“While you were in meditation.”
Think. Think. Make any excuse.
“Pain tithes.” It slips out, and I immediately regret it.
Henry’s dark eyebrows shoot up. “To which of the Divine?”
“Harvain, of course.”
“You pay pain tithes to your patron Divine by using ice?”
“Of course,” I say.
“To bless our marriage?”
I laugh. I’m so startled by the question that I can’t help it. There’s no way he would believe that. I have to give some kind of half-truth.
“I pay them to help me control my magic or—” I tip my head back and groan. “Or to take it away. I know that sounds ungrateful. Maybe it is, but I’ve never completely understood why I have this particular gift, and while I’ve found good use for it with myhobby, I’d love to be able to live a normal life without being afraid I might accidentally kill someone I care about.”
It’s partly true. The best lies always are. I used to wish for a cure to my cruel magic. But I stopped wishing when I stopped hoping for better and started making myself worse. If the men of Lunameadeneeded repercussions to behave, I would be the harbinger of consequences.
When I finally meet Henry’s dark blue eyes, he looks less skeptical but not entirely believing. That’s okay. He can be suspicious. It’s better than him knowing I’m defective. That could destroy this entire arrangement. I can’t afford that when I need this goodwill from my parents—when Aidia needs to get out of the cage of Lunameade before it suffocates her. For a moment, the wind is knocked out of me. I close my eyes and I can see nothing but her haunted eyes when she lay in bed with me the night before I left home.
The water stirs as he sits on the ledge next to me. “And the ice is for?—”
I blink my eyes open. “Have you ever held your hand in ice water for a few minutes? It’s very painful.”
He hums. Not exactly an agreement, but it seems like enough to get him to stop pushing.
Generally, when I’m hunting in Lunameade, I don’t have to spend so much time talking, and I certainly don’t have to volunteer things about myself that are even partially true. I’m starting to realize how out of my element I am. Mercifully, my first husband had thought me nothing but pretty window dressing and didn’t care to hear me speak at all.
I’m only now realizing how different fake intimacy is from real intimacy. When a man knows you already tried to kill him twice, he’s not inclined to believe casual flirting. I need to make him believe my interest the same way I need to let him think I’ve given up information I don’t want to.
I need to get him talking about something else. I clear my throat and nod at a neat scar on his throat. “That looks like it hurt, but it’s too clean to be from the Drained. How did you get it?”
He purses his full lips. “Going right for the throat. Why am I not surprised?”
“You have many curious scars. I could pick another,” I offer.
He bows his head and goes so still, I’m afraid to even breathe. When he looks back up at me, he looks entirely at war with himself.
“You don’t have to—” I say at the same time he says, “I hate talking about the day the fort fell.”
He runs a hand through his hair, the water flattening his waves andtrickling down his temples. His eyes are far away. The candlelight bounces off the well’s surface, casting strange shadows over the planes of his face.
“No one here talks about it,” he says. “We don’t need to—or maybe we do and we just don’t know how to speak to that kind of terror.” He pauses and licks his lips. “I’m a fighter. Every man in Mountain Haven is raised to be a fighter. You chase. You hunt. But most of all, you protect. And that responsibility was even heavier for me. I was raised with a blade in my hand—to not fear the monsters in these woods that surround us, because to fear is to attract them. But it is one thing to go meet them where they are, and another entirely when they bring the fight to you. I have never felt fear like I felt that day.”
He takes a slow breath and looks at me. For the first time since we met, his face is absent of all its guardedness and there’s no hint of cunning in his eyes. He looks devastated. “You are wary of me and uncomfortable so far from Lunameade alone. I’ve done nothing to make you feel at home, and I could say I’m sorry, but we both know I wouldn’t mean it. You did try to kill me, after all. However, at some point we have to have a base level of trust between us or this whole thing will fall apart.”
I lick my lips. “That’s fair.”
“I have no illusions. I know you have your own agenda, Harlow. No grown woman enters into something like this without good reason. But I’m telling you a secret and asking you not to share this information with anyone else.”
My mouth is dry. I shouldn’t feel so uncomfortable when I’m getting what I want, but I hate this version of him.
“The ring I was wearing in the city hides auras. It’s made with protection magic from Vardek. My sister’s creation. She was gifted with more protection than just holy fire. She also had a sort of boundary magic. My parents also wear them.”
That explains why I haven’t been able to see his parents’ auras. “But I can see yours now.”
