollow. I’ve been alone for so long that I’ve forgotten how it feels to be cared for, for someone to want to know me, to want to help me. The dark of night and my raw emotions once again lower my shields. I glide my teeth over my bottom lip. His eyes catch the movement, his own breath deepening at the sight.
His strong arms wrap around my body, a gale swirling amidst his eyes as they focus on me. Roan’s desire to be with me is as strong as my own for him. It took me longer to accept, to realize how I felt toward him. But now that it’s here, our tether feels too strong to deny in this moment.
I adjust my position, leaning myself forward so he won’t have to move, giving him access for more if he wants it. I want this to happen, but admitting it feels too much, even unspoken. I don’t move the full distance, stopping just short of his lips. Roan senses my permission immediately. He tangles his hand in my hair as he moves it behind my neck. I follow his lead, scooting myself down on the bed so our eyes are level with each other. Gently, he pulls me in the rest of the way.
His scent fills me— leather, fresh rain, and subtle spice— cloves? I don’t have time to finish my pondering before his lips reach my own.
Heat bursts through me. My free hand cups his face, finding its way across his cheek and into his dark hair. A low moan escapes him, reverberating through me as our lips continue to mold to one another’s. He clings to me, his hands the only anchor as my soul wants to lift into the sky.
The kiss starts off soft, getting to know the curves and shape of each other once again. But as his hand moves down my arm and across my hip, a surge of desire sparks in me. I deepen the kiss, needing more of him as fast as I can find it. He returns my urgency, his hand pulling behind my thigh, guiding my leg over him until he’s underneath me. I don’t dare put my weight on him, and I make sure I won’t cause him more pain before my mouth finds his again.
I’ve kissed before, but always random men I found at the local tavern, and nothing that ever meant anything. This feels so different. There’s meaning behind our touch. Unspoken desire, longing, and… affection. Could we truly care for one another? The captain and the thief, the most unexpected of pairings. But a uniting that neither of us can deny as we get lost in each other.
We fit together. His lips dance over mine in a lilting, melodic rhythm, like a waltz under a starry sky. It's as if we were always meant to find each other, the missing pieces of a long-forgotten dream. I melt into him as his hands grip my waist, moving up my back and winding into my hair loose about my shoulders.
He breaks our embrace, pulling back to look into my eyes as panting breaths escape between us. “I wanted to kiss you that day I saw you at Reynauld’s.”
“Why didn’t you?” I search his face for any answers he’s not brave enough to voice.
