Heat floods my face again and I shake my head. “I… I’ve been—” I bite my lip. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say to that.” Fuck, I’m the biggest idiot on the planet. I should have come up with a story for that by now. Something better than, ‘oh right, about that. My dad kept me in a ratty bungalow for seven years and forbade me to leave it unless he had secret jobs for me to do where I would go invisible to fighting rings and illegal court fights and heal the injured and no one has ever figured out it was me running in and out and not the Serpent King’s scary, powerful magic’.
