She stares at me with the kind of furious precision that rivals Father’s.
I’m dragged down a narrow stone path deep into the gardens, away from the crowd, dodging green-coated men on horseback who hold our Safire vintage. A reminder of our fake unity that sets me on edge all over again.
We make it far enough into the flourishing grove that we’re nearly to the stables, and then she faces me. “You never mentioned the knock-downs in your letters,” she accuses. “You can’t go off and do these things without even a warning.”
“I’m sorry,” I say honestly. “I didn’t want you to worry.”
“I know, but if anything ever happened to you…” She sighs, a new kind of heaviness in her gaze. More like grief. “Everything down there, it’s not as simple as you think.”
Bitter laughter escapes my lips. I can’t help it, since nothing is simple, not here nor there, and I know it well.
But she narrows her eyes further. “I mean that. You’ve only seen your little corner of it, and there are terrible—” Her annoyance changes to distress. “There are terrible things that have happened and you don’t understand,” she whispers.
“Understand what?”
“You won’t believe me.”
“I will.”
“Do you promise?”
I nod, and she looks at me, as if trying to determine if I’m lying, but she’s not very good at that anyway. I wait.
“Your General’s son did horrid things in Thurn, and no one knows. I saw the photographs. I swear I did. There were children. Little children, and they were shot.”
She clutches my arms, bare skin against mine, and no words come. I’d like to have a hundred of them right now, a hundred reasons why she’s wrong, reasons why it can’t be true, but I don’t. We just stare at each other, her hands clinging to me. Her words demanding an answer.
“Children?” I say finally, wanting to hit something. Wanting to hit Arrin.
I hate that I don’t doubt it right away.
I hate that it feels like it could be truth.
She can only nod. “It’s not right. It isn’t, and someone must do something before this next war begins.”
I push an escaped dark strand of hair from her face. I’ve waited too long to do that, liking the way she stills beneath my brief touch. “There won’t be another war, Ali. The League will never allow it.”
“But they could, Athan! It’s all so very complicated. You were right when you said that the Nahir might be justified in their revolt. I see what you mean now.”
I stare at her. “I never said the Nahir were justified.”
“No, but you implied it strongly, and now I’ve heard the truth, from someone there. It’s more than—”
“I believe you,” I interrupt, wanting her to stop talking. I don’t want to hear things I shouldn’t, not this time. “Whatever the Commander has done, I promise the rest of us are trying to do the right thing. I swear it.”
She leans up on her toes and kisses my cheek. “I know you are.”
But the feel of her lips doesn’t send my pulse into a flick-roll. It’s too much like a blessing, like an offering of trust, and I don’t deserve it. Not with what’s happening today.
I force a laugh. “God, it’s your birthday. Why are we talking about war? We should be talking about your masquerade and what the hell I’m going to wear to it!”
Her eyes widen. “You’re coming tonight?”
“We don’t leave until first light tomorrow.”
“Oh, Athan, you can wear whatever you’d like. It doesn’t matter!”
“I might have to,” I admit. “I haven’t been planning on this for months like you.”
“Come as you are. That’s the best gift you could give.”
“I have something else, but it’s quite small.”
“You do?”
“Close your eyes.”
She obliges, and I pull out the amber necklace, placing it in her outstretched hand. She opens her eyes, her face lighting up all over again. “From Thurn?” she asks, fingers moving over the sharp-edged gem. “It’s very crude, isn’t it?”
“Exactly the reaction I was hoping for.”
This is why pilots don’t give gifts to princesses.
“But it’s perfect all the same,” she says quickly. “Put it on for me, please. I’ll wear it now.” She turns around, sweeping the dark hair off her neck, waiting.
I glance left and right down the path. Not that there’s anything wrong with this, but guilt still prickles as I bring my hands up and fiddle with the clasp, fingers brushing her skin. I imagine kissing her neck.
I imagine kissing a lot more than that.
She turns and faces me again. “Thank you.”
There’s too much trust in her gaze, and the thought of lying to her for another minute seems beyond shameful. But then what would I say?
Ali, nothing in my life makes much sense, but I know I’d fight for you if you gave me the chance. But my father, he wants to destroy your mother, and truthfully, I think I want that too, because my mother was the innocent one and yours stole her from me. But maybe when this is all over, if it ever can be over, we’ll meet in the middle and try to—
Her eyes study my face so intently that I take a step back, embarrassed. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she says, and her hand moves, as if to reach for me again. “The sun made more freckles across your nose. They look very sweet.” Her lips part softly, curved with invitation. There’s no question about it. It’s an offer for me to take more, honest and true, and I would if it wasn’t the worst thing I could do to us both.
I resist the fierce temptation and hold out my arm. “We should go back. They’ll be wondering where we are.”
“I don’t care what they think.”
“Please don’t force me to answer to the Queen.” I try a smile.
She relents and slips closer, her hand taking mine unexpectedly. “I wouldn’t do that to you.” She smiles in return. “And at least we have tonight.”
36
ATHAN
“Nice mask,” Cyar says to me from across the room, the same one we shared during our first visit, “but I don’t know what you are.”
“Hm?” I’m staring out the open window, at the rainy evening. Glorious mountains and all.
“It’s a masquerade. I think you have to be … something.”
“I am.” I turn, holding the mask to my face. “A Safire pilot. The General’s son. Take your pick.” I laugh at my own joke, though it’s really not that funny.
Of course I know why I picked this mask and not the dozen others in Norvenne. I just can’t quite admit it to him. She’s going as Elinga, the unicorn, and that makes me Elois, the dragon. Cyar’s a romantic, yes, but maybe not enough to waltz around as creatures from a damn painting.
He smiles wryly at me. “Don’t waste your ace, then. I think you’ll need it.”
I’m not sure what he means. Presumably he’s pleased, as always, to hold his experience with women over me—though technically he’s only ever kissed one, and he hardly sees her as it is, so really, his expertise is entirely hypothetical and in his head.
“I have a very clever ace, in fact,” I say, “and it’s—”
I stop.
“Go on,” Cyar says. “Does it have anything to do with your remarkable ability to waltz?”
My hands grip the mask, the satin-trimmed purple and black, the little gems like fire along the edges, and I can’t move or breathe. My brain is turning cylinders.
Cyar frowns. “Athan, are you all right?”
A very clever ace.
One very clever ace.
The throttle releases and I’m charging through the truth, all of it there and ready to be captured. Every clue. Everything I should have seen long ago if I hadn’t been so blinded by my own self-misery. Every perfect piece that fell into place right on time to the ticking clock—the loss of Hady to the Nahir as we arrived in Landore, the subsequent attacks as we bartered for our right to be in the South, our fighters sitting there with no desert camouflage, the Nahir suddenly armed with weapons and airplanes, and now, like divine fate, their trail leading right to Resya, the homeland of Sinora Lehzar.
And the plea of the man Father shot in the back alley.
The name Seath on his lips.
“I have to see my father,” I hurl at Cyar, wheeling for the door wildly.