Chapter Thirty-Four Samira #2
“Mostly. There are some other notes in there that are specific to you. Can’t really pinpoint what they smell like. But they’ve gotten stronger since you got your runes.” There was a slight tinge to his cheeks. From the cold, I assumed.
I waited for him to say more. Something like And also the odor of a liar or You reek of heresy, but he offered neither of those. His throat bobbed beneath his runes.
Cinnamon. Not scary. Not indicative of something deeply wrong with me. Not an answer for why my runes were green or why there was a shadow creature in my fortune. Just… cinnamon. “But then why did you react so—”
“I answered your question. Now it’s my turn.” When he faced me again, the yellow of his eyes seemed deeper. Closer to smooth honey than the sun.
I braced myself. I’d have to answer very carefully so that he wouldn’t smell the lie.
His gaze fell from my face to my chest. “What are you tracing?”
My brows slammed into each other.
He nodded to where my fingers were unconsciously drawing over the grooves of the scarred X.
I dropped my hand quickly. “That’s your question?”
Keir was intensely focused on that spot. I wondered when he’d first noticed that habit of mine. And why he cared. Why he’d waste his question on anything other than What are you hiding? But he didn’t clarify. Simply insisted, “A deal’s a deal, Majesty.”
“It’s… it’s…” I hadn’t anticipated this question. I wasn’t prepared for it. I didn’t have another answer lined up. “A scar.”
He was quiet a moment. Then he asked, “Can I see it?”
My eyes snapped up to his. His voice had been exceptionally soft. So soft, in fact, that I could almost mistake it for kindness. The ice had melted from his gaze, leaving behind glittering eyes and an open face. A face that, when it wasn’t glaring or sneering at me, was quite pleasant to look at.
I’d answered his question. I’d upheld my part of the deal. I could shut him down and walk away. I’d revealed too much already anyway.
But my hand had a mind of its own, because it drifted up to my collar and pulled it aside.
A thin line formed between Keir’s brows as he studied the mark. As if his hand suffered from the same affliction as mine, he reached out to gently touch the mottled skin, fingertips rough and warm. Goose bumps spread over my flesh. “It’s deep,” he murmured.
My throat had closed up, so I could merely nod.
His index finger smoothed down the harsh line, pausing at the top of my breast, before he repeated the motion with the other line. “How did it happen?”
I stole a cup of water from the kitchens because I was so dehydrated I’d started to see spots and couldn’t walk a straight line. But stealing that cup had robbed someone else as equally thirsty as me and went against the Gods-Chosen’s explicit rules.
I’d thought about the lesson I’d learned that day often, but not the event itself in years.
The flash of the knife seconds before it cut into my flesh.
The look in Amunet’s face as my blood had run down her hand.
The burn of the blade, the fever that didn’t go away for days as infection set in.
My failure and shame forever sliced into my flesh.
I answered hoarsely, “Disobedience is punished.”
Keir’s eyes flicked back up to mine. I felt their touch every bit as much as the coarse tips of his fingers against my chest. They brushed over my burning cheeks, grazed over my clenched jaw. “Zaid did this?” he asked in that same, infinitely soft voice, yet there was an underlying anger to it.
“Yes.”
His fingers stilled. “Whoever would do this to you is not worth that lie, Majesty.”
The humiliation I’d wanted to avoid speared through me.
That feeling so familiar, that had walked in step with me since I’d gotten the scar.
I hadn’t noticed its absence over the past few weeks until that moment, but now it covered me like a blanket of stinging wasps.
Keir could not know what I had done to deserve something so ugly, and explaining it to him was as mortifying as it was impossible.
I stepped back, and his warm hand fell away. “I answered your question. I want to go back to my cabin now.”
He observed me for a long moment, but I would not meet his eyes as I rushed past him.
Keir became a quiet presence at my side as we trekked back to the central square. The heat in my cheeks seemed to rise with each painfully silent moment.
Before I could push into the sanctuary of my cabin, Keir caught my wrist. “Wait, just—” He blew out a sharp breath. “We all have scars, Majesty. I know—”
“I don’t want to talk about it—”
“Don’t give us hope,” he blurted. “Any other lie can be forgiven, but don’t give us hope if you won’t—if you can’t—” I thought I felt his hand tremble just the slightest bit where he held me. “It will break us.”
He was begging me. Keir of the Wild Valley was begging me.
Guilt was a blade through my innards.
I slipped my wrist out of his grip. “Enjoy your party,” I mumbled. The cabin door shut behind me with a dull thud.
It will break us.
A plea, not for himself, but for his people.
But as he’d established on the journey here, when I hadn’t hesitated to beg him for answers, I was already broken.
I had been broken that first year in Khada Palace.
Maybe if I were stronger, like Velka or Sillia, I wouldn’t have been.
But I wasn’t. I was the kind of girl who stole water rations from another.
The kind who lied to a goddess’s face. And now I was beyond helping anyone.