up with a sigh, stepping over Leon's legs as he moved to join me in the kitchenette. "I can cook."
"You can?" I asked hopefully.
"Yeah, my adopted parents never really bothered cooking for me once I was old enough to do it myself. So I learned or went hungry. You want bolognese?" he offered and my heart yanked at his words. My mamma had never let my stomach growl for more than a second before she filled it. Sometimes I forgot how much she did for me.
"Yes please," I murmured and he shrugged as he set to work boiling the water again.
I stayed in the kitchenette, watching as he stirred the spaghetti into the water as it went soft, feeling like an idiota for not knowing that. How many times had I eaten my mamma's spaghetti bolognese? It was shameful that I didn't know how to cook it myself.
“So are you spending Christmas with your parents when you get out of here?” I asked him just to make conversation.
“Nah,” he murmured. “They don’t really invite me along to shit like that anymore.”
I frowned, not understanding. “But they’re your famiglia.”
“Not really. It was just their job to look after me but-” he stopped himself, glancing at me like he shouldn’t have said that.
I cast a silencing bubble around us on instinct. “Job?”
His throat bobbed and he looked away as he took out some garlic and started chopping it. “I didn’t mean that.”
“Yes you did,” I said. “I don’t spill people’s secrets, falco. It’s the way of the Oscuras.”
He hmphed, keeping his gaze on the garlic. “I don’t have secr-” he stopped mid-sentence, his eyes glazing and my brows arched as I witnessed him having a vision from the stars. It made my heart beat harder. I was always a little envious of those who had the gift of The Sight. It must have been quite the thing to have such a bond with the stars.
Gabriel blinked suddenly, focusing on me for a moment. “Well it seems the stars think you’re trustworthy and they haven’t led me astray yet…” He still seemed unsure so I held out my hand to him on instinct.
“Whatever you tell me won’t leave this kitchen, falco, unless you ever want me to speak about it.”
He slid his palm into my mine uncertainly then struck the deal and magic rang between us. “Why do you keep calling me that? You said it in my vision too.”
“Falco?” I shrugged. “It means hawk. You remind me of one. You don’t like it?”
He shrugged too like he didn’t care either way, but I guessed he didn’t hate it.
“So…what is it?” I asked.
He drew in a long breath. “Well in all honesty, there isn’t a lot to tell,” he said. “Because I don’t know the answers myself. But the long and short of it is that I’ve been hiding my whole life and I don’t really know why. My parents aren’t really my parents. They were just paid off to play the part.”
“What do you mean?” I breathed in surprise and he kept his gaze on the garlic as he crushed it against the flat of his knife.
“There’s a block on my memories from when I was a child. I thought gaining control over The Sight might allow me to break through it, but it’s still in place. All I know is that I was put in a home with fake parents who were paid off to keep me safe. They don’t know any more than that either, but I’ve had a P.I. working for me for years to try and find out the truth. All I have to go on is a bunch of fractured memories that make no sense and a single name…”
“A name?” I pushed curiously.
“Falling Star,” he said, looking to me with his brows knitted. “Whoever they are, they pay large sums of money into my bank account every month. There’s no way to trace it back to the owner. So I guess they’re the ones keeping me hidden. Bill thinks from the amount of effort they’ve gone to keep me safe that someone bad is probably looking for me. That’s why I keep myself to myself. It’s why I don’t socialise with other Harpies or make friends…or have girlfriends.”
“It’s why you pushed Elise away so much,” I said in realisation and he nodded, his jaw tight. I reached out to press a hand to his shoulder, a blade twisting in my heart as I understood him a little