Page 19 of A Court of Truth and Thorns (Royal Scout #2)

KALI

M y mind races. Hearing the words I’ve ached for day after day shatters my world all over again. I hate him for saying them, hate myself for wanting them. An offer of a drug just when the worst of the withdrawal has finally passed.

“I’m sorry.” Rune steps away, showing empty palms. “You are right to despise me, Kal. Just do it for the right reasons.”

I rub the heels of my hands over my eyes.

I need a moment to think. Walking over to the closest armchair, I drop onto its cushion.

My mind spins. Rune. Owain. Dansil. Leaf.

My heart beats so hard, it eclipses the clock.

The words I threw at Rune just moments ago, calling him nothing but a message, return to haunt me.

There is no winning for us; the rules are rigged.

“Rigged?” Rune echoes, and I realize I said my last thought aloud. Which is just as well, because the embers smoldering in my blood billow into flames again.

“Rigged to tie your worth to your father’s word. To make me something that got swept along in the current. Someone else always pulling our strings. Why?”

Rune frowns. “I don’t know,” he says softly. “It just... is.”

“Maybe it shouldn’t be. Maybe we should stop fighting separate wars and make the rules our own.” I capture his gaze. Hold it. Soften my voice. “Take off your shirt.”

A step back. A nervous flicker in Rune’s gray irises. “What? Why?”

“Because you were flogged, Rune. And you are bleeding. Would you be hiding those wounds if they’d come from a blade or a fist?

Do you imagine your father doesn’t know that?

” I set out a chair beside a side table holding a pitcher of water.

“He’s using your ghosts to isolate you and to scare me and Wil into not daring to cross him. Let’s not oblige.”

His throat bobs.

“Take off your damn shirt, sit down, and trust me.”

Rune’s face clouds, tension painting every perfect line of his jaw. I pushed too hard, too fast. Wounds heal on their own schedule, not mine. Turning on his heels, Rune strides to the door, and my heart drops.

He grips the deadbolt and slides it home, then draws the shades over the open windows. That done, he draws a breath and removes his outer coat. His fingers slide to the buttons of his shirt, a slight tightening around his eyes betraying his pain.

I push his hands out of the way, undoing the buttons for him.

The opened cloth reveals the hard muscles of his chest, the angled indent of his sternum, the sharp cut of tensed abdominals.

I slide my thumbs beneath the shirt’s lapels and ease it off his back.

The cloth detaches with a wet whisper, the soaked fabric sliding to the floor.

A drop of blood follows it down and splatters beside Rune’s boots.

He stands stone still, chest out, arms loose at his sides, head raised.

The artery in his neck pulses so hard, I can see the skin twitch with each beat .

“If you were anyone else, I’d say you were frightened,” I say with forced lightness.

He catches my hands. Our eyes lock. “I am.”

I snort, but it’s half-hearted. “I can’t hurt you more than you already are.”

His grip on my hands tightens. His face looms over mine, close enough to share breath. Raw tension vibrates beneath the taut, scarred skin of his chest. “Yes, you can.”

“I won’t.” My voice barely breaks a whisper, the confession I uttered earlier haunting my memory.

Maybe, in the heat of everything, he didn’t hear my words.

Didn’t note what I said. Maybe it’s not even true, for I know little of such things.

I run my palm down the length of Rune’s clavicle, the lightly trembling muscles beneath.

I won’t hurt you, Rune. Can you trust me not to?

He breathes hard and touches his forehead to mine.

An inferno lights inside me.

Its mate burns in Rune’s dark gaze.

It would only take a small shift to press my mouth against his. I want to. I almost do. But before I can obey the impulse, I swallow, take a small step back. “Turn around and sit before you get blood on my clothes.” My voice is raspy.

Reaching for the chair, Rune sets it before him with clean, deliberate motions.

“Maybe there is a drop of poetic justice to it all,” he says in a voice that tries too hard to sound offhanded.

Straddling the chair, he crosses his arms over the back and rests his forehead on his arms. “In the woods with Wil, the day you arrived. When I—”

“No,” I cut him off. “There is no justice in this. Understand?”

He turns his head to peer at me. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Good.” I repurpose the pitcher of drinking water into a washbasin and rip a hem off Rune’s ruined shirt to use as a rag. My voice quiets. “That day—I should have taken the salve. I was lying when I told you I had my own.”

“I know.”

I shake my head, then take my first full look at his ravaged back and grow still.

It must hurt like hells, but Rune only hisses when I press the damp cloth against the first of his wounds.

I put my free hand on the front of his shoulder, and after a moment, his own hand comes up to cover mine and his breathing eases.

“Don’t take my head off,” Rune says tentatively after a minute, “but does the lack of bandages alter this plan at all?”

“What lack of bandages?” Striding over to the window, I rip a chunk of cloth from one of Owain’s fine curtains and begin separating the fabric into strips.