Page 51 of The Nightmare Bride
My musings evaporated as his question made my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth. Funny—in some ways, Icouldreinvent myself, but the dagger’s gifts ended at the surface. That was the irony, I supposed. I could alter my face all I liked, but no amount of magic changed what lay beneath. None of my adjustments made me less...me.
Now words flooded my throat. Honest ones. Goddess, I shouldn’t have drained that mug so quickly.
Maybe another drink would reinstate my sanity. I waved the waitress down.
But when the second mug arrived, sipping from it only lubricated my thoughts. “If I could’ve been anyone,” I said slowly, “...I think I would’ve liked to be good, like Amryssa. Worthy.”
A crease formed between Kyven’s brows. “Worthy? Why in Hyperion’s name would you think you aren’t?”
“Well, it’s like you said. Most people are selfish. Me included.”
His knife paused mid-swipe. The now-lengthy peel trailed onto the table, its ruby richness lurid in his hands. “Would you like to know what I see, when I look at you?”
I leaned in. “No.”
“Well, lucky for you, I’m going to tell you anyway, you stubborn woman. Because someone needs to inform you you’re absolutely worthy. Of course you are. You’re ferocious, in fact.Most people shy away from that side of themselves, but you? You’re tyrannical and not the least bit sorry about it. Not when it comes to the seneschal’s daughter, and not when it comes to your loyalty. Which means you take a hangnail more seriously than I take a knife to the throat, but that single-mindedness is your greatest strength. It means you can be trusted. Relied upon. You don’t change your mind along with your clothes. You’re ironclad, and if that’s not the single rarest and most precious quality a person can have, I don’t know what is.”
My blood thundered in my ears, loud enough to drown out the surrounding din.
What.
The.
Fuck.
I’d been unfailingly short with him. Cruel, even. And he came back with this? This...giftof an interpretation?
I buried my face in my mug, desperate to soothe the erratic leap of my pulse.
Kyven resumed his peeling, apparently unbothered by my silence. “Now, what I’d like to know is what the Lady Amryssa did to inspire your devotion in the first place.”
His words were airier than dandelion seeds catching on an updraft, but they brought me to a standstill, anyway.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you’re not a woman who trusts easily. Yet you stuck your neck into the marital noose in order to spare hers. She must have donesomethingto earn that from you.”
I stared. Kyven’s knife scritch-scritched, depriving the apple of its armor, exposing the soft core beneath.
How had he guessed that? Especially when Merron had assumed the opposite?
Then again, the two men had nothing in common. While Merron took everything personally, Kyven seemed immune tomy opinions. Trying to insult him was like trying to injure a well by throwing a dart into the water—all I earned was a ripple of amusement, and once it faded, the surface adopted the same configuration as before, utterly unperturbed by what had just happened.
He wasn’t the kind of man I could hurt. Not by accident, probably not even on purpose. Which was...oddly freeing, now that I thought about it.
“Amryssa saved my life once,” I heard myself say. “When I was eighteen.”
“Nine years ago.” He dropped his eyes, slicing the apple into sections, now. “The same age as the nightmares. Interesting. What happened?”
I hesitated, but either the heat or the ale or the way he studied his apple—as if intentionally granting me a reprieve—pried my tongue loose.
“It was after... Well, I didn’t have any family, then. I didn’t even have a home, just a shanty I’d pieced together in the swamp. I used to dig for mussels out there. Bring a bag to town each week, barter it for bread and soap and matches.” My words grew halting as I stumbled over the memories. “But everyone in Oceansgate avoided me, even back then. They called me names. Swamp-girl. Bog-wraith. Seemed like they came up with something new every week.”
And later, once Olivian had given me the dagger, the whispers had inevitably included the wordwitch. People had taken to crossing their fingers when I passed, attempting to ward off whatever evil spirits I must have appealed to in order to alter my face and hair.
But I left that part out.
“They never welcomed me. It didn’t matter that my parents had taken me into the swamp and just...left me. Thetownspeople saw a raggedy, penniless girl, and they shunned me. Everyone except Amryssa.”
