Page 11 of A Court of Truth and Thorns
The prince’s shoulders shake, his quiet laughter bouncing through the cave. “Oh, stars.”
“Your Highness?” Trace says quietly. “What—”
“Sonia.” Wil snorts, the laughter bubbling from him in earnest. “At the Wandering Dog. I was thinking of the Wandering Dog, when Luca hired a girl for Kal.”
A corner of Luca’s mouth twitches. “Kal looked like a startled rabbit. I thought I was doing a good thing, you know.” He glances at me, just a touch of the eyes, but a touch nonetheless. “What did you do with her outside?”
“A gentleman doesn’t discuss such things,” I tell Luca.
His smile widens. “Is this why Trace stopped training with Kal all of a sudden?”
Trace crosses his arms. “I don’t hit women.”
“Actually,” Wil raises a hand, “I believe you hit them just fine. Unless it was another Kal you whipped in the North Wood.”
Trace pulls his arms around himself. “I didn’t know.”
“I believe that particular oversight has been remedied now, no?” says Luca, sending Wil into another absurd burst of maniacal and slightly infectious laughter.
At least laughter is better than murder.
We spendwhat’s left of the night in uncomfortable sleep, Calvin suggesting that we might wake feeling better. Stronger. I can’t help wondering whether I’ll wake up to find Trace gone.
Trace does not, in fact, disappear under the cloak of darkness. Neither does fatigue nor humiliation.
My limbs are heavy as I go through the motions of checking weapons and bootlaces and supplies, my eyes occasionally straying to Trace and never finding him looking back. When we finally move out with the morning sun, I carve out a quiet place for myself at the head of the group, where I can look forward and see nothing but trees.
“So, what do I call you?” Luca asks, matching stride with me after two hours of silence. It’s slowly getting chillier the farther we get from Dansil, and I wager that evergreens will outnumber the other trees in a few days’ time.
I squint to block out the sun’s rays as I judge our path, calculating whether Calvin and the girls would do better with a longer, flatter trek or a shorter uphill hike. It’s easier to think about the forest than about what’s happened.
Luca clears his throat and I realize he’s still waiting for an answer.
“Kalianna,” I say, steering us toward the flatter path.
“No,” Luca drawls. “That won’t do. Too many syllables.”
“What?” I turn to face him finally. “It’s my name.”
“Don’t you have a better one?” Luca sticks his hands into his pockets. “What do your friends call you?”
My jaw tenses. “Scouts don’t have friends, Luca. We have marks.”
Luca makes an uninterpretable sound in the back of his throat and walks beside me in silence for another dozen steps before speaking again. “What I said last night was unforgivable. But I apologize nonetheless.”
I turn my face away, my skin heating anew. Beside me, Luca kicks a flock of pebbles down the path, the small stones skipping and singing when they hit bigger ones. Scout, Luca is not.
“Stars, Kal. I’m an idiot,” he says softly. “Ten kinds of idiot. You were right to slug me. And if I were in Trace’s shoes, I’d have taken my head off for me and shoved it deep into my ass. Then again, it might be there now.”
Trace. What does it mean that Luca, not Trace, is here talking to me? Does Trace regret kissing me? Think me an added complication in an already too-complicated existence?
“How is everyone holding up?” I ask.Is Trace as aloof as I am this morning?
“As well as can be expected,” says Luca. “Jasmine is weak but Trace says this course will take us right to an Everett fighting camp. He hopes some of the men might be superstitious enough to wear healing stones. And if not, then a magic-free healer will do.”
So Trace is active and strategizing. Relief and anger hit my gut together. For a heartbeat, I can think of nothing but how warm he tasted, how he smelled of the forest and sweat and steel. And how small and inconsequential a kiss must be in the life of a prince, even one fallen from his kingdom’s grace. I brace myself to ask my next question. Luca is hardly the ideal person to ask, but I’ve no one else. Never have. “Luca?”
“Mmm?”
