Page 22 of A Court of Masks and Roses (Royal Scout #1)

KALI

M y chest is tight, my heart beating so hard that my body shutters with each pump.

Never. I have never been compromised. Never been caught between personas.

Even when Samuels and his Viva Sylthia bastards caught me near that barn, they never suspected I was anyone but the boy I pretended to be.

This moment was never supposed to happen.

Except it did. With Trace.

“Who are you?” Trace repeats, his voice growing harder. Interrogation, not curiosity. “Why are you in Delta?”

I swallow. “Might I borrow your cloak?”

Trace’s gaze remains on me even as he tugs loose the knots at his neck. Swinging the cloth off his shoulders, Trace holds the cloak open, ready to lay it over my shoulders, the way one does for a lady.

I snatch the cloak from his hands and wrap it tightly around me. The blue wool still smells of Trace, his lavender soap mixed with a male musk of sweat and leather. Who am I? Who should I be? I try for the truth first. “I am exactly who I was an hour ago. Lady Lianna.”

“Aye.” Trace crosses his arms. “That’s who you were an hour ago. How about this morning, when I crossed swords with a trainee named Kal ?”

I pull the cloak tighter still, stepping away from Trace without knowing where the hells I think I’m going.

Lady Lianna won’t be outrunning a troupe of guardsmen, and Trace need only raise his voice to summon help.

My hands tremble and the shadows call with their sweet illusion of safety, even as the wound at the base of my neck trickles blood.

The blood is nothing compared to the damage a few words from Trace would cause.

If he exposes me, I’ll be useless to Firehorn. And Leaf will die.

My pulse flutters. “Can we talk somewhere else,” I whisper. “Please.”

Trace’s jaw tightens, but after a moment’s hesitation, he offers me his arm.

I pause, my fingers hovering a heartbeat too long above the curve of his wrist, where the muscles curl around the forearm.

It feels odd to touch him now that I’ve seen him hold Raza.

Now that he holds Leaf’s life in his hands.

Raza. Yes. I should be grateful for Raza, whose existence in Trace’s life gives me leverage. Yet I find little comfort in the thought.

Starting us toward the palace, Trace lowers his voice. “How did you know about the ambush?”

My face jerks toward him, anger shoving away the shock. “I didn’t know about the ambush. Raza’s exit from dinner was suspicious and I followed.”

“With weapons?” Trace counters. “How convenient.”

I bare my teeth. “First, there is nothing convenient about this evening. And second, I’m always armed. ”

“Does the king know?”

I stop, pulling my hand from his arm. My heart pounds, each beat deafening.

No more dancing. No more defense. Raising my face, I meet Trace’s gaze.

“King Firehorn is the one who summoned me here,” I say with a flat coolness that I don’t feel.

“Royal scout, at your service.” I sketch a bow, smiling without humor.

“What of you, Trace?”I step forward, making him retreat to keep our bodies from colliding. “Does the king know of you?”

It’s Trace’s turn to swallow, the apple of his neck bobbing. “Of course not.”

“And why are you with her?”

“I love her,” Trace whispers, meeting my eyes, letting me see the plain truth in his dark gaze.

I love her. Such simple, short words. I’ve nothing to say to that.

Silence and the forest’s shadows wrap us in their cocoon as Trace and I face each other, neither uttering a sound.

One heartbeat. Five. Ten. Finally, Trace clears his throat and reaches up to touch the side of my neck, his fingers coming away slick with blood.

“You are hurt,” he says, “and we... Have you a place we could go?”

Trace pushes after me into Lianna’s suite and closes the door behind him, having the decency to color lightly at Leaf’s gasp.

He raises his palms toward her. “Lady Lianna is injured. I thought she might prefer to come here before the infirmary, given...” he trails off, frowning.

“You are female, right? Not a boy dressed—”

“Of course I’m female, you bastard.” The first words I’ve spoken to Trace since directing him to Lianna’s suite.

I pull off my wig—the bloody thing is uncomfortable and useless at present—and ruffle my own short hair in relief.

As for Leaf, my sister needs no explanation for why going to the infirmary with my marks and bruises isn’t an option.

She does need one for why Trace is currently in our suite and I’m covered in blood.

“There was a Viva Sylthia attack in the woods,” I say briskly.

“Followed by some inopportune disrobing and piecing of two and two together in the process.”

Leaf freezes, the color draining from her face.

As if the compromise of my identity weren’t trouble enough, Trace and I appear to have barged in on my sister in the middle of research .

Living crystals, books, and that rutting board with the charted magical elements leave little to the imagination as to Leaf’s field of study. Stars take me.

My blood heats, my fingers curling into fists as I step between my sister and Trace.

“In case I was unclear before, you will tell no one that Kal and Lady Lianna are one and the same. Compromise my identity, and we will discover just how kindly the king takes to his captain of the guard sleeping with an Everett princess.”

Trace crosses his arms, composed except for a vein that pulses along his temple. “Threat little becomes you, my lady. Why don’t you try a civil tongue and see where that gets you.”

“Why don’t you spare me your notion of manners.”

“Why don’t you both shut up and sit down before you bleed on the rug.” Leaf turns her back on the battle raging between Trace and me and retrieves her medicine chest. She pops open the lid, her upper body disappearing inside the box. “Worktable, not the good chairs. Both of you.”

Trace stares at my sister’s back, a flicker of amusement touching his face.

I grip the cloak more tightly around my shoulders before remembering that it’s Trace’s. My fingers release the cloth at once and I cross my arms over my chest instead. The wound where the arrow nicked me throbs in dull waves, but I’ll wait until Trace is gone to attend to it. “I’m fine, Leaf.”

“As am I,” Trace says, but Leaf spins around on us, her arms full of bandages.

“No. No, neither of you is fine in any sense of that word. And neither am I.” Her thin voice trembles once, and she draws a breath before continuing with borrowed strength.

Her eyes glisten. “There was an attack on the palace grounds, my sister is bleeding, and words that will shatter the lives of everyone in this room are being tossed about like confetti. So you two will let me do the one thing that is actually in my power, and you will sit on that table. Now.”

My breath catches. Trace weighs Leaf’s words for only a heartbeat. “Yes, ma’am.” Touching his fist to his chest, he crisply takes the half dozen steps to Leaf’s worktable and hoists himself onto it. His hand hesitates at the hem of his shirt.

Leaf glowers at him.

Trace pulls the linen off in one smooth motion.

It’s all I can do to keep from sucking in a breath.

The skin stretching taut over Trace’s muscles is covered in scars.

Scars from knives, from whips, from brands, from worse.

In that company, the bloody gash that crosses his pectoral and disappears around his flank seems trivial.

A blue healing crystal, like Leaf’s, dangles against his sternum on a leather thong.

Seeing my stare, Trace’s eyes pierce into me, daring me to say one word, ask a single question. I don’t.

“You too, Kali,” Leaf snaps at me. “And take that damn cloak off so I can see what happened.”

I pull myself up onto the table beside Trace.

Without a shirt, the man gives off more heat than a furnace and is impossible to ignore.

I shoot a glare at my sister but let Trace’s cloak fall from my shoulders, leaving my back and shoulders bare.

The front of my once-beautiful dress is a mess of rips and stains, the sleeves little better than baggy satin rags.

Trace leans over and nudges one of my shoulder straps down a bit. I open my mouth to snap at the man, but something in his tight gaze makes me stop.

“When I asked who left bruises on Lady Lianna,” he says softly, “the answer was me , wasn’t it?”

I shrug, tilting my head obediently as Leaf steps behind me to examine my wound. “Might have been Luca. It little matters.”

“It matters,” says Trace.

Leaf snorts, shifting her attention from me over to Trace. The room is quiet for a few heartbeats while Trace watches Leaf’s too-experienced fingers wipe away the blood and inspect his wound. “I see you’ve a bit of practice tending trauma,” he says gently to my sister. “You have good hands.”

She flashes him a scolding look. “I see you’ve a bit of practice getting skewered, which puts you in good company with this one.” Leaf jerks her head in my direction. “Don’t move, either of you. I need to get a few things.”

Trace raises a brow. “Not easily cowed, is she?” he murmurs, watching Leaf pile sutures and sharp needles into a small metal basin with more force than necessary.

My chest squeezes. “Leaf—”

“If you don’t want needles, don’t get sliced,” Leaf snaps over her shoulder before striding back to us. “Simple logic.”

Trace’s eyes narrow on me, his mouth breaking into a small grin. “Are you... Don’t tell me you are afraid of needles.”

My face heats.

Trace throws back his head and laughs. A deep, rich sound that fills the room with sudden, unlikely warmth .

“Are you through?” I demand when he stops for breath.

“Yes.” Trace’s lips press together, though his shoulders still shake even as Leaf begins to stitch his wound. Trace’s fingers tighten around the table’s edge, the only indication that he feels anything at all. “Given everything else that’s happened, you must concede the absurdity of it.”

I shudder and turn away, watching the fire until I hear Leaf’s voice.

“You wear a healing crystal.” Leaf cuts the thread and lays a clean linen bandage across Trace’s muscled chest, her eyes fully consumed with her task. “Why?”

“A superstition. Though I hear healing crystals are unkind.”

“An interesting way of putting it,” says Leaf.

“When a whisperer properly tunes a healing crystal, the magic transcends the crystal’s shell,” she explains.

“That focused magic entering the body is what generates the healing. It is terribly painful for both patient and healer alike. The connection between healer and patient is what classifies healing crystals into the melding family.”

I exhale quietly. If Leaf is rambling about magical theory and classifications, she must be feeling better. And if she is feeling better, I might be able to escape this table and keep from becoming Trace’s entertainment.

“So you’ve no plans of using my own crystal against me?” says Trace with a tinge of sarcasm.

Now it’s my turn to grin. If I know Leaf, that small jest is about to earn Trace an earful.

True to form, Leaf’s face snaps to the guard’s.

“Using potent magic without proper training is not a jesting matter. You think living crystals are benign, pretty gems, all safe as light pebbles? That healing crystal around your neck? If tuned, it will produce magic potent enough to kill a patient and break an untrained whisperer’s mind.

Stars be thanked that healing hurts, or else fools would be paying with life and limb for their recklessness. ”

Though Trace dwarfs Leaf three times over, he has the good sense to lean away from my sister’s wrath. “Yes, ma’am,” he mumbles, this time with no hint of mockery, though a plain sense of relief.

Seeing Leaf nearly finished tending to Trace, I slip off the table and scout my escape route.

Trace’s arm blocks my path. “No you don’t,” he murmurs before raising his voice. “Leaf, your sister is attempting to make a run for it.”

“I will kill you,” I say through my teeth.

Sliding off the table to stand behind me, Trace gently tips my head to the side.

His calloused fingers are warm against my skin, which suddenly feels naked.

No one but Leaf has been this close to me before outside of combat.

My pulse races, my body unsure whether to make a dash for the door or elbow Trace’s gut.

“You are lucky that arrow missed your artery.” His fingers trail from the back of my neck forward, stopping at the top of my collarbone. His quiet voice tickles my ear. “Leaf is right, though—the wound would do better closed.”

“Go away.”

He chuckles, his hands sliding to my shoulders and growing heavy.

The bastard is holding me down, and my bloody sister is letting him do it.

I grit my teeth. If I die of mortification, I am killing them both, I promise myself as I close my eyes to keep from watching what happens next.

As the stinging pain of the needle comes, I feel Trace’s finger tracing a small, soothing circle across my skin.