Page 355 of Once Upon a Fable

I studied him, truly studied him. I followed the scar on his cheek, the taut way he held himself, and the barely concealed violence in his stance.

He had blood on his hands, without any doubt.

He had nightmares in his soul and death in his veins, but...

He reminded me of someone.

Someone who’d run from kissing me and vanished into the forest after remembering something that he couldn’t forgive himself for.

Someone who’d been raised in this valley, groomed, molested, and then left to die.

Kas belonged in this valley.

He was more animal than human and more broken than whole, but he was healing...slowly. He was trying. He was learning how to live one hard, horrible day at a time.

This man reminded me of Kas.

His bi-colored eyes held the same haunting. His body pulsed with power, ready to kill instead of accepting another bruise from someone else.

His head cocked as if he couldn’t understand why I’d stood down, but he never stopped assessing me, poised to attack.

I lowered the stick.

His nostrils flared as the stick rested on the ground, no longer aimed at his face. “Wise move. If you’d struck me with that, I wouldn’t have been responsible for my retaliation.”

I swallowed hard.

My arm bunched to bring my weapon back up.

If I was wrong about this. If I was seeing things that weren’t there, then I was more stupid than I thought.

My mind raced with names that Kas had moaned in his nightmares. The names written in books resting on pillows of slaves, binding them to a particular fable, ensuring their fates were no longer theirs but written by their so-called master.

Balling my hands, I whispered, “Wes?”

The stranger stiffened to steel. His eyes narrowed to slits. “Whatdid you just call me?”

“Zanik, perhaps?” I stepped toward him, dropping my stick on the way. “Umm...” What other names had Kas said? What other names had been on those books? “Neo? Maliki?”

He seemed to grow, gathering all the shadows and wrapping them around himself. His boots snapped a twig as he stepped toward me, closing the distance I’d put between us.

The air crackled as he approached. The forest went thick with anticipation.

I stopped moving as he came nearer. My body buzzed with adrenaline and warning, but I wouldn’t run. I had no doubt if I ran, it wouldn’t end well. It was either fight or persuade. Those were my only two options. Iwould never turn my back on this man.

Not when he was so similar to Kas but also entirely different.

Kas had been rough and brash when we’d first met. He’d been cruel and fierce, but beneath it all, there’d been an endearing sort of fumbling. He’d invoked terror but also summoned empathy.

This man wasn’t like Kas in that respect.

There was no humanity buried beneath decades of protection.

There was nothing in him that struggled to understand who or what he was.

He knew.

He knew he was dangerous.