Page 86 of Of Bargains & Betrayal

“You weren’t supposed to find out like this,” Jasper said as his shaking, gloved hands rose to the thick trim of his hood. “I’m sorry.”

His shroud fell back, pulling a haze of smoky magic with it.

I blinked once. Twice. A third desperate time.

My eyes didn’t understand what I was seeing—who I was seeing.

A shaky breath sawed out of my lungs. My vision blurred a little, like it too was desperate not to process the unveiled man standing before me—who I had spent an entire day alone with, completely unaware.

It was partly because I’d spent years trying to scour every fleeting, agonizing memory of him from my mind. But it was in equal part because he’d barely been a grown man when I last saw him, just a lanky seventeen-year-old who hadn’t grown into his height yet.

Fifteen fucking years ago.

Back then, his shoulders hadn’t been as broad. His body hadn’t been wrought with honed muscle, well-defined even through layers of dress meant to incite modesty.

He hadn’t worn a leather patch over his eye then either, barely disguising a network of scars and dark veining crawling out from his left side. But his hale eye was as mesmerizing a shade of earthy green as it had always been.

More stubble decorated his jaw than I ever remembered, but I’d never forget his nose and its almost imperceptible crookedness. His hair was still stark white-blond, shorter on the sides and a haphazard mess on top.

Fifteen fucking years, and it was him.

No wonder I’d fallen into such a disarming state of comfort despite thinking he was a stranger. Some subconscious part of my being would always know who he was, despite how desperately I’d worked to scourge my mind of his reassuring presence.

My body went so slack, I swayed on the spot.

He had never been a factor in any of this.

“No,” I rasped. “K-Kieran?”

His mouth tightened, tugging at the scar running up along the side of his chin, and acid burned at the back of my throat. I was terrifyingly close to being sick. Seconds seemed to stretch into minutes before my mind could form any further thoughts. Even then, they came in sharp, fragmented pieces.

“You…you…” I licked my lips, but there wasn’t an ounce of moisture to be found. My eyes swept the training arena before landing back on him. “Here? This is where you…?”

A nod. A fucking nod.

Its devastating simplicity threatened to take me out at the knees.

I could only stare at the man who’d once been a boy I thought I knew better than myself.

A boy who had been a constant in my life for all my formative years—who was supposed to be a constant endlessly.

Until he suddenly wasn’t.

He watched me back with visible apprehension. His uncovered eye did not leave my face, like he wasn’t sure if I was a wounded animal about to bolt or if he needed to make an exit for his safety. I wasn’t sure either.

My heart pounded so hard in my chest, I was certain it was about to start echoing off the walls at any moment—as soon as it finished beating its way out from behind my ribs.

Kieran.

Fucking Kieran.

“This was…not the reunion I thought it’d be.” Maksym was beside me suddenly, letting out an uneasy chuckle. He squeezed my shoulders and held my wavering body steady. “I expected a little more jubilation, truthfully. Jasper—er, Kieran, I suppose—led me to believe you two had been thick as thieves when you were young. We’ll really have to take a vote on what name to⁠—”

“Maksym,” Kieran—not Jasper—warned, his voice authoritative in a way I’d never heard from him before.

But as if my wits came rushing back all at once at the king’s forceful reinsertion of his presence, it hit me why the name Jasper carried a strange undercurrent of familiarity when I’d first heard it uttered outside my cell.

I’d heard it at least a hundred times during my youth, after all, when Kieran had recounted memories of his father to me—Jasper Morana. The man Kieran hailed as his hero for seeing that his only son, and youngest child, was made a ward of Odessa and granted haven while an illness ravaged their settlement in the Wastes. It was a stark contrast to how my father had told me Kieran had ended up under his care, but that was a truth I expected to die with.