“
Kestrel had forgotten. She had thought that she remembered only too well the lines of his face. The restless quality to how he would stand still. The way he looked fully into her eyes as if each glance was an irrevocable choice.
Her blood felt laced with black powder. How could she have forgotten what it was like to burn on a fuse before him? He looked at her, and she knew that she had remembered nothing at all.
“I can’t be seen with you,” she said.
Arin’s eyes flashed. He raked the curtain shut behind him. The closed-off balcony became deeply dark.
“Better?” he said.
Kestrel backed away until the heel of her shoe met the balustrade and her bare shoulder blades touched the glass. The air had changed. It was warm now. And scented, strangely, with brine.
“The sea,” she managed to say. “You came by sea.”
“It seemed wiser than riding my horse to death through the mountains.”
“My horse.”
“If you want Javelin, come home and claim him.”
She shook her head. “I can’t believe you sailed here.”
“Technically, the ship’s captain did, cursing me the entire time. Except when I got sick. Then he just laughed.”
“I thought you weren’t coming.”
“I changed my mind.” Arin came to lean against the balustrade beside her.
It was too much. He was too close. “I’ll thank you to keep your distance.”
“Ah, the empress speaks. Well, I must obey.” Yet he didn’t move except to turn his head toward her. Light from the curtain’s seam cut a thin line down his cheek in a bright scar. “I saw you. With the prince. He seems bitter medicine to swallow, even for the sweets of the empire.”
“You know nothing of him.”
“I know you helped him cheat. Yes, I watched you. I saw you play at Borderlands. Others might not have noticed, but I know you.” His voice grew rough. “Gods, how can you respect someone like that? You’ll make a fool of him.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“You’re a bad liar.”
“I won’t.”
Arin went quiet. “Maybe you won’t mean to.” He edged away, and that line of light no longer touched him. His form was pure shadow. But her sight had adjusted, and she saw him tip his head back against the window. “Kestrel…”
An emotion clamped down on her heart. It squeezed her into a terrible silence. But he said nothing after that, only her name, as if her name were not a name but a question. Or perhaps that wasn’t how he had said it, and she was wrong, and she’d heard a question simply because the sound of him speaking her name made her wish that she were his answer.
Something was tugging inside her. It yanked at her soul. Tell him, that part of her said. He needs to know.
Yet those words had a quality of horror to them. Her mind was sluggish to understand why, so caught it was in the temptation to tell Arin that her engagement had been the bargain for Herran’s freedom.
”
”