Page 34 of Marked

And he called me a princess.

If he left it there, I’d pick it up later and salvage the arrowhead myself.

Waste not, want not.

“What is my business then?” Ace asked after moment of silence. “I should know who I am trusting to guard my back.”

I examined the fletching and the arrowheads of my arrows to determine if they needed repairing. “What would you like to know? You practically grew up with us. There can’t be too much you still question.”

Ace picked up one of the targets to move it back to the storage shed. “You know, now that you mention it, I was always curious about where you and your brother came from. You both showed up out of nowhere, shuffling behind the queen and refused to talk about it. You practically clung to the queen’s skirt, and you were one raised voice away from a breakdown.”

“I did not cling to her skirts,” I lied. I remembered that moment with crystal clarity.

The queen had rescued us from the street gang and brought us to Perga to learn how to hunt and survive. She hadn’t left us with an adult to oversee our day-to-day survival. Maybe she sensed the rebellion that would’ve ensued if she’d tried. Instead, she gifted us with a cabin—the one Paul still lived in—and sent orders and money every week, essentially grooming us to be her perfect soldiers.

Ace was right, though. Not that I’d ever admit it. I had clung to Queen Titania’s skirts when we first arrived. I’d also cowered and adopted a meek expression. But I didn’t do those things because of fear or intimidation.

I did those things for survival.

I’d held a dagger in my hand and used the queen’s ridiculously voluminous skirt to hide the weapon. I was a child of the streets, and learned at an early age how appearances could be deceiving. I used that knowledge to my advantage. The kids our age constantly underestimated me due to their first impressions.

Even Ace underestimated me in those early years because he thought I was a meek little mouse.

He still did.

“Where did you and your brother come from?” Ace pressed. Setting down one target, he moved toward the next one.

I stilled, too busy reminiscing to realize the danger of Ace’s words and the direction of his thoughts.

The truth was, I didn’t know—not exactly—though the queen had guessed. We were abandoned on the front steps of an orphanage as infants. Maybe we could’ve learned more about the circumstances of how we were left if we’d stayed, but…

The fresh crack of a whip echoed in my memories, and I flinched. We were starved of affection, sometimes starved of food, and we faced the whip or strap when we messed up, as children often did.

We’d fled to the streets when we were old enough to escape and I tried not to think about our time under Headmaster Marcus’ care.

Neither of us remembered anything from before the orphanage, but the one thing Paul and I knew for certain was we were twins and we stuck together.

“After I left Perga, I heard stories about you and Paul,” Ace continued. “They were always so odd and never fit with the memories I had of either of you. There’s an explosion of information about the work you’ve done for the queen, but there’s never any stories of where you came from. Nothing about you prior to when you arrived in Perga. It’s as though you were plucked from a void and placed for the queen to find.”

He wasn’t far off—except we didn’t come from a void. We came from the streets and a painful past neither my brother nor I cared to discuss.

Ace waited expectantly as if I’d suddenly open up and start spilling my secrets and trauma just because I begrudgingly accepted him as my new partner.

“I’m not going to share intimate details of my past?—”

Ace barked. “Intimate? That’s not something I want to hear about. I was thinking more about your childhood, your parents, where you’re from. That sort of thing.”

“What about you?” I waved at him with my hand. “We grew up together, but I don’t recall you sharing much about your childhood before we met, either. And after you disappeared, I didn’t hear anything about you at all. What have you been up to since you left? You suddenly pop up out of nowhere armed with skills you didn’t have before. I mean, you were good with a bow when we were young, but now…” I bit back the compliment. He didn’t deserve it. “How did you become such a great shot without me hearing a single phaaning thing about it? If we’re going to be partners, the information needs to flow both ways. If you want some secrets from me, you’re going to have to spill some of your own.”

The wind swept through the trees and Ace paused to consider the forest and the rustling leaves.

“Well?”

“You think I’m a great shot?”

I narrowed my eyes. “What happened to you?”

Ace glanced down at me and shrugged. “My past is my past.”