My Unchosen Ex Chases Reborn Me (Soren and Fiona) novel Chapter 44

Chapter 44 Hidden Petals

Chapter 44 Hidden Petals

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“Lord Soren, it’s me.” Fiona yanked down the hood of the travel cloak, the rough wool hissing past her cheeks as she bared her face to the mountain wind.

Soren’s eyes narrowed, puzzled yet alert. The cold edge of his sword tilted upward until the gleaming steel grazed the soft skin beneath her chin. With an almost lazy motion, he lifted, forcing her to look fully at him.

For one breath, it felt less like a search for intruders and more like a lover’s teasing dare, the silver blade masquerading as an insolent fingertip.

She remembered the loose–sleeved gentleman’s robe hanging on her shoulders and bit her lip. “I am Fiona,” she said, steady yet wounded by the need to declare what he already knew.

He met her gaze for a heartbeat, then slid the sword back into its scabbard with a sound crisp as cracking ice.

“Your sword arm is still mending,” she ventured, voice pitched low in the hush of pines. “I thought I should come myself to thank you for the shop, instead of sending Harriet in my place.”

Soren’s attention dropped to her empty palms, a silent question. So this is how you thank me? By coming empty–handed?

Heat rushed under her skin, then drained away again. The valuables she might have carried would have raised questions at the estate gates; she had barely slipped past the guards as it was.

“Why did you never tell me that this flower, Dreamfall, is a poison?” She produced the delicate blossom, its petals snowy against the dusk, and held it accusingly between them.

Soren considered the flower, offered no answer, and simply turned away. He sheathed the sword completely and stepped back into the wooden lodge, shadows swallowing the line of his

shoulders.

She hurried after him. “If Lilith hadn’t warned me, the branch would have rested in my chamber for weeks. By then, the toxin might have seeped into every organ I possess!”

He’s so cruel. Does he fear I already know too many of his secrets and wanted to erase me without a trace?

“Dreamfall is mild,” Soren finally said, tone flat as slate. “It is prized in brothels for its languid haze. Respectable women would do well to keep their distance.”

The single word brothels dragged Fiona back to that fevered dream atop the mountain–the

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Chapter 44 Hidden Petals

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frantic union with Xavier, life–and–death tangled in bedsheets. Under Soren’s thoughtful stare, shame bloomed scarlet across her cheeks and spread, hot and uncontainable.

“Did you leave it in your bedchamber all night?” he asked, the lightest curl of mockery at the edge of his voice.

To Fiona, the barb sounded like an accusation of midnight debauchery. A retort clawed at her tongue–something along the lines of, I was hardly thinking of you–but she swallowed it for the sake of decorum. Silence settled like falling ash between them.

“What if we market the shop under the Divine Doctor’s name?”

His terms are suffocating, and Aunt Joanna’s hole needs ten thousand pieces of silver to fill. I must sell more, faster. Morgan Murren does not yet know me in this lifetime. Hearing his own reputation misused, he may appear months sooner–and then I will have my formulas at last.

“Tell the world the recipes were bequeathed by the Divine Doctor long ago,” Soren murmured after a moment’s thought.

She inclined her head. “Very well.”

Having climbed the winding path to Frostenden Peak, Fiona reminded herself that a visit, once begun, demanded a veneer of concern. The gesture was hollow, and she knew it, yet a half–finished play fools no one.

Hypocrisy rehearsed for a lifetime eventually passes for virtue. Acted concern, repeated without pause, may harden into something that looks–almost–like genuine care.

Soren let his gaze settle on her for a long, unreadable beat. “If you really want to thank me,” he murmured, “then give Glowstrike to me–what say you?”

Silence clung to her lips. She pictured Soren approaching Xavier for the relic. Xavier could never afford to offend the Zonfrillo heir.

She weighed her options in the span of a single breath, then kept Xavier’s name buried. “Glowstrike is part of my dowry,” she answered at last. “I’m afraid I can’t oblige.”

He had already turned down the marriage; that fact alone assured her he would press no

further.

Soren, true to form, pursued the matter no more. A thin, wintry curl of a smile skimmed his mouth and vanished like breath against glass.

“Whenever I can steal a free moment, Lord Soren, I’ll come visit you again,” Fiona promised, her voice warm enough to steam the air. He had claimed lingering wounds to silence Zephyr,

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Chapter 44 Hidden Petals

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