Page 70 of Burn Her They Said
“You think your body reacting like this, and only doing so with me, is somehow not an indication that we share some sort of special connection between us?” His eyes rove over me, setting my skin alight everywhere his gaze flicks, until my cheeks grow impossibly hot. Boiling. Then the feeling transforms and intensifies, almost as if my whole body is submerged and I can’t breathe while his attention is on me—with the need to break this spell feeling imperative.
“Can we please focus?”
“Can you?” he asks.
No, I cannot. Because next thing I know, I’m blurting out a question that’s been circling. “Why do you have scars when your father was a healer?”
His eyebrows rise, shifting one of the scars in question. He releases a breath and leans forward, rolling his shoulders on the way down.
“My father’s philosophy, or I suppose we could go as far as to say, ‘the Euclid way,’ is to keep from making mistakes. However, if you make one, you will live with the consequences to ensure you make a different decision in the future.”
“That seems to have stuck with you,” I tease, surprising even myself as he chuckles.
“Right. So when I climbed on top of the hay bales when he told me I shouldn’t because I would get hurt, I fell on top of a broken bit of wood, which cut through here,” he says, lightly tapping his eyebrow. “He refused to help me clean the wound, much less heal me.”
“How old were you?” I ask, aghast.
“Must have been seven, maybe eight years old.”
“And this one?” I ask, nearly brushing the bottom of his lip to indicate the scar there.
“That one,” he says, shaking his head. “That one is a different kind of story, and one which took place when my father was not present.” I gesture for him to continue, and he straightens to tell it. “I was ten years old, and we were outside playing in the yard when a force sorcerer around my size shoved one of the smallest flight sorcerers, and I told him to stop, or I’d make him. A threat which he did not appreciate after he failed to heed my warning and promptly clocked me after I blasted him to prove it.”
“He punched you?” I ask, brows raised.
“Split my lip open so far it ran all the way down to where you see the end of the scar.”
I shake my head and pull my hand back into my lap, having reached out for him at some point during his telling of the story.
“And what did he walk away with?”
“A nice lightning-shaped scar down his neck.” His stomach tenses in reaction to my shocked expression. “Don’t worry. The healers dealt with it in no time. My father, however, had instructed them not to tend to me when it came to accidents or skirmishes where I should have known better.”
Fire. Flames. Molten lava roils through my veins with the sudden need to pay this sorcerer a visit, though his son quickly tempers it.
“I feel the same,” he says, lips curving on one side as I look back in confusion. “I want to hurt the one who neglects your needs.” My face falls, and his follows.
Did I send my emotions to him just now? Or can he possibly guess something so specific? Am I that incapable of controlling my feelings around him? Or when it comes to him…
He clears his throat, dragging my attention back.
“Let me guess. You want us to return to focusing on my rehabilitation.”
“That is why the Emperor sent me here.”
“Thank you for the reminder. Can we please discuss anything but him?”
“As long as the topic doesn’t include my feelings.” For you.
“That’s no fun.”
“I wasn’t sent here to entertain you, Varic.”
“And it seems to be your favorite thing to remind me.”
I close my eyes with a sigh, reaching out with my magic—which he blocks. Effectively.
My eyes fly open with surprise, quickly overtaken by a sense of pride—though he must misread my meaning as his own face falls.
