"It’s… a brand," I say softly, as if stating the obvious will somehow make the moment less dangerous, less intimate.
His gaze doesn’t waver, doesn’t shift away from mine. He lets me look. Lets me touch.
"It is." His voice is steady, matter-of-fact. Like he’s decided that now, finally—he’ll tell me anything I want to know.
No more secrets.
My heart skips at the thought, a flicker of something I refuse to name, and I shove the hope somewhere deep down.
I would be an idiot to think that.
I swallow hard, my fingers lingering against the scar. My mind races for the right thing to say, for something that doesn’t make me sound like I care as much as I do.
"Did it… did it hurt?" Stupid question. Probably the dumbest thing I could ask. But I don’t know what else to say, and I don’t want him to stop talking.
A wry smile tugs at his lips, but there’s no humor in it. Just something dark. Hollow. "What do you think?"
I hesitate, biting the inside of my cheek. And then, quieter this time, "Why did you do it?"
The question lands between us, heavier than the others. He hears what I’m really asking—why the brand, why this life, why any of it?
And I think he might actually tell me.
I want to know why he’s fucking around with the Assembly in the first place—what could make someone go down that path, what could make them stay.
His jaw tightens, and for a second, I think he’s going to brush me off like he always does, push me away with half-truths and silence.
But then, he shifts.
Leans back against the pillows, his arm still looped around my waist. Still holding me there.
"I didn’t have a choice," he finally says, voice rough, like the words scrape on the way out. "I was fourteen. It was part of my years-long initiation."
My heart clenches.
Fourteen is so fucking young.
He exhales, eyes flickering to the ceiling, as if he can escape what’s coming next.
"It wasn’t just this," he continues, gesturing toward the brand. "There were… other things. Things I don’t like to talk about." He pauses, jaw flexing. "Things I can’t talk about. Things that keep me bound to them." His eyes meet mine, dark and shadowed, a lifetime of something unspoken coiled inside them. "I’ve been forced to do a lot of things in my life, morte mea."
And even though he doesn’t elaborate, doesn’t say the worst of it out loud, I know.
I can feel it in the way his body tenses, in the way he’s still waiting for me to pull away. To be disgusted.
But I don’t move. I just stare at him, trying to piece together the boy he was with the man in front of me, the one who thinks he has no way out.
And I hate it.
I hate the Assembly.
I hate whoever did this to him.
And most of all, I hate that he still thinks he belongs to them.
The vulnerability in his voice cuts through me, stripping away the layers of arrogance and indifference he’s always worn like armor.
Now, I see past all of it, to the boy who never had a choice.
