Page 426 of Flirting with Darkness

This time, it really is a screech.

“What do you mean, payment?” Father asks.

“I believe it’s customary for a family to offer a dowry so that a woman’s future husband finds her more appealing.”

Father hardly knows what to say. “That is true, but I hardly see…”

“Your Liesl has become the moon of my night, Keeper Aderyn. All these years she’s held fast to her teaching, her beliefs, so strongly, I feared I’d never be able to tell her the truth of things.”

The king turns to face me. “Liesl, from the first time I heard your voice in my head, I knew you were my match in everything that matters in this realm and the next. I knew that if the fates allowed, if I were ever allowed to court you, I wouldn’t hesitate. I’d court you for as long as dictated by your custom before asking for your hand in marriage.”

My vision goes blurry at his confession, dark around the edges until all there is…

Is him.

“You asked me to send you away because you didn’t understand the order of things, and that was my fault. I failed to take into consideration your cultural context. In my exuberance to make sure you succeeded in the Trial of the Forest, I failed to notice you thought I had already sentenced you to death. But it would be my greatest honor to escort you back to my realm.”

He takes my hand in his, and my gaze is drawn to a glowing light at my wrist.

A small golden sigil glows bright just where my wrist meets my palm. Not the same wrist he used to bind us together, the opposite one.

“That is the sigil for—”

“Protection,” I say, staring at the beautiful glowing light.

“Yes, my love, but not just that.” He touches the center of the sigil and Mother screams.

She stands so quickly her chair falls to the floor behind her. “Liesl!”

I stare at her. “What’s wrong, Mother?”

“I can hear you, but I can’t see you!”

I glance at the king, and he nods. “It’s the sigil for occlusion, so it might hide you from the things that roam my Kingswood.” He touches my wrist again, and Mother clutches her hands to her chest.

I risk a glance at my father.

My devout, pious father.

He’s beaming at me. Smile splitting his face in two.

“When? When did you mark me with this?” I ask, finally meeting the king’s gaze once again. A gaze so full of affection, I can hardly believe I ever saw cruelty or evil there before.

“When we held hands. I traced the sigil on your wrist over and over. I thought you knew.”

I shook my head. “I didn’t know. You were fond of touching me.”

I replay every time he’d traced a pattern in my skin. My shoulder when we lay in the woods after our coupling. My back, when he first tore my dress from me. Had they all been protective sigils? Had he marked me as his that early on?

“You knew so much about magic, I assumed, incorrectly, that you’d accepted what I felt were overt advances.”

“You called me ignorant,” I say, breathless and trying to make sense of everything. “You spat the word human out like it burned you to say it.”

He lowers his gaze. “I had to work through my own prejudice as well, Liesl. I had to get over the well-earned hostility toward you and your kind. It took longer than I would have liked, I’ll admit, but I hardly think you can blame me for it. And I had to reconcile those feelings while also knowing that you are my heart. I’m sorry it took me so long.”

“You were hardly gone at all,” Mother says. “I’d say you managed those emotions quite quickly.”

Again, the king casts his gaze downward. “In fact, we were gone for much longer than any of you realize. That includes you, Liesl.”

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