The Heart of Betrayal (The Remnant Chronicles 2)

He stared at me, his chest rising in controlled breaths. “He fed me when I was starving, for one thing.”

“A charitable act is no reason to sell your soul to someone.”

“Everything is so simple to you, isn’t it?” Anger flashed across his face. “It’s more complicated than an act, as you call it.”

“Then what? He gave you a nice cloak? A room in the—”

His hand flew through the air. “I was traded, Lia! Just like you were.” He looked away as if he was trying to regain his composure. When he looked back at me, the hot fury was still in his eyes, but his tone was slow and cynical. “Except in my case, there were no contracts. After my mother died, I was sold to a passing ring of beggars for a single copper as if I were a piece of trash—with only one caveat—to never bring me back.”

“You were sold by your father?” I asked, trying to fathom how anyone could do such a thing.

In seconds, sweat had sprung to his face. This was the memory that mattered, the one he had always refused to share. “I was eight years old,” he said. “I begged my father to keep me. I fell to his feet and wrapped my arms around his legs. To this day, I’ve never forgotten the sickening scent of jasmine soap on his trousers.”

He shut the trunk lid and sat down, his eyes unfocused as if reliving the memory.

“He shook me off. He said it was better that way. The better was two years with accomplished beggars who starved me so I could bring in more money on street corners. If a day’s begging didn’t bring enough in, they beat me, but always where it didn’t show. They were careful that way. If I still didn’t bring in enough, they threatened to take me back to my father, who would drown me in a bucket of water like a stray cat.”

His gaze turned sharp, cutting into me. “It was the Komizar who found me begging on a muddy street. He saw the blood seeping through my shirt after a particularly bad beating. He pulled me up on his horse and took me back to his camp, fed me, and asked who had whipped me. When I told him, he left for a few hours, promising it would never happen again. When he returned, he was sprayed with blood. I knew it was their blood. He was true to his word. And I was glad.”

He stood and snatched his cloak from the floor.

I shook my head, horrified. “Kaden, it’s an abomination to whip a child and just as bad to sell one. But isn’t that all the more reason to leave Venda for good? To come to Morrighan and—”

“I was Morrighese, Lia. I was a bastard child born to a highborn lord. Now you know why I hate royals. That’s who the Komizar saved me from.”

I stared at him, unable to speak.

No.

It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be.

He threw his cloak around his shoulders. “Now you know who the real barbarians are.”

He turned and left, the door thundering shut behind him, and still I stood there.

His schooling in the holy songs.

His reading.

His flawless Morrighese.

True.

The scars on his chest and back.

True.

But it wasn’t a Vendan who had done this to him, as I had always supposed. It was a highborn lord of Morrighan.

Impossible.

* * *

The candle burned out. The lanterns did too. I lay curled in the bed and stared into the dark, reliving every moment, from the time he walked into the tavern, to our long trip across the Cam Lanteux. All the times I marveled at his tender ways that were such a glaring contrast to what he was—an assassin. All the times. The way he was so comfortable in the Morrighese world. It seemed perfectly obvious now. He was reading the games board. It was Vendan he didn’t know how to read, not Morrighese. Pauline and I had both noted how well he sang the holy songs, while Rafe knew none of the words. He had been raised until he was eight as the son of a Morrighese lord.

Kaden’s own kind, my kind, had betrayed him. Except for his mother. She was a saint, he had said. What had happened to her? It must have been from her that he learned his tender ways. It might be she was the only one in his entire life who had shown him any love or compassion—until the Komizar came along.

It was the middle of the night when he returned. The room was completely black, and yet he moved quietly through it as if he could see in the dark. I heard him set something down, a loud thunk, and then I heard the scant ruffling sounds of clothing being laid out and the soft sigh of his breaths as he lay down on the rug. The room was heavy with silence. Long minutes passed. I knew he wasn’t asleep. I could feel his thoughts in the darkness, his stare drilling into the timbers above him.