His words brought back memories. Once I had grown older and a little more cautious with my ability, I should have been safe from the authorities. Though discretion was never my talent. I would have escaped notice had the bounty hunters not tracked me from the time I was fifteen, when my parents were executed for withholding their gifted child from the empire. And at the end of last spring, when Tosya must have been at university, the bounty hunters had finally succeeded in finding me. My arms had been covered in bruises from their brutal grip as they’d dragged me away.
Rubbing his brow, Tosya turned to Anton. “Did you bring her here so I could hide her again? I would gladly do it. You know I would.” My chest tightened with his guilt. Why did he blame himself for what had happened to me? Even if he had been with the Romska caravan last spring, it wouldn’t have changed the outcome. The bounty hunter, Bartek, once he’d discovered my whereabouts, held five Romska children hostage, with me as their ransom. Tosya wouldn’t have let them die; he would have made the same choice their families did.
Anton remained silent, giving me a chance to answer Tosya’s proposal. I considered my friend. Leaving Torchev behind was a wonderful temptation. But then Tola and Dasha seemed to ghost through the room, two little girls huddled in the folds of Sestra Mirna’s skirts as they watched me leave on one of the hardest days of their lives. They were now the children I had to save, their fates dependent on me.
“I wish I could see the Romska again,” I admitted. “But my days of hiding are over.”
Tosya nodded and watched me sadly. “How do you bear it? Serving the emperor? Being walled inside the palace with so many people?”
He must still see me as the haunted girl I was at fifteen, the girl troubled by the fresh wound of her parents’ death, a reality that woke me screaming from my sleep. Somehow Tosya had been able to coax smiles out of me, even an occasional laugh. He’d distract me with stories and quiet musings. And now I had read his book of poetry. The mighty isn’t one, but many. Words Anton told me were sweeping across Riaznin. I didn’t want Tosya to think me weak. “I’ve grown stronger,” I answered him.
“She’s truly incredible,” Anton added, the energy between us burgeoning with pride.
Tosya’s curiosity bubbled again. He turned calculating eyes on his friend. “Have you shown her your birthmark?”
Anton’s aura jolted. He pulled his leg away from mine. “Is anyone hungry? Ruta mentioned bread and jam.”
“Have you?” Tosya asked, unrelenting.
“What birthmark?” I spun to Anton. “What is he talking about?”
Neither man answered. Anton couldn’t bear the weight of Tosya’s stare for long. He stood and walked back to the kitchen.
“What birthmark?” I asked Tosya again, this time lower so Anton wouldn’t hear.
“It’s nothing. I only thought he might have . . .” He idly rubbed a spot on his inner forearm, his gaze drifting back to the prince. “It’s nothing.”
Clearly it wasn’t nothing. My skin tingled with the remembrance of when Anton had drawn back my sleeve and examined my arm in the very same spot.
Unable to restrain myself, I pushed up from my chair and followed Anton to the kitchen. I’d spent enough months in the dark, as far as his secrets were concerned. I thought they’d all come to light, but I was wrong. And the prince was, too, if he thought he could keep something else from me.
Anton stood by the slab of the kitchen table. He studiously avoided my gaze as he unwrapped a loaf of bread from its cloth.
“Give me your hand,” I said.
He removed the lid off the crock of jam.
“Anton.”
“Let this go, Sonya.”
Ignoring him, I took his right hand and revolved it, then slid back his sleeve. He sighed. There on his inner forearm, just where I knew it would be, was the birthmark Tosya had mentioned. It was pinkish brown, no larger than my fingernail, and reminded me of the head of a lynx in profile: snarled mouth and pointed ears, slightly longer than an average cat’s. I brushed my thumb across it, and Anton’s skin pebbled, his muscles tight as balalaika strings.
“What has this to do with me?” I asked.
“It doesn’t. That’s the point.”
“Then why did you look at my arm that night?”
His frown deepened. “I don’t know.”
“Why won’t you tell me? Don’t you trust me?”
He closed his eyes. My question of trust hammered on the wedge dividing us. “This isn’t important.” He slit his eyes open, but kept his gaze trapped on the leaning floor planks. “It has nothing to do with the revolution. It’s only some nonsense Tosya’s teasing me about.”
“He wasn’t teasing.”
“Sonya . . .” Anton gave me a miserable look.
“Please?” I softened my grip on his arm, trying to show him it was safe to open up to me.
He inhaled a long breath and stalled another moment before he finally gave in. “When I had to leave Trusochelm Manor,” he said slowly, haltingly, “when Valko required me in Torchev and under his watchful eye—I was torn about it. I’d learned to accept my fate, but rumors of my brother’s unforgiving rule had already spread across the countryside. I wasn’t sure if I could endure being with him . . . witnessing Riaznin crumble under his reign.”