Chapter 5: The Warmth of a Monster

The cabin smelled of wet earth, old leather, and cedar smoke. It was warm inside, almost too warm, heated by a stone fireplace that cracked and popped in the corner of the room.

My head throbbed with every heartbeat, and each small movement pulled fresh pain across the blistered flesh on my forehead. I couldn't shift. I couldn't heal. I was left with nothing but the pain.

Lucian carried me through the doorway without effort, as though I weighed nothing at all. He didn't drop me onto the furs stacked near the wall or leave me in a corner to fend for myself. He walked straight past all of it, toward a large iron tub near the fire, steam already curling off water someone, or something, had prepared before we arrived.

"I'm going to set you down." His voice was gentle.

He lowered me onto a wooden stool beside the tub. My legs buckled the moment my weight shifted onto them, but his hand caught my shoulder before I hit the floor.

"I can do it," I rasped, my throat hoarse from screaming and begging. My hands shook as I picked at the torn, blood-crusted fabric still clinging to my skin.

Lucian crouched in front of me, his knees settling on the bare wood floor. In the firelight I could see him properly for the first time. A scar ran from behind his ear down the length of his throat to his collarbone, old and pale against his skin. His dark hair, still wet from the sleet, hung loose around his jaw. His storm-silver eyes held mine with an intensity that made it hard to breathe.

"You can barely sit up on your own, Seraphina." His thumb hovered near the inflamed skin surrounding the brand on my forehead, then dropped instead to my chin, tilting my face toward his. "Stop fighting me. There's nothing you need to hide here."

Hearing my real name on his lips, spoken so simply, caught me completely off guard.

"How do you know who I am?" My voice came out unsteady. "Tristan didn't know. My own father barely looked twice at me most days. Nobody knew."

His thumb traced along my jaw, his palm rough against my skin. "Tristan sees exactly what people put in front of him and nothing else. He always has." His voice dropped, quieter now. "I met you four years ago at the border spring. You were washing blood out of your shirt after your father used his belt on you, and you thought you were completely alone out there."

I went still. Somewhere in the tangle of dark rooms and locked doors that made up my childhood, I remembered that spring. A feeling of being watched, a shadow at the treeline I'd been too afraid to investigate, too afraid my father would find me gone and add another mark to my back.

"That was you."

"I never forgot it," he said. "I never forgot you. I watched my brother marry the wrong sister while I sat out here in these woods with nothing to do about it but wait."

I didn't have an answer for that. Before I could try to find one, his hands moved to the hem of my ruined dress. He didn't rush the way I expected him to. He peeled the wet fabric up over my hips slowly, his knuckles dragging against bare skin, and every place he touched lit up under my skin like something had been asleep there and just woken.

I flinched, pulling back on instinct.

"Easy." His eyes came up to meet mine, unwavering. "I'm cleaning you up. Nothing more than that unless you want it to be. Look at me."

I looked. I couldn't have looked away if I'd tried.

He lifted the ruined slip over my head and dropped it into the hearth. The fire caught it instantly, and I watched the last trace of Clara's life burn down to nothing in a handful of seconds. I sat there in front of him covered in mud, dried blood, and the faded scars my father had left behind over the years, with nothing left to hide any of it.

Lucian's breathing changed. His gaze drifted down my throat, over my chest, across the old scars on my ribs, then slowly returned to my face. He saw every mark. Every scar. And somehow, he looked more hurt than I felt.

He scooped a handful of warm water and let it run over my shoulder.

I gasped at the heat of it against my skin.

"I've got you." He soaked a cloth and began working the mud from my collarbone down, his hands absurdly careful for a man who'd torn a rogue's throat out an hour earlier without breaking stride. His shoulder pressed against my knee as he worked, and the heat coming off him did more to warm me than the fire or the bath combined.

"Why are you doing this?" I asked, watching him work. "Tristan called me a parasite in front of his entire kingdom. He said I was something people should be sick to look at."

Lucian's hand stopped. He flattened his palm against my stomach, and I felt the heat of it sink in.

He leaned in close enough that his mouth brushed the edge of my ear.

"My brother wouldn't recognize something worth keeping if it were standing in front of him wearing a crown."

His next words were so quiet I almost missed them.

"He branded you because the truth was easier to destroy than accept. Looking at you meant questioning everything he believed about fate, and my brother has never been good at admitting he was wrong."

His hand slid slowly up along my ribs, his thumb pausing just beneath the curve of my breast, and I felt my pulse stutter somewhere in my throat.

"Lucian." My hand found his shoulder, gripping the scarred muscle there to keep myself steady.

"You're shaking," he murmured, watching my face. He didn't pull his hand back. Instead his thumb moved, and a sharp current of feeling shot straight down through my body, pulling a sound out of me I hadn't meant to make.

A low sound rumbled in his chest, something between approval and restraint. "Good," he said quietly. "Let yourself feel something that isn't fear for once." His mouth moved slowly along my neck, pausing at the curve beneath my ear. "No more hiding what you are. Not with me."

He lifted me out of the water without asking and wrapped me in a heavy fur before I had time to feel the cold of leaving it. He carried me to the bed near the fire and laid me down, then climbed in behind me, pulling me back against his chest until there was no space left between us.

His weight against my back should have made me tense, but I found myself relaxing instead. His arm settled around my waist, keeping me close, his mouth resting against my neck, his breath brushing over my skin.

"I'll stop here tonight," he said softly. "You're still healing, Seraphina, and I have no intention of taking advantage of that. Get your strength back."

Part of me wanted to question him still, to tell him he didn't have to treat me so carefully, but exhaustion stole the words before they reached my tongue. The steady warmth of his chest against my back, the quiet beat of his heart, and the unfamiliar feeling of being wanted instead of merely endured pulled me under before I could stop it.

"Sleep," he said against my hair, his hand still resting over mine at my waist. "Everything else can wait until morning. Right now, you just rest."

For the first time in my life, wrapped in the arms of a man half the world called a monster, I let myself close my eyes and believe, if only for a few hours, that nothing was coming for me in the dark.