A Veil of Secrets by Hailey Edwards

to doubt your relationship with Edan.” He leaned against the tree trunk.
    My laughter shocked us both. “You’re drunk. Find your hammock and sleep off this madness.”
    “I read your journal.” He removed it from his back pocket and shook it at me. “All of it.”
    My mouth went dry. “How dare you.”
    “Me?” He tapped my chest with the edge of the binding. “You have a lot of nerve.”
    I snarled, “Then you must have borrowed some.”
    “Did you know anyone can make an offering to Old Father, and if he accepts, he can divine their future mate?” He let me snatch the journal out of his hands. “The Salticidae belief in soul mates is so deeply rooted in their culture that before a person forms a strong bond with their significant other the couple must have their spiritual status confirmed. They bring Old Father an item that belongs to their beloved, and from that he can tell whether they are a match. I decided to test his process for myself.”
    “Why would you—?” A worse thought occurred to me. “You shared my journal with him?”
    “No.” He reached behind his back. “That would have been a violation of your trust.”
    “Trust? What trust?” My claws lengthened. “You read my journal without my permission.”
    His lips tightened. “I read your notes to save you, to learn how to care for you.”
    The joints in my wings began itching. “I am not a pet.”
    “You would have died if I hadn’t,” he pointed out to me.
    I tucked the journal, the memories of Edan, against my chest. “I wanted to.”
    He went still. “And now?”
    “I will do my duty to Henri.” Starting tomorrow, I would write. “Then I’m going after Idra.”
    He pulled the bowl I had used for breakfast from behind him.
    “Where did you—?” I groaned, feeling ten kinds of foolish. “You lied to me.”
    “I did. I had to know.” He tossed it to the ground. “Tell me.”
    Tell him. Not hardly. “I see no reason to answer your deceit with the truth.”
    “Tell me the truth.” He prowled closer. “Were you married to Edan?”
    The evasion came harder to my tongue than expected. “That is none of your business.”
    He stalked me until my back hit a tree. “A yes would have been simpler.”
    My pulse leapt when he braced a hand over my head and leaned closer. “Why does it matter?”
    “It might be what you are, or what was done to me, but I can’t stop thinking about you.” His jaw worked. “You can imagine how that conflicts my morals to covet another male’s wife, especially one whose husband obviously adored her.” He smiled, and it was hard. “Rather he doted on her, like one might a younger sister. After reading your journal, I thought to myself that I never saw you and Edan be affectionate in the way husbands and wives are. Rough as his edges were, he would have stolen a kiss from you, a real kiss, if he had wanted one. Yet he never did. Not that I saw. Why was that?”
    I shivered as his eyes searched mine. “Perhaps we believe in keeping our private lives private.”
    “No.” He brushed his knuckles down my cheek. “You have such fire in you and yet I never once saw that spark of passion in your eyes when you looked at him. You didn’t desire him, did you?”
    I clamped my mouth shut.
    “There it is.” His soft chuckle blew his warm breath across my face. “That spark I so admire.”
    I shoved his chest. “What did Old Father tell you to make you so bold?”
    What he read must not have been proof enough for him to act on his interest. What had he read? I thought I was being so careful. I never said we were or weren’t married or much else on the topic. I stuck to the facts in case we had reason to return to Erania as husband and wife. Was that the tip-off?
    Had he expected me to praise the man he thought was my husband in some softhearted fashion?
    “Old Father said only that the heart of the female who last used the item might yet be won.”
    “My heart is not a prize.” I shoved him