Page 74 of Courting War
She knew.
Sweat dripped down his back.
He was caught. She knew he was an idiot. An idiot who couldn’t read. An unlovable, undesirable imbecile. A big dumb brute whose only value was to guard a king, not become one.
His heart jolted, and fire licked his insides.
She knew.
How? And how so quickly? He’d been able to hide his affliction so well before, with no one figuring it out once he entered the Agoge—no one, including Emmett. He had ensured no one knew he couldn’t read—tricking teachers and stealing tests. Sometimes he’d even forced Cecile to read to him.
Kellyn cracked his back to relieve the pressure, and his eyes fixed on her, trying to figure her out. Morrigan was unnatural. She knew far too much—was far too skilled.
“Words look the same and sound the same sometimes, don’t they?” she asked. “Or letters swim, or you can’t understand them. Or you can’t process them properly.”
Kellyn’s face paled, and he wanted to run away.
His heart drummed in his ears, and the world faded away, his mouth growing dry and hurting from the strain of holding in his shame.
Morrigan inched closer and placed a hand on either side of his face. Her skin soft and comforting. “It’s okay,” she breathed. “It’s called dyslexia, and that’s not something you need to feel ashamed about.”
His muscles tightened at the words. He didn’t understand. That word meant nothing to him.
“It’s an inherited condition that affects reading and the language center of your brain,” Morrigan said. “It makes it hard to distinguish the parts of the words and the sounds those words make.”
Kellyn flinched, unable to process. Everything she said made sense. Kellyn saw the letters in words and often made out their shapes, but they never fit right. And no matter how hard he tried, the meaning wouldn’t translate.
Morrigan gave words to the shame he’d carried with him all these years. That shame was like an anchor on his back—an anchor that pulled him down into the ocean deep.
It was like she’d seen and validated all his struggles. She was the first person to say it was okay. The first person to provide answers. Even if he didn’t understand those answers in the slightest.
He wanted to ask what that word—dyslexic—meant, and if he was an idiot. But his tongue locked up, and he couldn’t answer the question.
“It doesn’t affect intelligence,” she answered his unspoken query, “but it’s why Ricin looks like Ficus—especially in cursive. They look nearly the same to you, don’t they?”
Kellyn stumbled and caught himself on the wall, the action pinning her between his arms. Blood rushed from his face. “I nearly killed him, and you.”
He stumbled again, and she caught him, her arms around hiswaist, trying to steady him. At her attempt, he caught himself against the wall.
His shoulders drooped, and a thick layer of ice coated his veins like crystals forming on a window on a winter’s day. “Ricin has no cure.” His eyes burned. “No antidote.”
His head fell in shame.
“No, it doesn’t,” Morrigan said, her hands fixed on his torso. She moved one to his heart as if to steady him. Her touch was an iron on his dark olive skin, both burning and consoling.
“I would have killed him.”
She gently patted him and whispered something indistinguishable. Morrigan would never win an award for warmth or a comforting nature—she was all liquid fire and brimstone—but at least she tried.
He lowered his head to meet her violet gaze. “You saved him.”
Kellyn didn’t know what to do with her. She brought out parts of him he didn’t know he had. Everything in him wanted to pull her close and show his appreciation with a kiss. His body begged for it. But would she want it?
He didn’t know, and it was too risky to try without knowing.
Morrigan was the only person who knew his secret and didn’t make him feel ashamed.
She accepted him as he was.
