Summary: Kenna thinks a lot about her soulmate. A soulmates AU, with a little reimagining of the alliance dinner and airship scenes from Book 3.
The first scars show up when Kenna is too young to remember them. She does remember the day she first notices them, and asks her mother what they’re from. She remembers the initial confusion and then intrigue when her mother explains that whenever her soulmate is scarred, Kenna will wear the same marks.
“It’s how you’ll know you’ve met your soulmate,” Adriana says, smiling fondly as she gently touches the line going through Kenna’s left eyebrow. “You’ll bear identical marks.”
Kenna likes the idea, that one day she’ll meet someone whose lines and marks match hers. As she gets older, though, and scars show up regularly, she starts to wonder who, exactly, her soulmate is, or what he does. They don’t hurt her when they appear, but she imagines they must hurt him.
Most of them are hidden, though a few refuse to be covered beneath gowns and are only covered by her armor. That, and the fact that she always feels more like herself in her armor, are why she prefers dressing like a warrior over a demure princess. She’s not ashamed of the marks, exactly, but the jagged gash on her left shoulder always attracts a few stares and whispers, and she gets tired of them.
Kenna thinks about her soulmate with every new mark, every silvery line that decorates her skin. Some of them leave her wondering how he’s still alive, they’re so long and ragged. She traces her fingers over them when she can’t sleep at night, imagining who he is. He must be a warrior of some kind, she decides, with all the wounds he endures.
Kenna wonders where he’s from and when they’ll meet. On the nights after her mother is murdered, the familiar marks provide a small sense of comfort. Even though she doesn’t know what her soulmate looks like, Kenna dreams about him sometimes while she’s in hiding. In the dreams, he’s always tall and broad shouldered, with dark hair and impossibly dark eyes, and even in the dreams, confidence radiates off of him.
She wants that, Kenna thinks, wants someone who can take the lead. When she comes out of hiding, and starts fighting to get her kingdom back, she looks for him sometimes. It’s easy, in a way, because all she has to do is take a quick glance at someone’s face for that tell-tale scar through their left eyebrow.
No one has that exact scar on their face, though. There are plenty of lines on plenty of faces, battle wounds and work-weary marks, but none that match hers. For a time, no new scars appear on her. Kenna wonders if her soulmate has died, and it makes her heart clench.
Then, a few days after she starts accepting that maybe her soulmate is gone, a new scar appears, just below her rib cage. It’s thin, the edges smooth, and Kenna has never been so relieved to see another line. It grounds her sometimes, keeps her focused and quiet when she wants to scream or lash out, knowing he’s still out there.
When she at last manages to stop Luther, only to realize she’ll have to form an alliance with him, the newest silvery line above her left hip keeps her from making an angry, irrational decision.
He’s still out there, she reminds herself. Refusing to work with Luther and getting herself killed by Azura’s troops won’t bring her to him.
She has a funny feeling as she dresses for dinner. She’s not looking forward to dealing with Luther and Zenobia, of course, and Diavolos once he’s found, but there’s something else, too.
As Kenna sits at the table, reminding Zenobia of who is in charge, she sees Jackson emerge from around the corner. The strange feeling in the pit of her stomach intensifies, and then the dark-haired man from her dreams emerges behind him, and the strange feeling makes perfect sense.
Diavolos Nevrakis is undeniably tall and broad. His eyes and hair are dark, darker than hers. She thinks she could ignore all of that, dismiss his resemblance to the man she’s been dreaming about, but she can’t ignore the scar through his left eyebrow that matches her.
Kenna’s eyes widen, but she manages to stop herself from sucking in a sharp breath.
Diavolos flashes her a confident grin, his eyes lighting on the scar through her eyebrow. A surprised look briefly crosses his face before that smug grin returns. Zenobia notices their matching scars immediately, as does Luther. Diavolos deflects it with ease, pointing out that it’s one scar. He suggests that she likely doesn’t have all the same scars as he does. Kenna is willing to bet she does, but something in Diavolos’ face tells her to go along with him. She does.
Kenna is in disbelief. She cannot possibly be destined to be with Diavolos Nevrakis, the son of the man who murdered her mother. It hurts, thinking about it, and yet, as the dinner progresses, she starts to warm up to him. She can understand why it’s him.
Despite her certainty, Kenna still wants to make sure that Diavolos is undeniably the soulmate she’s been dreaming about, and plans to talk to him after dinner. She’s certainly not going to compare scars with an audience.
Her plans change, though, with the news about Aurelia, and then change again when Diavolos announces he’s coming with. She’s not thrilled at first, but, Kenna admits, at least it still gives her the chance to talk to him.
Diavolos smirks when she asks him up to her room. It fades, just slightly, when she pulls her shirt up enough to show him the scar on her hip, and he reveals his matching one. He shakes his head.
“Gods,” he mutters, then laughs. “It is you.”
“You lied to your father and Zenobia about it,” she reminds him.
He laughs again. “I didn’t lie. I made a suggestion. Did you really want to deal with their reactions?”
“…no,” she admits, then says, “You have a lot of scars.”
“So do you,” Diavolos points out.
“And whose fault is that?”
She smiles a little when she says it, unable to help herself. The whole situation is so absurd, that a Rys and a Nevrakis would be soulmates. But even in the short time she’s talked to him, she’s started to like him. He’s nothing like the rest of his family so far, for which she’s grateful.
Diavolos chuckles at her comment. “I’ve been in a lot of battles, Kenna. It happens. Are any of these even from you?”
“Hmm. At least one,” she remembers.
She looks at him for a second, then says, “On your back, just below your right shoulder blade.”
She motions for him to take his shirt off, and he smirks again. “So it’s like that, is it?”
Before she can say anything else, he undoes the fasteners on his shirt and pulls it off, then turns around. Sure enough, there’s a jagged, silvery line right where she knew it would be. She traces her fingernail down its length, then lightly runs the pads of her fingers over it.
“What did you do?” Diavolos asks.
Kenna smiles wryly. “Tree branch. I wasn’t paying attention and turned around right into it.”
Diavolos turns back around. She knows he notices the way she’s staring at him, taking him in, but she doesn’t care.
“Where’s this from?” she asks, touching a long, jagged scar on the right side of his stomach.
His muscles are solid, his skin pleasantly warm under her fingers. She feels his muscles tense where she’s touching him and grins up at him.
“Are you ticklish?”
Diavolos grabs her hands, letting out a low chuckle. “No. And that is from a weapon that Azura’s troops are particularly fond of.”
She pulls her hands out of his grasp, resting them on his chest. She’s about to ask him where the scar below his collarbone is from, when he suddenly wraps his arms around her waist and holds her securely against him.
“Oh,” she breathes.
Diavolos has an impossibly smug look on his face at her reaction, so she loops her arms around his neck and presses closer to him. His grin broadens.
“We’ll be in here all night if you ask about every single scar,” he says.
“Is that a bad thing?” Kenna asks, tilting her chin up, his breath warm across her lips.
“No, but I can think of a much better way to pass the time than talking about all of my battle wounds,” Diavolos replies.
Kenna tugs his head down. “So can I,” she says, and presses her lips to his.
She can feel Diavolos smile against her mouth, and then he’s kissing her hungrily, teasing her lower lip between his teeth until she moans quietly, then tangles his tongue with hers. She’s nearly gasping when they part, her face flushed and her heart racing.
“So it is like that,” Diavolos murmurs, the corners of his mouth quirking up.
“It is,” Kenna agrees with a hint of a smile, and tugs him in to kiss him again.