by Rae Brooks
Not only that, but the blond had asked about Taeru, or Kilik rather, after coming to the healer. How had he even found out where Taeru lived? Not to mention, his wound looked as though it was older—which meant that he’d shown up…
No, that was ridiculous. Nobody was going to come to Juliet for the sole purpose of seeing Taeru. Taeru was not so vain as to believe that, surely. And yet, the blond had spent the majority of sun up unloading boxes. With a rather unpracticed hand too, the blond had the hands of a man who had not done much honest work.
Traders weren’t known for doing much labor. In fact, that was the very reason that Taeru had been hired to unload Manali’s goods. So, it made decent sense that Atris—or whatever his name was—wasn’t practiced at unloading. Why had he volunteered to help Taeru, then?
“So—your friend was incredibly handsome,” Alyx informed him. Taeru got the feeling that Alyx had been talking to him for some time when he finally glanced at her. Her eyes were filled with the slight agitation that she got when he’d zoned out.
He sighed. “What?”
Alyx looked indignant that she hadn’t been paid her proper attention. “I said that your blond friend was incredibly attractive. Why did you not introduce me?” she prodded. Taeru found that he really didn’t want to have this conversation.
Ordinarily, Alyx’s conversations were endearing and sometimes he even enjoyed them—but right now, he did not want to take part in them. “He’s not a friend,” Taeru corrected, “I barely know him.”
“If you hardly know him, then why did he ask Mother about you?” she asked accusingly.
The question was one that he’d asked himself many times. It wasn’t normal for an acquaintance to inquire about someone. Even less so when they had nothing but rumors to say that they were asking the right person. The blond and he weren’t friends, and he knew that, but the blond seemed to want to be.
In his life, friendship had always been a novel concept. Few people pursued his friendship, and even fewer did so without proper reason or sensibility. There was court in Cathalar, but that was not an affair to find friends.
Friendship was often a product of a forced or arranged partnership, and nothing that was ever formally announced. However, this man had been direct in his approach, his compliments, his intent—even people in court had never been so candid.
“I don’t know,” Taeru finally answered Alyx’s nearly forgotten question.
“How did you two meet at the dance?” she asked after another moment of thought. The fact that they had met through that bloody soul-finder dance wasn’t lost on Taeru, either. Perhaps that was why the traveler was so bent on befriending him. Maybe the man believed in the silly superstition. Taeru thought it would be terribly awkward if a man he barely knew thought they were destined to be soul mates.
Still, he couldn’t deny that the dance had been an interesting experience. One that he had avoided thinking about—partly due to his illness, and partly due to the fact that there were feelings associated with it that shouldn’t be. “Ah, he was… well, I ran into him,” Taeru answered. He didn’t feel the need to hear Alyx’s interpretation of his soul-found partner.
“Oh, no, Alyx.” Katt’s voice lit up the room, alerting them both to her return. She had been helping Juliet with one of the children that had come in with a skinned knee. “Ask him when he ran into the very handsome blond!”
Alyx looked to Taeru, waiting for the answer without ever opening her mouth. Taeru had no idea how Katt would know whom he ran into during the soul-finder dance. He wasn’t going to give himself away that easily. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.
“His friend said that you were his partner for the soul-finder dance!” Katt nearly shouted. Alyx let out a gasp that meant that he had been spot on in his prediction of her behavior immediately following this revelation.
Taeru felt his cheeks burning, and he wanted nothing more than to walk to his room. “Wow, he went to all the trouble to find out who you were! Maybe the legend is actually true!” Alyx said.
The young prince didn’t know if he should remind Alyx of all the times when the superstition had meant nothing to her. He sighed, prepared to come up with some excuse to go when he saw a child run out the door waving a thank you.
Juliet appeared shortly from the cloth. Her eyes were amused as she watched the child leave the room, and then she looked at Taeru with a stern expression. “Come here, Kilik. I want to check on your shoulder.”
Taeru nodded his head and stood. He wasn’t going to resist her, considering how kind she’d been on the matter of letting him return to work a few suns before he should. Then, there was the matter of the bruise. He nodded to the two girls, from whom he was very glad to get away.
Once they got into the back, Juliet smiled at him. “You made a friend,” she said gently as he worked to get his brown tunic off. He didn’t worry with correcting Juliet, as he knew she wasn’t going to give him a hard time about it.
“I barely know him, though. I’m not sure why he was so anxious to help me,” Taeru muttered as she checked his shoulder.
The bruise had appeared shortly after he’d gotten the fever that he’d had for a few suns. The fever had broken, but the bruise had remained. The small purple-blue splotch hurt when touched, but other than that, it didn’t bother him too badly. There was a very mild pain, but he just assumed the bruise was being stubborn. Juliet went to work putting some kind of herb on it.
“You’re very likeable, Kilik. He was probably just taken with you,” she said softly. Taeru wasn’t sure that he felt he was likeable. In fact, back in Cathalar, most of the nobles found him rather unappealing to be around. Well, Aela had always liked being around him, and Ryo did too. Still, they were his siblings.
Oddly, what Juliet said was very close to what the blond had told him on the way back from the deliveries. “Thank you, Juliet,” he said. There was no sense in arguing with someone who had just paid him a compliment. Though, he had done so with the traveler, certainly.
“I do think there was more to his visit than he said, though. From what I saw, someone had worked with his wound before I did, and someone who… almost knew what they were doing. I have a feeling, my dear, that he came here with the sole intention of inquiring about your well-being.” Her words were matter-of-fact, as if they didn’t contain horrifying information that made him want to hide under the table.
Taeru’s cheeks turned red again, and he shook his head. “Don’t be absurd. He has things to attend to. I’m sure you just saw his own work with the wound.” He tried hard to make his words convincing, more for himself than Juliet.
“Kilik,” she said shortly, “I told you to be careful.” Her words were less playful, and more as though she were scolding him. He winced under her tone, and then he found himself wondering what he had done to displease her.
He chewed on his lip for a moment before he asked. “What did I do?”
“The bruise is worse,” she said. “What did you do?”
“Oh,” he answered. He hadn’t expected Rijit’s hit to have actually made the bruise worse. He had to admit that upon being struck he had felt much more pain than he had expected, even knowing that Rijit was about to hit his bruise. “Rijit slapped me on the shoulder. He didn’t know,” Taeru defended warily.
Juliet let out a very slow breath, and then she nodded her head. She had nothing more to say on the issue, and she just returned to healing his shoulder. “You have to be careful, though. This bruise is not like most of the ones I treat, and if there is something further wrong with it—I do not want your recklessness making it worse.”
Taeru shifted a few times on the table. He hadn’t meant to make the bruise worse. No, he hadn’t been particularly careful as he’d lifted the packages—but as the past few suns hadn’t caused any problems, he’d nearly forgotten his plight. Leave it to Rijit to cause him trouble. “Apologies,” he said, “I’ll do my best to make sure that doesn’t happen again.”<
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“See that you do,” she said curtly. Taeru didn’t like when Juliet got agitated with him. She so rarely got agitated with anyone, and yet she seemed more stern with him. He didn’t blame her, of course, as he was a guest in her home and should be held to higher standards. But he hated when he upset her—after all, he had no right to be living in this place—and then he went and angered her.
She worked in silence for a little bit, with a slightly angry expression in her hazel eyes. Taeru wondered if he should apologize again, but that never did him much good when dealing with Juliet. He swallowed.
When she moved her head so that she was looking into his face again, her eyes softened with instant worry. “Oh, Kilik, I’m not angry with you. I’m just worried about you. You don’t seem to understand the importance of keeping your body healthy.”
Taeru had been told that on more than one occasion before he’d ever left Cathalar, but he had always tried to ensure that his body was properly cared for. He’d washed all the times his father had told him to, and he’d done all the things that he needed to do to keep himself healthy. “I do, ma’am,” he said.
“You don’t,” she countered. “You are constantly throwing yourself into tasks with no thought to the effect it might have on you.”
“What do you want me to do?” he whimpered. The last thing he wanted to do was to worry her, even though he knew he’d been doing this since the family had formed the attachment to him. He masqueraded as a vigilante referred to as the Phantom Blade, even though he knew that this put them in danger.
But how could he not? Like the blond had said earlier this sun—people weren’t going to help people if there was no one to begin it for them. Taeru wanted to be the one to bring a little hope to Dark District. He’d tried to do the same for Lower Town in Cathalar, even though the problems had been less violent there.
If he couldn’t stop a war from occurring, then he should at least do his best to help the people that he had the power to help. Even if his father wouldn’t listen to him, and Lavus would have killed him on sight—he could bring a little hope to people who deserved it. “I wish you would stop trying to play the hero,” Juliet said. The veiled request was blatant.
Taeru shook his head. He couldn’t do this one thing. She had asked him before, and his answer was always the same. Nevertheless, he was aware that he was needlessly putting others in danger, and he wanted to stop that. “Juliet,” he said warily, “perhaps I should stay elsewhere. I know you say you don’t mind me here, but as I am being a bit reckless with my charade… I don’t want that to fall ba—”
A stern expression took hold of Juliet’s features again as she put a finger to his mouth with a frown. “Kilik, darling, you don’t understand at all what I am trying to say to you. I would never have you live anywhere but here. The times when you are safe in this house are the times that I feel the most at ease. I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if you left.”
Taeru tried again. “I would still give you the money from my unloading job. I won’t quit it. I know you need the extra coin…”
Oddly enough, Juliet smiled. Taeru thought that she might take him up on this offer, and though he wasn’t sure where he’d go—he realized that there was relief accompanied with his wonderment about his new lodgings. Then, she shook her head as she touched her fingers to the side of his cheek. “Listen to you—this is what I’m talking about—I’m worried about you. I’m not worried about you getting us in trouble, Kilik.” She laughed. “You would give me the coin, love? Then what would you live off of? You must stop thinking like that. You have to protect yourself, or find someone to do it for you.”
The idea was fair. Taeru had never been one to think too heavily about what he would do in any given situation, but he always seemed to be the secondary factor. The one time that he’d made a selfish decision was in the decision to leave Cathalar, and he regretted that to this very sun. Even so, he had made sure that Ryo would be the one to follow in Veyron’s footsteps—and that had been a good thing. Taeru would never have been able to lead. “I do think about myself,” he told her.
“You don’t,” she said. She handed him his tunic back after a weakened smile flitted across her face. She seemed tired, and he couldn’t help but feel like he was the reason for it. He had spent a full cycle lying on her healing table. Surely, that had taken its toll, he flushed when he thought of how silly he must have looked. But those dreams—those dreams had been terrifying, and even when he thought of them now, he couldn’t discount them. “I was delighted to hear that young man ask about you this sun. People in Dark District will take anything they can, and you give yourself freely to them. After all that you do, I have never heard one of them ask about your well-being.”
“To be fair,” Taeru defended, “they don’t have an opportunity to ask about the Phantom Blade, and he is the one that does most of the work.” Taeru didn’t like when Juliet expressed a lack of faith in Dark District. He was trying to remove that from the minds of all the residents here, and he hadn’t even removed it from the woman fostering him.
Juliet was, again, not convinced by his words. In fact, she seemed even less happy after he’d spoken. “No, Kilik has done plenty for them, and many people knew you were sick. Very few of them asked about you. Then, imagine my surprise when some boy I didn’t know happened to ask about you.”
Taeru flushed. Some boy that almost no one knew. In fact, Taeru knew nothing about where the traveler was staying, and he hadn’t been overly willing to offer information about himself. He had given that he was a trader, but that was it. “People are busy,” Taeru said. “I have been asked plenty if I’m better while I’m out.”
He had been, actually. Quite a few people had come up to him and asked if he was feeling better, and when he told them he was, they seemed genuinely happy. So, he had to tell himself that he was making some degree of progress. “Well, I think you deserve more,” Juliet said.
Taeru’s brow furrowed. He wasn’t sure if Juliet expected a line of visitors to wrap around the bend with flowers for him, asking him to get well. He smiled a little at the idea. He would surely have died from awkwardness if that had ever happened. He had been unable to handle one blond traveler asking Juliet about him with any grace.
“I couldn’t believe he helped me. He actually stayed through the whole load. I—I mean I’m aware that you knew that, but I was surprised. He wasn’t very good at it, but he almost seemed to enjoy it. He looked happy the whole time, and he kept staring at me,” Taeru said. He tended to be able to talk more openly with Juliet—mostly because she rarely had much to say, unless she was expressing dislike for members of Dark District. He would never have believed that she didn’t love them by the way she handled their problems, though.
Juliet quirked her eyebrow as a knowing smile came across her face. “Staring at you, was he?” she asked coyly. Taeru flushed. Just when he’d thought it was safe to express his opinion on the issue—oh how he hated being surrounded by women!
“Not in that way,” Taeru reassured, “he was trying to see how to do the work more properly.” That was what Taeru had told himself, anyway. The way those blue-green eyes had flickered over Taeru, though, had him thinking very different thoughts a few times throughout the sun. And those thoughts had him blushing profusely.
The healer just kept smiling and watched as Taeru worked to get his tunic back on. Taeru let out a breath and stared into Juliet’s hazel eyes. He wished she could give him all the answers, and part of him wished he could tell her who he really was. Not just the Phantom Blade, but Taeru Lassau. Even she would have been obliged to turn him in, though, and he knew that. “I thought it was wonderful that he offered to help you, and for free,” she said.
Somewhere at the back of his mind, Taeru could hear those whispers again. Somehow, he felt sick again. He stared up into Juliet’s eyes, hearing the whispers of people he couldn’t see telling him how atrociously he’d failed her, and everyone. He beat them back, determin
ed not to give way to another round of fits. His jaw clenched, and he shook his head at her. “N-not for free,” he said. “I made him take half of the earnings.”
Juliet seemed amused, though her eyes flashed for a moment as she watched Taeru. Maybe she had seen the way he’d twitched a little bit in that single moment. But he’d successfully silenced the whispers for now, and he was able to see Juliet without fearing her death. “Did you?” she asked.
“Yes,” Taeru said mournfully. Juliet had probably been expecting all of the earnings, and he hadn’t been able to deliver that to her. He flushed at how triumphant he must have sounded at the fact that he’d lost coin. “Ah, I… apologies, Juliet. I just felt bad—I didn’t want to take coin from him when he’d earned it. But!” he said, remembering that Lycael had given him extra. He decided not to harp on the fact that he had nearly not taken it. “Manali did…” When Taeru looked into his coin purse, he let out a choked gasp.
“Kilik, what is it?” Juliet asked worriedly.
With a hand trembling with anger, Taeru dipped his hand into the coin purse and brought out the four shining coins. “Oh my!” she said. “He paid both of you four coins?”
“No,” Taeru said flatly. “He paid us both two.” He tried to think back on when the blond would have gotten the opportunity to put the coins back in Taeru’s bag. He couldn’t think of a time.
Juliet giggled, covering her mouth when she realized how girlish she sounded. Taeru’s head snapped up to her, with irritation glinting in his eyes. “Were you reverse pickpocketed, love?” Juliet asked.
The thought of the blond flashed across Taeru’s mind, and he could feel his heart speed up a little. When had the traveler gotten the opportunity to put the coins back in Taeru’s coin purse? Surely not easily—as Taeru was known for being fairly observant. And yet, he had been entirely unaware of when the coins had been replaced. His cheeks flushed, and he felt an intense want to go find the traveler and give him his share. “I wish I knew where he was staying,” Taeru moaned. “This isn’t fair.”
