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They worked in companionable silence for a while, Sofia relishing in the work that gave her fingers a break from the constant writing.

“So did the chief commander teach you how to read?”

“Gods no, I taught myself,” she said, before snapping her jaw shut, almost biting her tongue in the process.

Gabriel looked at her with such glee that she might almost forget she’d just admitted treason to him.

“I knew it!” he said, voice a sharp whisper. “But Chief Commander Harlow knows. He has to know. It’s what you’ve been doing for him in his office this entire time? Reading?”

“Quiet,” she said, voice shrill and heart pounding hard. Her eyes darted around the stables as if a horse might jump out with anahaat having heard their conversation.

“No one’s around, you said so yourself.”

“Yes, I read and write for him, but no one knows. No one. Not even my parents.”

“Shit,” he said. “That’s seriously incredible. I don’t know what’s more impressive, the chief commander breaking the law or you teaching yourself how to read.”

Her cheeks heated and she forced herself to focus on the task at hand. Hot tears burned at the backs of her eyes and she hated herself for it. The tears weren’t for sadness, but the realization that beyond the chief commander catching her all those cycles ago, she’d never been able to share this part of her. And she’d never had someone looking at her like this, with such admiration andlove.

The word popped into her mind and Sofia had to push it away. Love wasn’t something Dragonborn experienced.

“Your finger, then?”

He said the words carefully. She knew he’d seen the missing digit back when they’d first started spending time together. He’d likely felt it the first time he’d grabbed her hand as they walked to the inner gates together. But he’d been smart enough to never ask.

“The chief commander caught me. He deemed the finger a worthy punishment if I promised to work for him.”

She was still avoiding his eyes, so when his fingers grazed across her cheek, she flinched before finally sinking into the warmth of his skin.

“You are truly amazing.”

She looked up and saw his eyes, staring at her with such earnestness. “Most people wouldn’t dare call treason amazing,” she said, placing her own hand over his, forcing his hand to stay there, cradled against her cheek.

He looked thoughtful for a moment.

“I knew my old boss was skimming stocks back when I worked on the docks.” Sofia had to strain to hear the words that he mumbled out.

She blinked for a moment. “What?”

“I knew long before he got caught. He was feeding some of the families in the drowned quarter that didn’t have sanctioned jobs for rations.” He paused, looking at her. “The point is it’s not like I haven’t done my fair share of treason. I might have even helped deliver the fish occasionally—not that I would have claimed to know it wasn’t sanctioned by the king’s food assessor.”

Sofia felt something swell in her chest. Even Mina, who loved listening to her stories of dragons and faeries, had never spoken a word against the king or crown. Her parents, for all the anger she knew they held against the crown, had never spoken a single word out loud to threaten their position in Suvi as loyalists.

“I still read sometimes,” she said softly, watching his face. “When the chief commander isn’t in the office.”

“Let’s take a break from this. If you help me with a few more saddles, I’ll be on track even if we do—other things.”

She bit her lip and they stood, and when he pressed her against the wall of the closet stall and sealed his lips onto her own, she almost forgot about their troubles and the sins they had confessed to each other. Almost.

CHAPTERTWENTY-THREE

FOX

Fox was left staring after her, trying to understand what had just happened. He could have sworn when he first heard her standing behind him, silent as he washed his cuts, that she had been ogling him. Not that it mattered to him despite whatcertain partsof him had decided, but he enjoyed when another person appreciated his body. He’d spent the last few sun cycles of his teens and the time since honing his body to be what it was now; he was no longer the scrawny boy his brother knew him as.

But when he’d turned and noticed her, the look in her eyes had been one of fear and then hatred. He should have been getting used to such emotions from her, but she wiped them both away so quickly, he was still unsure they’d been real.

She’d disappeared over the lip of the cenote, and once he knew she wasn’t going to fall back into the lake, he moved to get dressed. She wasn’t wrong about wanting to stay in the cenote for the night. It was safer away from the creatures that prowled in the forest and close to water, but with the various holes in the ceiling of the cavern, it wasn’t as warm as he wanted. A cursory search of the rooms beyond the main chamber told him he didn’t want to stay back there. There was something haunting about the bedrooms and kitchens—remnants of lives lost and forgotten.