Taking the parchment-bowl, I bring the meal to my lap and pick through the foreign food lazily.
“Was it voders that did that to your back?” I gesture to his scars with a nod of my head.
He stills. His finger stay pinched on the edge of a meaty strip, his shoulders bowed slightly, his head down. Then, his tension starts to unravel as he straightens and inhales deeply through his nostrils.
Cutting a dark look at me, he releases the meat strip from his fingers.
“No,” he says and throws his gaze to the fire. “Voders are large—around the size of your world’s cats, but they do little damage. Those are not scars that I wear on me.”
A frown tugs my eyebrows together. Leaning back, I run my gaze over the black ribbed skin before I shake my head.
“They sure look like scars.” I eye a cubed potato for a beat before I pop it into my mouth and—Mother, it’s delicious. The herbs are a clash of flavours, a battle of garlicky tones with sweet hints and a mouth-watering crunchiness. I toss another in my mouth.
While chewing I study Cliff’s profile; his downcast gaze, the length of his lashes that cast dark shadows down his faraway-face. He picks at his meal, distracted.
“If they aren’t scars, what are they?”
“Marks of dishonour,” he says.
I blink through the sudden spring of pity in my chest. “Punishment? Someone did that to you?”
He loosens a sigh before setting aside his parchment-bowl. Wiping his hands together, he stares into the fire and pulls up one leg, resting an arm on his knee.
I keep eating, not expecting him to answer me.
But he does—
“I told you I can’t protect you,” he says, watching the flames that lick orange and darkness up his olive-toned face. “I am a mere steed-soldier now.”
I nod, though I don’t understand the meaning of that rank. I hardly understand the military ranks in my world, never mind his.
“Once, I was a second-in-command,” he tells me, reaching for the purple-stained bottle.
He uncorks it and the stench is instant—it floods the quiet forest air with a rich, spoiled grape smell. Something like wine, I decide. Something far more potent than any we’ve ever known in our world.
After he takes a swig, he sets it down on the dirt between his legs and watches the flames still. “I was one battle triumph away from leading my own unit. By the end of our conquer over your world, I could have been made General.”
I won’t forget what he is, the things he has done. I make an effort to hold onto the vicious memories I have of him in this moment, because for the insanity in me, my heart suddenly blossoms a bud of sorrow for him.
It’s not that he didn’t get the promotion he wanted—though I understand that to his people, the ranks and working their way up them mean a lot more than it does to my kind. This is in their bones and blood, as he told me—it’s what they live for.
And since they live so long, who knows how long it took him to almost reach the rank of General?
Still, it’s his eyes that stir pity inside of me. His lashes lower until he’s looking at the dirt; no light reflects off the black depths. His eyes are desolate and bleak; utterly hopeless.
“What happened?” My voice is a whisper, hushed by the fear of spooking him into silence and anger.
How does any of this have anything to do with those scars?
I leave my whirling thoughts to stay buried behind my tongue for the moment.
Already, he’s opened up so much—he held my hand (sort of), he held me as the cottage burned, and he’s telling me about his life.
Things are definitely changing between us. Hell, they already have. I just wonder if this line we have crossed means there’s no going back.
“My mother was an Admiral,” he goes on. Between his fingers, he’s somehow gotten a hold of a twig and he starts to break it up into tiny pieces, left to rain down on the blanket. “A General of the waters. She was highly respected.” He tosses the pulverised remains of the twig away. “Until she ran off with Malik.”
“Malik?” I ask, picking apart the strips of meat. They taste all right, a little smoky and cheap, like beef jerky in the US, but edible.
“An Admiral of the light realm. A litalf,” he spits the word as though its venom and he must be rid of it.
“She…” I blink at him for a moment before I shift around to face him. “She ran off with a light fae?”
The shadow of his jaw darkens to the shade of the blackness all around our bubble of orange. He clenches his teeth, his fingers winding together.
“Over the centuries, they spent much time in close negotiations,” he says. “And she disgraced her rank, her people, her duties, her house and her son—for one of our natural enemies.”
A thought comes to mind. “I thought your world didn’t have seas?”
“We are one world,” he says, cutting a distant look at me, “two realms. We have rivers that lead to seas that border their queendom, rivers and streams too narrow for all of our armies to sail through.”
“So what’s so bad about this, then?” I ask, an uncertain frown titling down my mouth. “Your mother fell in love with a litalf. How did that disgrace you?”
“I am part of my house. As is my mother. When she abandoned her rank and fled to the light realm to live with Malik, she brought dishonour on all that she left behind.”
“So…” I glance at the back of his muscular arm, as though I can see the ribbed marks running down on either side of his spine. “So you were cut up for that?”
“No.” Faintly, he shakes his head. “I was disgraced.”
For a moment, I stare at him with my mouth pursed and the confusion written in the wrinkles of my face.
Finally, I say, “I don’t understand what you mean.”
“I am royal, Cora-lee,” he admits without looking at me. “As is my mother. We are bound to the thrones and the king and the princes. And what one of us does—or does not do—reflects on all in that house. Royals,” he adds, his tone dropping, “wear markings like no other of the dokkalves do.”
“And these are your markings,” I say, reaching behind him.
He freezes, his muscles clamping up beneath the skin one by one. Before I can touch my fingers to his grooved marks, his hand shoots out and catches my arm. Lowering my hand to the ground, he stops me from touching him.
“These markings,” he says, watching me darkly, “are openings.”
“Openings,” I echo, frowning as he releases my arm from his death-grip. “To what?”
“Wings.” He looks back at the flames. “I had them sealed with the black metal after my mother’s betrayal. My dishonour means I should never wear the markings of my royalhood again. Not until I earn back the house name and honour.”
He has … wings…
My voice drops to a whisper, “Show me.”
His eyes widen with a glare that he flings at me. “They are sealed.”
But that’s not why he won’t show me. The shame of it all is etched into the faint blush on his cheekbones, the rosy tint to his nose. He is embarrassed by what his mother did and—even more for telling me about it. Me, a mere kuri he can do nothing to protect once we reach his unit.