Page 112 of Of Bargains & Betrayal

Jasper rose, planting his hands on the edge of the table as he snapped, “I didn’t have a choice.”

“Bullshit, you didn’t.”

“I. Didn’t. Have. A. Fucking. Choice.” As Jasper bit out those words, punctuated with purpose, he fought through the layers of his jacket and wrenched up his shirt.

It took me a second, in the heavy shadows and light of the archives, to realize why he had just revealed the taut planes of his stomach to me in a moment when blows felt imminent.

But when I finally processed the branded scar on his stomach, I felt like I was going to be sick.

The brand of the King of Odessa.

The same symbol was used all over our kingdom in official measures, stamped in wax seals for official missives, and marked proudly on goods from the king’s favorite merchants.

But branded onto someone’s stomach?

That had a single, explicit meaning.

Exile.

And only the king’s own hand could deliver it. My…father’s hand.

I don’t know how long I said nothing for, staring at the raised pink scar. Eventually, Jasper dropped his shirt, breaking my focus, and he scoffed.

“I didn’t have a choice,” he repeated. “I never would have left you of my free will, Enora. Never. But your father didn’t want me around anymore. I asked too many questions. Had too many doubts. Got too close to you.”

Acid burned at the back of my throat, and my hands trembled so badly, I had to clench them tightly in my lap.

The prospect he was laying out in front of me was one I ardently did not want to believe.

My father sent scouts to gather information on his whereabouts.

My father held me while I cried and cried and cried, hurt and confused as to why my best friend and the boy I loved had abandoned me.

For years, he was the sole confidant of my grief, my shoulder to cry on when I couldn’t grapple with how my life had changed.

To think, the same infallible man had exiled Kieran—had caused all that trauma—refused to take root in my brain.

“No,” I whispered. “There’s no…”

My words dried up as Jasper sank back in his chair. He just looked bored, maybe a touch disappointed—like he’d expected this but hoped it would go differently.

“Believe whatever you want, Nora.” He slid the tome about the dark gods across the table to me. “Odessa is not the good place you think it is, and it has been like that for far longer than you or I have been alive. Your brother is only the latest in a long line of shady, self-centered kings.”

I had nothing to say.

Nothing.

Maiming, half-thought-out words were something I often had in abundance on the tip of my tongue.

But Jasper had stolen every single one of them away from me, and his own were slicing into me like the slow press of a blade, ready to bleed me out.

Of all the reactions my body could’ve manifested, I hadn’t expected it would be to run.

Jasper studied me with his single moss-green eye and hardened jaw as I pushed back from the table and rose from my chair. I gathered up the book and looked at him for a long time.

“I don’t know what to believe anymore,” I finally said, my voice little more than an unsteady whisper.

“But I can’t stomach looking at you right now, not when every time I turn around, I’m being told part of my life was a lie and being expected to just accept it. I’ve been through hell, Jasper, literal fucking hell. I just burned the bodies of my friends. I have to marry a stranger or be executed. My home is gone, and my brother tried to…to…”