“This makes sense, though, sweetheart, there are other instances of a crime committed against a person that have much the same effect.”

“I have been beaten up, Ellie. I have even been jumped by surprise and assaulted. It is the way of training a soldier in Airen, and also in Firenze. Especially if you are a prince who others wish to take down a peg. But I have not had my body invaded. The very thought threatens to suffocate something inside me. And thus, I think this is the way forward.”

It also had to do with his mother suffering that same fate.

Repeatedly.

However, I did not mention this.

“Horatia will not face tribunal,” he decreed. “I will quietly pass her sentence, though I think she has served enough, as it were. Thus, I will find somewhere safe and pleasing where she can spend the rest of her days.”

“I think this is the best way,” I murmured.

I rose and fell with the mighty rise and fall of his chest.

Then I lifted my hand and touched the markings under his eye. They were a sort of brackets, but the top of the one to the right had a short slash going in, but none at the bottom, the opposite on the bracket to the left side, and a miniscule four-sided star was in the middle.

“What does this mean?” I asked.

“Completion,” he told me.

I looked into his eyes.

“Of training,” he went on. “When I became an officer.”

“Oh,” I whispered, not surprised at this for all his men had the same under their eyes. I moved my finger to his temple. “And these?”

I touched my finger to two swooshes, both truncated at one end. And under them, the same swooshes, but they emitted from two four-sided stars.

“Conception and birth.”

My gaze jumped to his.

“The top I had inked when we found Aelia was growing in Liviana’s belly,” he shared. “The bottom I had inked after she’d safely arrived.”

I decided, for that day, not to ask more.

“Oh no, my princess,” he whispered, turning us, me to my back, him looming over me. “You did your reading, now you shall have mine.”

I wanted his.

But I did not wish to take him to places that would open old wounds in getting it.

“Cass, you don’t have to do this.”

“I do,” he stated, these two words seeming to be torn from somewhere deep in his soul. “For you must know, she is here.”

He took my hand, pressing my fingers to a larger bracket that was over his heart, the top end bent inward more, shielding to its right a small swoop that was inked over another four-sided star.

“Protection. Liviana,” he grunted, dragging my hand up and pressing the tips of my fingers to a symbol at the pulse of his neck that I did not look at, for I was gazing into his eyes.

But I did not need to look, for I had it memorized.