Betrayer: (The Cursed Bloodstone Book 1)

Firelight frames Gabriel’s features, highlighting the high cheekbones. His straight nose. His close cut beard. That full mouth of his.

As he tends to my wound, I think about everything that transpired from the moment Lucian showed up in the barn, and I think about Gabriel’s reaction. It’s not what I expected. I thought he would yell at me for killing a Bloodstone warrior.

After Gabriel finishes stitching my injury, he rubs one of my salves on the wound and wraps a clean cloth around my arm. I settle against my pillows as he stands to pour me wine and brings it back to me.

“Where did you learn to fight?” he asks.

Images of my training flash before my eyes, those months I spent learning before I was allowed to fight with the mercenary army. Gabriel wouldn’t understand why a simple Kyanite woman would join a force like them. Nor can I tell him.

“Our villages were always being attacked. It was either learn to fight or die.” It’s not a false statement. Our villages were attacked. I did learn to defend myself from a young age.

He sits on the opposite end of the bed with a second goblet of wine. “I was five the first time the city I grew up in was attacked. I was eight the first time I stabbed someone.”

“Eight summers old?” I ask, trying to picture him as a young innocent child forced to defend himself.

“My grandfather was being murdered, and I desperately wanted to defend him,” he says, his voice low.

“Did you?”

Shadows play across Gabriel’s features as he looks down and shakes his head. Something in me wants to pull him close, to comfort him, but I resist, knowing he probably wouldn’t welcome my touch.

“You watched him die.” Empathy prods at the corners of my heart, the place where I shelter my bitterness toward the Bloodstone people.

“Yes.”

“I was ten when Mother was slaughtered in front of me. I didn’t help. I hid like a coward.” I choke out the last words.

“You were a child,” he says, his tone empathic.

“As you were, but you tried to defend your grandfather.”

Gabriel shifts closer to me and catches my cheek in the palm of his hand. His thumb traces the scar left by Esmund’s attack. “I wasn’t an innocent child by the time I was eight. I had already seen enough to haunt an adult. Like the brutal execution of my mother. Trust me when I tell you, hiding is the normal thing to do.”

“Your mother was executed?”

A muscle jerks in Gabriel’s cheek as he frees me and sinks back against the headboard. “Yes.”

“Why?” I ask, desperately wanting to know him better and understand why he’s so distant.

He stares down at the gold ring on his pinky. “My father accused her of infidelity and convinced the council of her guilt.”

“Oh, Gabriel.” Pain wells up in my chest as I think of him losing so much.

An exhale escapes him as that muscle jerks faster in his cheek.

I couple my fingers with his. For a while, he even allows my comfort before pulling away and rolling to his side. He always falls asleep so quickly. I’m the one left reflecting on everything that transpired.

I think of him as a boy watching his mother being executed for something she probably didn’t do, and I think of him trying to defend his grandfather.

I close my eyes, willing away the compassion, the sympathy. It refuses to fade.

A sigh escapes me as I glance at his back again.

I’m supposed to hate him, but the more time that passes, the harder it is to hate.