The mournful admission shamed her, but she couldn’t help it. Her birthmark had been the source of numerous miseries once she was old enough to understand the ridicule it generated. How different would her life have been had she been born without it or even with it in a less visible spot?
Radimar swooped closer, and his hands rested heavy on her shoulders. This close, and she could make out the angles of his hard face and the glitter of his eyes. “Stop,” he ordered in a soft voice, no less stern for its quietness. “Don’t give that shallow bitch’s words a weight they aren’t worth.”
Jahna scrubbed away her tears and sniffled. They stubbornly trickled down her face. “She isn’t the only one to say it. People can whisper loudly. I wish I could make this go away.” She touched the blemish spread across her cheek. “Evaline is a bitch, but she’s pretty, and she has friends. I don’t have to be pretty, but I would have liked to have friends.”
He shook her gently, as if to snap her out of a bad dream. “Are we not friends, you and I? And Lacramor’s spoiled brat is a friend to no one, nor are they to her. They cling together because they’re too weak to stand alone. Trust me when I tell you they’d stab each other in the back at the smallest provocation and turn on each other like dogs at the first opportunity. That isn’t friendship, Jahna. Far from it.”
He was right. Her reason argued he was right, and she’d seen with her own eyes how those “friends” had done nothing to help Evaline.
Every thought fled her mind when his hands cupped her face, thumbs smearing the tears that still dripped down her cheeks. The fingers resting against her blemish fluttered across her cheekbone like a moth’s wings. “This is part of who you are, Jahna,” he whispered. “What makes you strong and resilient, gives you purpose beyond the arm ornament of some nobleman. You’re beautiful. Let no one make you believe otherwise.”
She leaned into his touch, savoring the feel of his hands on her skin, and closed her eyes. “You’ve always been so kind to me. Never looked at me as if I’m lesser.” More tears seeped under her closed lids. “I think I will mourn forever when you return to Ilinfan.”
“Shhh, Jahna,” he murmured against her temple. “Shhh.”
His mouth drifted from her temple to the corner of her eye, the kiss as ephemeral as a snowflake but not at all cold. Jahna forgot her sorrow, entranced by the touch of his hands and lips on her face. He kissed every curve and angle of her face: forehead and damp eyelids, the bridge of her nose and fullness of her cheeks. She shuddered under his hands when he paused for several moments to map her birthmark, his clasp gentle and reassuring.
At some point during Radimar’s exploration of her features, Jahna’s hands found their way to his torso, her fingers pressing into his heavy winter tunic to grip his sides. She tilted her chin up, instinctively seeking his mouth with hers. Her sigh when his lower lip touched hers unfurled between them, and the kiss transformed.
No longer a delicate touch that coaxed and teased and encouraged, Radimar’s kiss consumed her. Jahna sank into it, not caring if her response was a clumsy effort of eagerness, wonder and inexperience. Radimar didn’t seem to care either. His mouth played along hers with the skill of an adept, the sweep of his tongue edging the underside of her upper lip, making her startle at first and then moan against his mouth at the sensations that sizzled from her face to her feet.
His hands slid from her face to her shoulders and down her back to gather her close. Even with layers of clothing between them, Jahna still felt the muscular contours of his chest pressed to her breasts, the way his broad shoulders flexed under her massaging fingers.
And that kiss. The first she’d ever received that wasn’t a peck on the cheek from her father or Sodrin. There was no comparison between those casual displays of familial affection and this wonder of sensuality that sent the blood rushing under her skin like fire and burned ever hotter when he coaxed her mouth open a little wider and slid his tongue inside.
She shivered but didn’t pull away, enjoying the taste and feel of him inside her, the scent of him in her nostrils, and most of all the telling groan that traveled deep from within his chest to flow from his mouth to hers. Magic, Jahna thought. This was magic no sorcerer could create with potions or invocations.
The spell Radimar wove around them shattered when Sodrin’s steady snores broke into a series of explosive snorts and a round of coughing. Radimar backed away from Jahna. Caught by surprise at both her brother’s porcine racket and Radimar’s abrupt withdrawal, she stumbled toward the swordmaster who restored her balance with a hand on her elbow.
She still couldn’t clearly see his face in the dark room, but she didn’t have to. The horror in his voice clanged like a discordant bell in her ears.
“Gods,” he uttered on a hard exhale. “What am I doing?” He let her go as if she’d suddenly been set ablaze and might burn him as well. “I’m sorry, Jahna,” he said, and pivoted away on a rush of cold air and the snap of his cloak. Before she could call out to him to wait, he was gone, the door closing behind him with a quiet click.
Shock nailed Jahna’s feet to the floor but only for a moment. She raced after him, yanking the door open to skid into the corridor. Its emptiness mocked her. The man who wove sorcery with a kiss had disappeared like smoke.
“Come back.” Jahna’s soft plea spilled into the silence. No one replied.
She spent the rest of the night in her bed, staring at the ceiling and reliving those moments in Radimar’s arms. It might have been an exercise of euphoric wonder were it not tainted by his appalled apology. She touched her stained cheek. In the dark, it was no different from her other cheek. Same smooth skin, same shape. Had a stray beam of moonlight shone on her birthmark? Reminded Radimar that he kissed a woman whose face once frightened a small child so much, he cried into his mother’s skirts?
Jahna swallowed down a knot of tears. She’d done more than enough weeping for the night, nor would she torture herself any longer with questions only the swordmaster could answer. In the morning, at first light, she’d seek him out, demand to know why he had fled, for that’s exactly what he had done. The reasons for his flight remained a mystery to her, but the sick feeling in the pit of her belly warned her none of them were good.
Her resolve to catch Radimar early proved futile. Jahna had no idea where he disappeared to after he left Uhlfrida’s suite, but she assumed he would return for no other reason than to haul an ailing Sodrin out of bed for more training.
Sodrin huddled in his bed with a wash basin tucked against his side. He clutched it like a lover and glared at Jahna with bleary eyes. “I haven’t seen him, brat, and thank the gods for it this morning. Now go away.”