I stilled. The flowery, flirtatious innuendos I'd rustled up for whatever story I'd thought Beatriz would ask me to share all disappeared. Lie, some part of me cried. But I could already feel my lips parting and my gaze falling away from hers. She was going to read the truth all over my face anyway – a lie would only break this fragile trust building between us.

But where on Earth had she come up with Adelaide's name?

I rolled up to hug my knees and escape Beatriz' impenetrable gaze. "Why?" I asked finally, hating that my voice came out rough.

After all this time. Just when I thought I'd be free of...her. Of that cursed name and how it interfered with even my best laid plans.

"You were supposed to marry her, were you not?" Beatriz replied softly.

I laughed and it tasted just as bitter as it sounded. "She hoped to marry a rival. Then my brother. Then me. I suppose she thought the third time would be the charm."

Her cloak rustled as she sat up to study me. "Did you want to marry her?"

"No." The word came out too quickly. I scraped my hand through my hair and amended, "A long time ago, yes. But not anymore." I let my hand fall to the shingles as close to hers as I dared.

"What happened?" Beatriz asked.

Every instinct told me to dodge the question. To shift the attention away from that broken piece of my past, the part I was so ashamed of. The part that still haunted me. The part I wanted to rip out and forget about, but never quite could.

I pulled my hand back. "Is there really no other story I could tell you? None of my daring exploits or wondrous triumphs?"

She simply shrugged. "You don't have to answer. But if you'd rather brag than be honest with me, you won't get my story in return."

Curiosity rippled through me like a shiver. Despite everything Adelaide's name had dredged up, despite how it made me squirm to discuss her with Beatriz of all people, I couldn't resist the temptation of Beatriz's truth. Even if it meant sharing a piece of myself I'd kept buried deep, beneath bitterness and sorrow and heartbreak.

I couldn't bear to look at her as I tore open my heart, so I stared off towards the campfires in the distance instead.

"I lied for her, a long time ago, when I thought she was everything I wanted. She was mother's best friend's daughter and I don't think I understood how I felt about her until it was too late to stop myself from falling for her. She loved every minute of it, stringing me along and toying with me. Even after she passed me over for someone else and broke my heart, I lied to protect her. I thought it would make her see me as her shining knight. The saviour of her virtue. Someone worthy of her.

"But it didn't. And I've never told anyone the truth because it would ruin her, even more than the story that I spun to protect her. All that did was see her shipped off to some finishing school, only to return so she could chase my brother's crown instead of chasing me."

Promise me you'll come back for me...

I pressed my eyes closed against the echo of Adelaide's voice.

"Now that your brother has chosen his bride...is she waiting for you?" Beatriz' voice was a whisper, barely louder than the cricket song.

I took a moment to consider my answer before I turned to look at her. "Even if she is, it doesn't matter anymore."

She studied my face, then sighed. "Genevieve was right. You do leave a trail of broken hearts in your wake."

My hands hit the shingles as I pivoted towards her. Instantly, my mind was generating rebuttals, smooth words to change her mind, to make her think I wasn't indeed that person. But before I could so much as open my mouth, let alone decide on the words that would most effectively assure her that I wasn't out to break her heart, she spoke.

"Thank you," she said. Her hand landed atop my own, her fingers curling into the spaces between mine.

I cursed my damned curiosity when she turned towards me, her shoulder brushing mine. Perfectly positioned for me to kiss her, right as I was being offered carte blanche to ask her any question I so desired. The debate raged within me, on whether to lean in and find out how delicious her lips would feel against mine, or whether to finally learn her story.

"I take it you'll want to know about these," she said, turning away and trailing her fingertips over her left cheek while I sat paralyzed with indecision. 

I certainly did want to know what had torn apart the soft skin of her face, but something about the hunch of her shoulders and the way she seemed to shrink as she touched the marred skin stilled my tongue. She might have offered to share such a story with me, but it was clear that she didn't want to. And as much as I hadn't wanted to share about Adelaide, a broken heart was not the same as whatever must have happened to her.

"That's not what I'm most curious about. We all have scars, Beatriz." I gestured to the pink, healing flesh of my torn ear. "My mother has them too, you know. From bad things that bad people did to her when she was younger. She calls them her warrior's wounds, proof that she fought and won when it mattered most."

I hadn't expected my words to bring such a haunted look to her face. Her breathing seemed to have stopped entirely before she squeezed her eyes closed.

I tightened my fingers around hers. "I want to know why you went to Bazera instead of a convent, like everyone believes."

Her throat bobbed. She leaned over to rest her head on my shoulder. Her chest rose and fell with a sigh.

"I used to be one of father's favorites, like Ana-Cristina. He found me pretty. Good breeding stock. Easy to marry off. But he never looked at me the same way, not after what happened to me. He looked at me like I was a spoiled piece of fruit, of no use to anyone. That was the point of the attack, I think. To ruin me. To get me out of the way."

The words poured from her, like a dam unleashed. Silently, I rested my cheek against her hair.

"My mother was about to give birth to Brigida and she was laid up in bed, unable to leave because of the risk it posed to the baby. Father was hoping for another son, so he didn't dare let her move around. She summoned us – Frederico and me – to her bedside. She made him swear to protect me, to be sure our father did not marry me off to some undeserving duque's cousin just because my face had been damaged. And that's when Frederico discovered that was exactly what our father had been planning. My brother was more impulsive then, and he marched right up to our father and demanded that he send me to a convent instead. Anything to keep me out of a marriage like our parents'.

"But I hated the idea of a convent, and I think that was the only thing that saved me. My father would never have sent me to a convent if he'd thought I'd enjoy it. It was a convenient solution, to get me out of Relizia and to punish me, all at the same time. But he didn't know what my mother had arranged."

"She's the one who sent you to Bazera?" I asked.

Beatriz nodded. "She was going to run away to Bazera herself, before my father found her and tore her away from her dreams. Shahnaz was her friend, the daughter of a Bazeran jewel merchant. She was going to sneak Mother away on one of her father's merchant ships, but they weren't quick enough. My father summoned my mother to court and kept her there until he married her. She was the most beautiful woman in the kingdom and he wanted her as his wife. It didn't matter that she hated him. He threatened her family and she had no choice."

My stomach turned. I pressed my cheek against Beatriz's head. "Your poor mother."

"She didn't want the same for me, especially if my father ever changed his mind about the convent. Two weeks after I'd been left there by my father's men, Shahnaz arrived in the night. She paid the Superiora to pretend that I was still there, cloistered in isolation if anyone should try to visit, and whisked me away to Bazera. Mother only told Frederico where I'd really gone just before she died. He was the only one who tried to write to me at the convent. He came to find me when he left Relizia for his schooling in Vareinne and never told my father where I'd really been."

We sat in silence, nothing but the cricket song around us as I digested her story. The tragedy of it. The sheer luck that her father had sent her away rather than marry her off. The way her mother had protected her from a fate like her own. The horror with which she and her sisters must have all viewed the treaty with Pretania - another forced marriage, or war.

This damned country and its damned cruel monarchs.

"Thank you for telling me," I said into her hair, relishing the smell of her.

She lifted her head to look up at me, so close that our noses were almost touching. "You're a good listener, for an idiota."

I smiled, letting my eyes rove her face. When they began to trace her scars, she tucked her chin down, tilting her face to hide her left cheek.

I reached out and took her chin in my fingers. With a gentle nudge, I brought her eyes to mine, her face etched in moonlight. She held my gaze, but didn't fight my grip.

"It's rude to stare," she said finally.

"I know," I replied, my eyes roving her face, taking in the high cheekbones and the almond eyes, the threads of scar tissue that so nearly missed her left eye. I held her gaze as I said, "I wish you could see how beautiful you are to me."

Something haunted and heartbreaking flickered across her features, the inner corners of her brows drawing up with longing before it vanished with a blink.

But I'd seen it. I'd seen how my words had sung to something inside of her that she'd buried deep. Words she had probably longed to hear her entire life until she learned to stop hoping for them.

She was opening her mouth to say something when I leaned over to catch her lips with mine.

I don't know what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn't the feel of her fingers brushing my cheek and tracing my jaw with such tenderness. Nor the way her lips ignited something wild and intoxicating within me when she parted them and leaned into me. I'd half expected to be thrown from the roof to the sound of her laughter. Instead, she let me tangle my fingers in her hair as her nails grazed the nape of my neck.

I'd had my fair share of kisses before. Some clandestine and swift, some lingering and passionate. But none like this. None that made me feel like my skin was too confining. Like I could burst from the way the feel of her seared through my veins. Like I could do this for the rest of my life and never wonder what another woman's lips tasted like. Beatriz kissed like she fought – all passion and fire, and utterly ruthless. She knew what she was doing too, with her tongue and her lips and her fingers. Like all the times she'd knocked me flat on my back, I'd found yet another skill she excelled at – and I liked this one very much.

She was the one to break away, to suck in a sweet lungful of night air. I couldn't have stopped myself if I'd tried.

"You kiss like a heartbreaker," she mumbled, resting her forehead against mine.

I didn't waste time formulating a reply. I needed to tell her that she'd never have to worry about her heart if she decided to give it to me, so I answered her with another kiss. One that said everything I wanted to say, but without the words that I couldn't be bothered to string together. I leaned into her, pressing her back against the shingles so I could trace an experimental finger down her jaw, then her neck, then along her collarbone to the collar of her shirt. She didn't stop my wandering hands. She spurred me onward with her mouth, devouring me as hungrily as I was devouring her. With a hand on her waist, I shifted in an attempt to free my other hand, only for my foot to slide out from under me as I landed with a thump against her chest. A shower of shingles shattered on the ground below.

Her laugh rumbled through her chest and I groaned, reluctantly pushing myself away from the delicious part of her that I'd landed on.

"We should climb down before Genevieve comes out to scream about us ruining her roof," Beatriz said. She silenced my protests by meeting me with a kiss as she sat up. "Come on, Tom. We both need our rest."

"Tom?" I repeated, as she slid past me towards the edge of the roof. "Have I been promoted from the rank of idiota, then?"

She looked back at me over her shoulder. Her hair was mussed from our kisses and, with the sly, conniving look she fixed upon me, I could do nothing but think about desperately I wanted to kiss her again. Even if it meant going to the ends of the Earth and back again, I'd have done it.

"With the way you kiss, I think you're worthy of a promotion." Beatriz swung her legs over the edge. "I'm going to sleep. You should too."

The thrill that her kiss had blazed in my chest sank lower. "Are you asking me to join you, darling?" 

"Don't push your luck, Tom." She grinned,  then slipped over the edge of the roof.

I fell back against the shingles, loosing every last bit of breath in my lungs as I etched the evening into my memory, staring up at the stars with a smile.

**A/N: I think I'll just let this chapter speak for itself *sly grin*   As always, if you enjoyed it, please take a moment to vote and comment!**