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“You were never his. You were fighting to hold your own against him.”
“Do not romanticize me. No matter how much you love me.”
He didn’t push her away. There was no judgment in his voice. “I have always seen you more clearly than anyone else could. Your petals and your thorns.”
“You don’t know what I’ve done,” she whispered.
“Will you tell me?” he asked. “You know that nothing you say or do will cost you my love.”
“I don’t want you to love me for the person you believe me to be…you deserve to know the truth about who I really am.”
For a moment, she thought she might be sick again from simply trying to say it aloud, but Lio’s power touched her mind, calming her stomach.
“When the king sent me to Paradum,” she began, “I thought it would simply be another season to survive in another keep. The lord and lady were glad enough to watch me for him to curry favor, but they treated me like baggage.” Cassia swallowed. “That’s also how they treated their own daughter. Lady Miranda.”
“Now I begin to understand.”
“But Agata, the cook, was kind. She put me to work in the garden, and I…I was happy, Lio. It was the only time in my life I was happy, after losing Solia and before I met you. And part of the reason why was because Miranda and I became friends. She was my first Perita.” Cassia shut her eyes over a fresh wave of tears. “But then I ruined everything.”
He stroked her hair, listening in silence.
“She accidentally used magic in front of me. She begged me not to tell anyone, for she dreaded being trapped in a temple. It wasn’t the life she wanted, and most of all, she didn’t want to lose her inheritance. Everyone living in the vicinity of Paradum…the people in this village…they should have been her dependents. She wanted to become their lady and take better care of them than her parents had.”
“What happened?” he asked gently.
“I sold her out.” The words emerged from Cassia in a horrified rasp. “I told the mages she had magic.”
He listened, giving her time. Why wasn’t he angry? Why wouldn’t he agree with her that what she had done was wrong?
“Miranda fled rather than succumb to the Orders,” Cassia said. “But do you know what she did before she escaped to become an apostate? All these years, I never recalled, until I saw her again. But now I remember her leaning over my bed, working magic. She must have healed me. She must be the reason I survived the fever.”
His arms tightened around her.
“I threw away a friend like that,” Cassia said.
Lio rocked her in his arms.
“All of this is my fault. I doomed her to a life as a fugitive. I doomed her people to the king’s whims, robbing them of a lady who would have tried to shield them from him. Her fear…this family’s losses…all of it is because of me.”
What had happened to Miranda since then? What hardships had she faced as a woman alone in Tenebra, trying to hide her magic? Cassia shuddered to imagine. “At least she found her way to Sabina, who knows her secret and treats her better than I ever did.”
“I do think Miranda has some friends in high places. Someone with resources to help her hide her aura. The first few times I met her, I had no idea she was a mage.”
“She’s probably the reason Perita is alive, too. She was surely helping Pakhne heal her. That night, you drove the Collector away before he could harm anyone else, including Miranda.”
“Then I will consider my bond of gratitude with her honored, and we will continue to watch out for her. Between his attack on the tent and the undead crow, we were right to worry he might target her.”
Cassia hung her head. “Now you know. I betrayed a woman that brave and heroic and kind. To save my own skin.”
Lio’s tone was so reasonable that she could scarcely bear it. “Why did you do it?”
“Because I was selfish and cruel.”
“You have never enjoyed being cruel to people. There must have been a pragmatic reason you chose to barter that information to the temple.”
Cup and thorns, he knew her so well. His logic went right to the heart of the issue like a razor.
“The king was coming to take me away from Paradum,” Cassia said. “He wanted me back at court for reasons I didn’t know.”
