Clothes transparent and clinging to my skin, I lifted the hem of my pant legs so they did not drag along gravel and prickly grass. My outer robe—which I regretfully had forgotten to remove before entering the water—became significantly lighter after ringing it out and webbing it across tangled branches to dry. Next came the weight that was my hair, and I took long cords of it between my hands and squeezed out the water over my shoulder.
With frost touching praying stems of grass early in the morning, it was still much too chilly to play in frigid water.
But I hadn't been able to help myself.
For only twenty minutes did I wait, resuming my earlier activity of linking flowers until Hael returned to our clearing, two large fish dangling from a skewer in his hand—prepped and ready to touch the fire. He dug carefully rods into the earth and created a convenient setup where he needed only to turn the fish over the flames every few minutes to cook them properly.
Deciding I needed to contribute too, I worked on peeling a few small oranges from the gifted basket of fruit.
Hael was not sitting on the stone slab beside me this time, instead sitting against a fallen tree adjacent to me, his back pressed against the prickly width of it. But even so, I felt frost creeping along my skin, and it had nothing to do with the dipping temperature tonight.
It had been different when we were in the water, my gaze settled fondly on Hael and his considering me openly, for my wet and clingy hair had hidden my scars from him. And it had also been too dark to see anything clearly. But now, with my hair pushed behind me to dry against my back, I felt a murky-colored dread handle my stomach, self-consciousness taking me over beneath his passionate scrutiny.
When his eyes traveled between every dip and valley and twist of my scars, what did he see? He had commended me for them once, but I didn't know if he'd just wanted to say the right thing.
Regardless of the truth, I was particularly uncomfortable with his eyes on me tonight, drawing along my flaws, burning them, darkening them, doing everything under the sun but erasing them.
My scars had always been glaring reminders that while I had been valiant and perhaps heroic, I had neither been strong nor skilled enough to avoid a mere gash to the face or neck. They were indicators of how useless I'd been in the end.
A hero who had required saving.
Something had changed between Hael and me, something sensitive and threatening, because I realized now how terrifying the idea of his rejection was. I should have been used to it, and truly, I was, but Hael was different from everyone else. He looked at me differently…touched me like I was someone he adored and treated me as someone equal to him.
He'd given me everything I could have asked for, and yet, all I yearned to do now was close in on myself and hide before he realized there wasn't anything about me worth treating fondly.
Instead taking a direct route, I looked over at Hael pointedly. "I cannot tell if you are fascinated or disgusted with my scars."
"Impressed. I'm admiring you," he said on the current of a soft breath. "Can I? Admire you?"
I curled in on myself slightly. "That isn't possible." A quivering breath breezed through my lips, emotion inconveniently pummeling me when I already felt so raw and exposed, stripped to the barest of my being beneath Hael's wandering inspection. "I don't deserve to be recognized or acknowledged or…" Admired. I was too inadequate for that. What contribution had I made to the world that deemed me worthy of praise?
Hael leaned forward, glittering eyes runny with softness as he spoke to me. "Not only is that not what I asked you, but what you feel you are deserving of is irrelevant. Do you want me to admire you?"
A self-conscious huff left me. "Who asks for something like that?"
"Someone who has been deprived of it."
My next breath traveled over mountains before it left me, and I considered Hael, the honesty crawling from his feet to curl around my ankles.
Starved of affection. Of recognition and acknowledgment and adoration. Starved of love, I had been. So ravenous for roses and smiles that I was willing to stir coins in my palm at the edge of streets and beg only for people to look at me. With warmth. Even if it was not real.
But here Hael was, denying the rusted currency and admiring me of his desire to do so.
Why did he want to admire someone like me?
How could he?
Pounding and crumbling and jumping and weeping, my heart did not know how to respond to the retraction of the ocean's water, for it could predict something consequential sailing along the incoming waves.
And in a futile effort to rescue my heart from the threat of drowning, I muttered, "You are only trying to appease me."
"If speaking the truth is what does that, is it so wrong?" he asked quietly. An innocent stream of nervousness carried his words to my ears. Even as his cheeks colored, he did not look away from me. "Your scars aren't anything to be ashamed of. They aren't blemishes. You're perfect with them."
It was instinct to deny such an outstanding compliment that felt like the truth when it fell off his tongue. I shook my head, nibbling on the tip of an orange slice to busy my quivering lips. "God did not create anyone to be perfect."
"He created you."
The orange slipped through my fingers, followed by a startled gasp. Threads and colorful ribbons kept my gaze connected to Hael's, and in the green of his eyes was an affinity so vibrant that my heart was painted over with adoring color. I could not stand it: this familiarity—the connection and innate feelings I felt for someone I did not know. A person who was supposedly wicked. But how could I believe in such nonsense when Hael looked at me like that?
Like I was someone he loved?
The idea was alluring, enticing me with ripe fruit I knew I should not touch, but my desire to be loved was greater than the fear of any poison I could have consumed. So, I picked myself up and sat beside Hael against the tree. Our shoulders brushed once, and his arm stiffened, unsure of how else to react when I was this close to him.
I turned my body to face him, deciding to take advantage of how social he was tonight to get some answers out of him. "Give me something about yourself," I implored. "Anything you can share. I just—"
"I am not someone you should want to know," Hael cut in, his eyes shining glumly. He studied the distance between us—there was none—and moved over a space. "Nothing good will come from knowing me."
"You don't get to decide that for me," I persisted, ignoring despondency as it buzzed between us. "There is more to your actions that you aren't revealing, and I'm…" I choked on my unfinished words. I'm having a hard time believing you are truly as bad a person as you pretend to be.
A curious look went my way, and upon realizing I would not finish what I'd intended to say, Hael attempted to distract me by tending to our fish. "They're almost done," he muttered, much too eager to redirect our conversation.
I scoffed, my eyes crinkling with fiery disappointment. "Is this how you'll be? You can know things about me while sharing nothing of yourself?"
"That is how it has to be," he admitted grimly, not looking at me. "I am not…good, Reyin."
"And I am telling you I don't believe that," I snapped.
In an instant, Hael's eyes met me, curious and wide and a bit frightened, as though I'd managed to scratch persistently enough to touch the surface of the truth he kept buried. "You've killed people, but you also saved my life. You returned a lost child to her family and generously gave money to an inn worker. And you're fond of your horse, dedicating time tending to him. You've done terrible things, but so has every human to exist. What I desire most is to know who you really are behind this facade of a villain you've created for yourself."
My cheeks blazed after my outburst, my chest rising and falling erratically. And my hands trembled slightly from the abrupt release of pent-up curiosity and parasitic emotions. Hael only stared at me, and there was uncertainty across his expression. Wariness, too.
He was afraid.
Afraid I would discover him.
Afraid I already had.
Sitting back against the log, a short exhale exited him. He brushed some of his hair away from his face and looked at me.
"I'm an orphan," he revealed, and I straightened eagerly, ready to indulge in whatever he was prepared to share. "My parents are alive, but…circumstances caused them to give up on me when I was young."
I nodded slowly, discreet in my effort to get closer to him. "Do you still love them?" I asked, because I wanted to know if he was capable of it.
Hael's irises flared like a splash of water across wet paint. "There is someone I love more."
The intensity of his words, while he'd pointedly looked at me, had my stomach knotting with uncertain emotion. He'd said that as if the endearment had been meant for me. But that wasn't true…was it?
And there it was again. Those sharp tugs of familiarity. Memories of watery green eyes and dark brown curls. Memories of a boy I had loved deeply. Still loved. The adoration unfurling in me was too notable to ignore, and with every purposeful encounter, Hael and Alora resembled each other more than the last.
In my heart, I did not know if I would rather Hael be the boy I used to know or someone entirely new.
A chill went through me when I confidently said, "We know each other. Or knew, at least. I don't know how or where from, but at some point, we did. We must have."
I implored with my eyes for him to be honest with me. I needed this. Needed to know if my past had caught up with me and if it was for better or worse. But most importantly, I desperately needed to know if the boy I had known was the man sitting before me now.
Helpless and decaying in misery because I had not recognized him before.
War ensued across fields in Hael's expression, his lips twitching with the threat of parting and spilling everything. He surprised me when he leaned forward then.
I retracted my face an inch.
Hael paused, waiting for me to demand he leave. I did not. And he drew closer.
Nervous music pounded in my ears, inspired by the alarm and anticipation swirling to create strange melodic notes in me.
I held my breath when Hael's hand came to the right side of my face, his cool skin biting my cheek. Then he pressed his own cheek to the left side of my face and nuzzled me.
His damp hair brushed across my squinting eye as he rubbed fondly his face against my scar. And a remarkable exhale left him like he'd yearned to do this for a while.
My cheek stung.
My hand twitched on my thigh.
I was unsure of what to do with myself.
I knew this feeling. Had felt it before. This indulgently fond and intimate way of touching between two close friends. My heart was splitting in my chest, one side tugged valiantly by hope and the other by grief. The tears were quick to follow as I understood, gathering in my eyes and ready to rain. He hadn't been able to hide it any longer, and if he had, I would have discovered the truth on my own eventually.
Hael was indeed the boy I had known, and I'd had the audacity to miss him when I hadn't recognized him after all this time.
Hael pulled back only a little to rub the tip of his nose against mine. The touch was warm. Burning. Scorching. And when he leaned back to look at me, his voice was fluid with yearning. "Maybe that will answer your questions, dove."
Dove. An intense shiver encased me at the nostalgia for our affectionate names for each other. I took his shoulders in my hands, determined to keep him as close to me as possible. "Alo—"
"Don't," he whispered quickly, looking pained. "Hael… I am only Hael now."
I nodded as quickly as my spinning head would allow. Questions swarmed at the nectar his confession had given. Where had he been when I'd looked for him all those years ago? What had he meant his parents had given up on him? What wrong turn had he taken as that sweet boy to become this?
A man who didn't flinch when he killed another.
A man who burned castles to dust.
A man who'd taken me from my home.
Why had he done any of it?
I wanted to reach into him and seize the answers myself, but Hael had already retreated again, re-stitching his weathered seams and denying me any more access to himself tonight. When he served our fish, it was done reclusively to avoid conversation.
I slept with my back to the fire after eating, my heart unsparingly broken. Because while my dearest friend had indeed returned to me, he was not the same person I had grown to love all those years ago.
No, for Alora's innocent hands had been stained with pollen.
Hael's were stained with blood.