Nadia
His thumb traced the pale line where it curled toward my abdomen.
“This one.”
The touch was light, careful. Annoyingly careful, actually, because there was no reason for it to feel more dangerous than a blade. He had seen every inch of me the night before. Had mapped far more interesting territory than an old scar along my ribs.
Still, my breath caught. Only a little. Barely worth mentioning.
His gaze lifted to mine, and the question waited there, quiet and patient and entirely too gentle for a man built like war in expensive trousers.
A rueful smile tugged at my mouth. “A witch.”
His thumb stopped. “A witch?”
“Sorcerer, technically, but witch is faster and less flattering.” I tipped my head against the pillow. “Especially to men, for some reason.”
The corner of his mouth moved, but his eyes stayed on the scar. “What did he do?”
“Spelled his kitchen to murder me.”
Enzo lifted his head enough to stare at me.
I sighed. “It was a very aggressive kitchen.”
“Nadia.”
“What?” I lifted one shoulder. “It tried to kill me. I’m allowed to hold a grudge.”
His thumb moved once more over the edge of the scar, softer this time, and the amusement in his face faded into something quieter.
“Start at the beginning,” he said.
I sighed, because princes were exhausting even when naked and warm. “Your father hired me to verify whether a sorcerer near the northern border was selling information to a wolf-pack alpha. Quiet work. In, out, answers delivered to people with nicer boots than mine.”
“So, not an execution then?”
“No. Not unless he made it one.”
“And he did.”
“Oh, yeah. He had opinions about being investigated.”
Enzo’s mouth flattened.
“I was inside the house for approximately three seconds before the kettle came off its hook, the knives left the block, and a boiling pot of stew tried to pour itself over my head.”
His expression went blank as if he were trying very hard not to react. “The stew attacked you?”
“The stew was an accomplice. The cleaver was the ambitious one.”
His gaze dropped to the scar again, and the amusement vanished. “A cleaver did this?”
“Only because I hadn’t realized the kitchen had been spelled to adjust. I moved left to avoid the knives, and the cleaver corrected for it.” I tapped the scar with one finger. “Took a piece of me for the trouble.”
His hand closed over my side, careful enough to make my chest ache.
“He sent an apprentice after me when I left,” I said before the quiet could get too soft. “He assumed I’d die on the road and wanted the body retrieved before anyone inconvenient found it.”
Enzo went very still. “What happened to the apprentice?”
“Oh, he died in the forest.”
“And the sorcerer?”
“I came back two weeks later when I could stand upright without puking.” His gaze lifted to mine, and I smiled without humor. “Killed him, too.”
“Nadia.”
“He tried to have me murdered via soup. My response was appropriate.”
For one breath, he only stared at me.
Then a sound moved through his chest, too horrified to be laughter and too amused to be anything else.
“And my father?”
“His steward paid the original contract, then added a bonus for confirmed treason, attempted murder, and the inconvenience of being assaulted by cookware.”
“That sounds about right.”
“It was a very fair bonus.”
Enzo looked at the scar again, his thumb brushing the curve of it with a tenderness I didn’t know what to do with. “You nearly died.”
“I nearly die all the time.”
His eyes returned to mine. “That doesn't make it better.”
No, it didn’t. Still rude of him to notice.
For a moment, Enzo said nothing. That was worse than if he’d lectured me. His hand stayed over the scar, palm warm against the place where the cleaver had taken its opinion out of my side. Beneath my cheek, his chest rose once and fell, but it was as if he were holding his breath.
“Attempted murder by soup.” He chuckled.
“It was very aggressive soup.”
His fingers flexed against my ribs. “I hate that I believe you.”
“As you should. I’m a deeply trustworthy person when discussing cookware violence.”
That did it. The laugh broke out of him low and unwilling, rumbling up through his chest and into my cheek like something the world had no business giving me and somehow it ruined me just a little.
His mouth brushed my hair. “And the wound?”
“It closed eventually.”
His hand stopped moving.
“When I went back for the sorcerer, I gave him a choice. Close it and give me the information, and I wouldn’t gut him.”
“And he believed you?”
“He was under duress.”
“Nadia.”
“He closed the wound. He gave me the information. I slit his throat.”
His entire body stilled beneath mine. “So, you lied.”
“No. I told him I wouldn’t gut him.” I patted his chest. “Precision matters. Plus, with the information he gave me, he’d have been killed anyway. I basically did him a favor. At least it was quick.”
Another sound moved through him, caught somewhere between horror and admiration, which was probably the exact place where I made his life most difficult.
“You’re impossible.”
“Yes, but I’m alive.” The words slipped out too easily.
His amusement vanished. I felt it go. Felt the warmth in him bank itself down until only the dangerous thing remained underneath, quiet and bright and furious on my behalf. He didn’t push it at me. He only held me closer.
That was somehow worse.
“Tell me you don’t still take contracts like that.”
“Of course not.” I traced the edge of his ribs with one finger, because looking at him would have been a mistake. “Your father stopped offering them to me fifty years ago.”
“Stopped offering them?”
“They called it a reassignment.”
“And you called it?”
“A tragic reduction in entertainment.”
His hand slid up my back and settled at the nape of my neck, heavy and warm. “Hunting traitors in Tharros is less entertaining than a homicidal kitchen?”
“Way fewer cleavers. And no scalding soup. It’s like they’re not even trying.”
“At least so far.”
“That’s the spirit.”
This time, when he laughed, he didn’t hide it. The sound was soft, rough from exhaustion, and so unexpectedly young that my throat did something useless. I tucked my face more firmly against his chest and let the moment pass before either of us could be accused of feeling it.
His thumb moved once at my neck. “Tell me another.”
So I did. Not all of them. Not the small scar above my right hip, where a vampire had put a blade while I had been working a contract he didn’t need to know about. That one stayed mine.
Enzo felt the door close around it. He didn’t knock. He only listened while I gave him the others.
The wolf-shifter who’d accepted payment for information he never intended to provide and tried to take a chunk out of my forearm instead.
The Shadow Fae enforcer who’d cornered me in a port tavern and been good enough with a knife to make me respect him for almost three whole seconds before I ended him.
The scar at my ankle from a horse the king had provided and should have warned me was part demon.
That was the one that undid him. “A horse bit you?”
“Viciously.”
His chest shook beneath me. I lifted my head enough to glare at him. “Don’t laugh.”
“I’m not.”
“You’re vibrating.”
“The horse?”
“Retired.”
“For biting you?”
“For general crimes against the kingdom. The biting was merely one entry on a very long list.”
Enzo laughed into my hair. Low and helpless and surprised, one arm tightening around me as if he could keep the sound contained by holding me harder.
And gods help me, I liked it. I liked being the thing that had pulled that sound out of him. I liked the way it loosened something in his chest. I liked that he could hear pieces of my life—ugly pieces, bloody pieces, ridiculous pieces—and not flinch from them.
I liked it so much I had to look away. Unfortunately, I was lying on him, so there was nowhere useful to go.
His laughter faded slowly, leaving warmth behind. I let the quiet sit. Let the strange, careful pleasure of having given him pieces of myself settle between us.
His mouth found my temple, the kiss lingering long enough to make my chest ache. His body had been hard against my hip for some time. He’d made no demand of it. Hadn’t pressed, not shifted, not used the bond to make his wanting my problem.
But I felt it. The heat of him. The restraint. The quiet, patient ache he’d carried while I handed him stories about every way the world had tried to carve pieces out of me.
I turned my face up, and his mouth was already there.
The kiss was nothing like the others, absent the brutal edge of need dragging us under before either of us could breathe.
This was slower. This was his hand at my cheek, his thumb along my jaw, his breath shuddering against my mouth as if kissing me softly required more control than bending me over the table ever had.
“Nadia,” he murmured.
I hated the sound of my name like that. Like relief. Like a wound. Like a prayer.
“What?”
“I nearly lost you yesterday.”
The room went very still and so did I. His thumb moved over my cheek, and for once, he didn’t seem to care that the bond carried everything he was too controlled to put in his voice.
Ash. Blood. My body going cold in his arms. His panic locked behind command because there had been no room for it.
“I held you in that town,” he said, low enough that the words barely disturbed the air, “and for a few breaths, I thought I’d brought you all that way just to lose you in the dirt.”
My throat closed.
“I don’t know where the dead really go,” he said. “I only know I’d already decided to follow you if you left me.”
A sound escaped my throat. It wasn’t a laugh, even though it wanted to be. Because the terrible thing was, I understood him.
If his body had gone cold in my arms, if the bond had gone silent beneath my ribs, if I’d been left in that burning town with nothing but his blood on my hands and the shape of him missing from this world, I didn’t know what I would’ve done.
No, that was a lie. I knew exactly what I would’ve done. And gods help anyone who tried to stop me.
“So dramatic,” I whispered.