I fidget, tugging at one of the buttons on his shirt. “I’ve never really known anyone.”
“That you liked?”
“No, I mean I’ve never known anymen.”
“You’ve never known any men,” he repeats. I can tell by the way he says it he hasn’t processed it. His gaze darts to the fire and back to me. “At all?”
“The Shrouded are only permitted to interact with each other, the Reverend Mothers, the Grand Prioress, and the Priest. I wasn’t kept under such a careful thumb before I took the Shroud but that was a long time ago and even back then…I didn’t really know many men.”
“I’m the only man you’ve ever known?”
“Pretty much. Aside from the Priest.”
“And, your father?”
I snort again. “At this point, I think we’ve interacted more than me and my father have over the course of my entire life.”
“Gods.” He scrutinizes me as if he’s seeing me for the first time, and a flush creeps over my face. “This actually explains a lot.”
“Like what!”
“Your skittishness.”
“That’s because you’re a witch.”
His laugh is a soft, rough sound. “Comes in handy sometimes, doesn’t it?” He asks, bumping my shoulder with his.
“I suppose.”
He flashes me a grin I can’t help but return. It’s like something has shifted between us here in this place. Maybe because with him here, without his magic, we’re finally like equals. My walls start to crumble, falling victim to the numen of this forest or this moment in time. Or maybe it’s because he’s proved himself to me time and time again I can really trust him.
He shifts forward to feed a few more logs to the flames, taking his heat with him, and I draw my knees up to my chest. When he positions himself back against the log, he huddles in even closer. Our legs brush against each other as he pulls his own legs up to mirror mine.
“What exactly is the reason for the Shroud?” he asks, gesturing to his face.
“In Eden, marrying one of the Shrouded is considered one of the highest honors a man can be granted. Men with the highest status are granted multiple. After our eleventh birthday, we’re not seen, we are not spoken to, we are keptpure,” I say, enunciating that word bitterly.
“I suspect they keep us isolated so when we are gifted to whatever man my father grants us to—we’ll be more pliant, we’ll find even them--” I clear my throat again. “Exciting, at least in comparison to the drudgery that is our everyday lives. They say it’s our purity that keeps our kingdom vigorous. So naturally, when everything fell apart, the blame fell on us…and…” I decide not to devolve into all the horrifying details of what happened to Margaret. “It’s all theatrics.”
He’s quiet for a moment as he processes that. “You seem…unusually self-aware about all of this.”
“I’ve had a long time to think about it but I always despised the Shroud. Syra bought into the whole thing for a long time, as many of the Shrouded do. We are revered like religious figures so many of them take a liking to feeling morally superior, anyway—“ I say, cutting myself off. “That was probably more than you asked for.”
“No, I want to know,” he says adamantly.
I stare off into the flames. “Syra did finally come around. But even still, even though I say all that I kept thinking these last few days maybe I was being punished for removing the Shroud and for…” I trail off with a shake of my head.
“You haven’t done anything wrong.”
I nod, slowly biting at my lip, and muffle a yawn behind my palm. No idea how I’m so tired when all I’ve done is lie in bed for days.
“We should probably try to get some sleep.”
There are so many things I didn’t get to ask. “You got so many more questions,” I argue with another yawn.
“Well, we have a six-hour journey back to look forward to tomorrow and you’ll have plenty of time to pester me with questions.”
I peer around the dark curtain of trees. “I’ve never slept outside before.”
