He winced in pain, that last tap was a little deeper than necessary.
If someone had told him three days ago that Aelin would be in his room he would have laughed. If they had told him that they would not be trying to kill each other, he would have thought that person senile. If they had told him that he would feel lighter and calmed by her scent he would have walked them to the healing compound. But here he was sitting at his work table, talking with Aelin.
She had burned away a piece of his tattoo, the final piece that told the world he would feel his shame until his last breath. He did not want to think what that meant, that she had burned it away. The girl that had stirred feelings other than grief and shame, in him for the first time in over two hundred years.
“Tell me about how you learned to tattoo.”
“No.” He was too busy self reflecting to have a sharing moment.
“If you don’t answer my questions, I might very well make a mistake, and…”
He held back his laugh. The look in her eyes said she might have caught his slip.
“Did you learn from someone? Master and apprentice and all that?”
He gave her a rather incredulous look.
“Yes, master and apprentice and all that. In the war camps, we had a commander who used to tattoo the number of enemies he’d killed on his flesh—sometimes he’d write the whole story of a battle. All the young soldiers were enamored of it, and I convinced him to teach me.”
“With that legendary charm of yours, I suppose.”
He could not help but smile, even if it was just a half of one.
“Just fill in the spots where I—” He hissed through the pain.
“Good. That’s the right depth.”
With the rhythm of her tapping, he return to his introspective thoughts.
“Tell me about your family.”
He did not want to, his endless family that had somehow even now not given up on him. That level of love did not settle well within him, he had lost the right to be loved.
Maybe we could find the way back together
She needed this, her family was dead, what was left were distant cousins.
“Tell me about yours and I’ll tell you about mine,” he said through gritted teeth.
He waited for her response, her agreement to his terms. If they were going to do this together than they would have to bare their entire souls and the scars that ran beneath the surface.
“Fine. Are your parents alive?”
“My parents were very old when they conceived me. I was their only child in the millennia they’d been mated. They faded into the Afterworld before I reached my second decade.”
He could not remember if she had siblings.
“You had no siblings.”
She did not look at him as she began to speak, “My mother, thanks to her Fae heritage, had a difficult time with the pregnancy. She stopped breathing during labor. They said it was my father’s will that kept her tethered to this world. I don’t know if she even could have conceived again after that. So, no siblings. But—”
He waited, letting her decide if she wanted to continue that statement.
“But I had a cousin. He was five years older than me, and we fought and loved each other like siblings.”
She set down the needle and mallet and flex her fingers. He could tell that she hurt.
“I don’t know what happened, but they started saying his name—as a skilled general in the king’s army.”
He had heard of the general, the winds whispered back to Maeve of the general’s fame. The Wolf of the North also known as Ardarlan’s whore was her cousin. He should have known.
“I think facing my cousin after everything would be the worst of it—worse than facing the king.”
He watched as her grief threatened to overwhelm her.
“Keep working,”
Two children broken along with a kingdom. One became an assassin, while the other a general for his enemy. For the first time he had wondered what drove them.
“Do you think, your cousin would kill you or help you? An army like his could change the tide of any war.”
His army was said to be ruthless, though he had known that, now he could connect the stars. Revenge is what fed the Wolf of the North.
“I don’t know what he would think of me, or where his loyalties lie. And I’d rather not know. Ever.”
He hoped that one day Aelin would know that her cousin’s loyalty had never faded.
“Do you have cousins?”
He almost laughed, “Too many. Mora’s line was always the most widespread, and my meddlesome, gossiping cousins make my visits to Doranelle … irksome. You’d probably get along with my cousins, especially with the snooping.”
He could not help but picture Sellene and Aelin scheming together.
“You’re one to talk, Prince. I’ve never been asked so many questions in my life.”
He bared his teeth, though he didn’t mean it. He glanced at his wrist, for the first time he did not want to lament on the meaning. The burns had healed, but there was a slight scarring that would never fade. He would always know that at some level she had burned away a little piece of his shame.
“Hurry up, Princess. I want to go to bed at some point before dawn.”
She used her free hand to make a particularly vulgar gesture, and before he thought about it he caught her hand within his own. Like her gesture, her small hands were not that of a queen.
“That is not very queenly.”
“Then it’s good I’m not a queen, isn’t it?”
Everything in his being told him to not let go of her hand. Together.
She feared being a queen and it was not something he understood.
“You have sworn to free your friend’s kingdom and save the world—but will not even consider your own lands. What scares you about seizing your birthright? The king? Facing what remains of your court?”
He stared into her blue eyes rimmed in the most beautiful gold.
“Give me one good reason why you won’t take back your throne. One good reason, and I’ll keep my mouth shut about it.”
She weighed him, understood the question was not meant to be cruel, but sincere. He wanted, no needed to understand why.
“Because if I free Eyllwe and destroy the king as Celaena, I can go anywhere after that. The crown … my crown is just another set of shackles.”
Shackles?
He quietly said, “What do you mean, another set of shackles?”
He loosened his grip to reveal the two thin bands of scars that wrapped around her wrist. His mouth tightened, she had been shackled. In some point within her ten years, she had been shackled.
She yanked her wrist back hard enough that he let go. He looked at her, waiting for an explanation.
“Nothing, Arobynn, my master, liked to use them for training every now and then.”
He knew she was lying, there was a deeper hurt buried within her. A truth she was not ready to share. He would give her the time and space she needed. He held back a shudder of Arobynn being her master. A young queen of a mighty kingdom turned to an assassin.
“Why did you stay with Arobynn?”
“I knew I wanted two things: First, to disappear from the world and from my enemies, but … ah.”
He wanted to recapture that hand he held.
“I wanted to hide from myself, mostly. I convinced myself I should disappear, because the second thing I wanted, even then, was to be able to someday … hurt people the way I had been hurt. And it turned out that I was very, very good at it.
“If he had tossed me away, I would either have died or wound up with the rebels. If I had grown up with them, I probably would have been found by the king and slaughtered. Or I would have grown up so hateful that I would have been killing Adarlanian soldiers from a young age.”
She surprised him, the girl that wanted to become a healer changed to a person who wanted to hurt. Somehow she had bottled that desire for vengeance away.
“You thought I was just going to spread my whole history at your feet the moment I met you? I’m sure you have even more stories than I do, so stop looking so surprised. Maybe we should just go back to beating each other into a pulp.”
There was no way he was turning back now. Together, they would fight through the darkness together. He would train her to become a warrior. He may not be able to fight with her, but he would give her every tool to protect herself when he could not. They would do this together.
“Oh, not a chance, Princess. You can tell me what you want, when you want, but there’s no going back now.”
“I’m sure your other friends just adore having you around.”
A feral smile, and he grabbed her by the chin—not hard enough to hurt, but to get her to look at him.
“First thing, we’re not friends. I’m still training you, and that means you’re still under my command.”
Lies. He watched the flicker of hurt. He leaned in closer, hoping she would understand.
“Second—whatever we are, whatever this is? I’m still figuring it out, too. So if I’m going to give you the space you deserve to sort yourself out, then you can damn well give it to me.”
She studied him for a moment, the ice danced in his veins.
“Deal.”
As he removed his hand, he knew that whatever this was, he didn't want to let her go.