Yet that couldn’t be further from the truth, because as he lifts the towel to dry his hair, I can see his time at Bedrock as plain as day. Long, pale scars mar his stomach and chest, overlapping, crisscrossing. Too uniform to be from a whip. A hot poker, maybe. A blade.

“They couldn’t very well mess up my back,” he says, catching me staring.

I want to ask him how it happened. Was it all at once or was it one burn a day for the course of many? Did they do it before they got him on sleeping ilk or after? I want to ask why he didn’t tell me. But all I can do is follow the scars as they stretch across his chest, my heart aching for him. Is this what would have happened to me if I hadn’t escaped the General so quickly? Would our fronts have matched just like our backs?

He’s broader now than when we were kids. Stronger, too. My eyes find lines of strength among his scars. On his arms, his chest, his stomach. There’s a V of muscle cut off by his pants.

My cheeks flush, and I don’t know where to look. His face, the floor, my hands—none of it seems good. Asher rubs his mouth, trying to hide a smile behind his fingers. Then he turns for the wall, lifts his shirt from a hook.

I freeze at the sight of his brand. “Stop!” I practically yell. “Don’t put that on.”

With his arms threaded through the sleeves and the shirt still held to his chest, he glances over his shoulder. I walk toward him in a trance. I never got a good look at his brand that day when we were kids. Never got a good look at it ever. But now, standing so close . . .

“Delta?” he whispers.

I’m a hand’s width from him, studying two Old World symbols on his left shoulder blade. I have two in this same spot. Es, the Oracle had called them. But the symbols on Asher are not Es. One is partially curved, the other made of three sharp lines.

I raise a finger and touch the pale, puckered skin on his back.

He sucks in a breath.

“Sorry,” I murmur, but I let my finger trace the Old World marking, mesmerized. Asher shudders, his skin prickling beneath my finger, and twists abruptly to face me.

I step back.

His throat bobs.

Something hangs between us, heavy and dangerous.

“Asher, can I trust you?” I ask quietly.

“Yes,” he says immediately. “Always.”

“With my life?”

“Yes, of course. Why would you even ask that?”

“‘Show it to no one,’” I recite. “‘Unless you trust them with your own life, keep it hidden. Always.’”

He frowns. “There’s nothing to hide from me. We’re the same where that’s concerned.”

“We’re not.”

He stares.