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Memories flashed across my mind, of the drunken rages he’d fly into, of the women he hurt. I’d been too young to stop him at the time. I regretted not being strong enough.
“One day, Father and his crew had botched a job. They’d nearly been caught by the guards when they attempted to rob a transport of the king’s gold. I remember coming up to his side, trying to ask if he was all right, but he shoved me to the ground and snagged a bottle of liquor. Foolishly, I rose and tried again, wanting to make him happy, for him to let me hug him.”
My throat grew impossibly tight. I’d never shared this, not even with Isiah. “But when I reached for him that second time, he slammed the glass bottle across my face. I screamed, clawing at myself, at the shard of glass that had embedded itself in my left eye.”
He’d blinded me right then and there, the broken bottle leaving those two jagged scars running across my eye. Kiara pressed her fingers deeper into my cheek, my lids still shut. I couldn’t look at her when I spoke of the next part. The blinding hadn’t been the worst of it.
“Afterward, when I lay bleeding on the floor, shaking and frightened, he’d grabbed my hair, pulled me across the mildewed planks of our home, and tossed me out in the cold. I don’t remember much, but I managed to crawl on my hands and knees through the dirt and fallen snow. I must’ve passed out, because the next time I awoke, I was in a strange bed, one of our neighbors having taken pity on me. She told me I’d been found facedown in the mud and grime, left outside in the freezing winter air for hours.
“Not only had the glass blinded me, but the wound had gotten infected. Our neighbor wasn’t a healer, but she claimed I would’ve been a lost cause if she hadn’t found me in time. Dead from hypothermia first, most likely.”
I felt Kiara shift closer to me, pressing her body against mine. I squeezed my lids tighter.
“As she couldn’t afford to feed me much longer, she was forced to return me to my father a week later. He took one look at me, spit, and said, ‘Now he’s crippled and dimwitted,’ before lugging me inside and slamming the door in our neighbor’s face. He never apologized, and he never spoke of it again.”
“Gods, Jude,” Kiara whispered, anger deepening her voice.
I paused, pulling away from her touch to scan the paradise at our feet. Her hand dropped to my knee, where she gripped me gently.
“It wasn’t until I hid away in the bath that I unwound the linen from my face and saw the monster I’d become.”
Her hand tightened on my knee. “Don’t ever say that again,” she scolded, her tone turning severe. “They’re only scars. They don’t make you into a monster. Your father was the monster.”
My gaze dropped to her hands, to the gloves that concealed her own scars.
“If they’re only scars, then why—”
“Why do I hide mine?” she asked, her entire body tensing. “I knew you would ask.”
“I haven’t pushed you once.” Even though I’d wanted to.
Now it was her turn to look away. She was silent for many minutes, her brows furrowed as if a million thoughts filled her head. When she removed her hand from my knee, I believed the conversation was over and done with, but then…then she started to pull off the leather, finger by finger.
She did so slowly, her chest moving and falling rapidly. I could only imagine what she was going through, her fear at being exposed. Biting my tongue, I waited as she went at her own pace, until the first glove fell to the soft earth.
Holy gods.
I’d thought I remembered her scars from that first day in the Mist, but I’d forgotten just how deep and unusual they were. The eerie blue-and-black color, the shape of the wounds, like tiny veins spreading to graze her wrists.
“I know. They’re hideous,” she said as she yanked off the other glove. Her head lowered in shame, and I couldn’t allow that.
I grasped her chin between my fingers and turned her head. What I saw in her gaze hurt more than any dagger.
“That day in the bathing suite, when you saw my face,” I began, leaning closer. “I’ve never had someone look at me like that, like you were awed by me, enthralled by the ugliness marring me.”
She opened her mouth to speak, but I shook my head.
“I had never felt seen before, Kiara, not like that. You looked past what others mocked, what they feared, and yousmiled.”
“It’s different, you don’t understand.” She sighed, wetness lining her eyes. “It washowI got these injuries that marked me as an outcast. People looked at me as though I were evil. Some tainted creature who…” She sniffled, twisting out of my grasp.
I didn’t care how the hells she got the odd scars, how she’d been irrevocably marked.
“You wear your scars well,” I said, echoing the words she’d once told me. “If anything, they draw me to you.”
Her head gradually rose, a beautiful kind of wonder painting her stunning features. Carefully, I lifted one of her hands to my mouth, pressing a kiss upon each finger, each twisting mark. She trembled in my hold, but I continued, my lips expressing what words failed to.
Before I could make my way to the inside of her wrist, Kiara thrust her fingers into my hair and yanked me close, our noses brushing. She inhaled my every exhale, and I breathed in her trust, her fears, her doubts.
