*
Arin didn’t like to leave her for long. She was going to attract attention. It was her nature. But when he returned with wine and a game set, she was alone and quiet: an almost eerie silence in the tavern’s storm.
He saw her before she did him. He saw that she was unhappy. He realized that this was what had arrested him by the canal when he’d thought she was a nameless maid: the sense that this stranger had lost something as precious to her as what he had lost was to him.
In his mind, Arin lost to Kestrel at Bite and Sting, and let all of his questions slip away.
In his mind, he said, Tell me what you want.
And she said, Leave this city.
She said, Take me with you.
Kestrel lifted her gaze. As he met her eyes—an extremely light brown, the lightest shade before brown becomes gold—Arin knew that he was a fool. A thousand times a fool.
He must stop. They were painful, these waking dreams. Why did he allow himself to think them? They skewed everything. Arin was ashamed now, remembering how he’d pretended—even if for a moment—that Kestrel was the Moth. He shoved that lovely little lie from his head. He refused to think of it again. Thoughts like this made him feel split in two, just as his face was: one side fine and the other sore and throbbing.
He sat, and set the game, wine bottle, and glass on the table. He poured.
“Only one glass?” she said.
He handed it to her. “I’ve no head for wine. How is it?”
“Terrible.” But she drank deeply.
Arin upacked the set. Kestrel picked up one of the tiles, which was made of rough wood, and turned it over in her fingers. Her thumb rubbed at some grime. He watched her drink again.
Arin thought of the ruined dress Deliah had described. Tensen had dismissed it with an impatient wave of the hand, a gesture that told Arin it was ridiculous to imagine anything dire. Vomit on the sleeve of a dress? Well, don’t courtiers like wine? Arin had seen scores of Valorians drunk until sick. As for the dirt on the dress and split seams … anybody can trip. The Winter Garden had no mud, true, but Arin hadn’t seen all of the palace grounds. There were places he wasn’t allowed to go. Kestrel could have tripped anywhere.
Neither tripping nor drunkenness seemed like Kestrel. But he watched her drain the glass.
I could have changed, she’d said by the river.
Arin took the game piece from Kestrel. He mixed the tiles with unnecessary force. They drew their hands.
Arin’s was pitiful. The only thing that saved this game from being a lost cause was a pair of mice, and mice held almost the lowest value. The rest of his hand was an assortment of Sting tiles—which Kestrel delighted in playing, and played well. He, less so.
And Kestrel had a high hand. He knew it. She had no tells—not exactly. It was more that she had a concentrated lack of tells. She changed without giving any clear sign that she had changed. She gathered intensity.
“Kestrel.”
She discarded a tile and drew another. She didn’t look at him. He’d noticed—of course he had—how she avoided looking at him now. And no wonder. Arin’s face stung. The stitches itched. He was tempted to rip them out. “Look at me,” he said. She did, and Arin suddenly wished she hadn’t. He cleared his throat. He said, “I won’t try anymore to convince you not to marry him.”
She slowly added the new tile to her hand. She stared at it, and said nothing.
“I don’t understand your choice,” Arin said. “Or maybe I do. It doesn’t matter. You want it. That’s clear. You’ve always done exactly what you wanted.”
“Have I.” Her voice was flat and dull.
He plunged ahead. “I was wondering…” Arin had an idea. He’d had it for some time now. He didn’t like it. The words lay bitter on his tongue, but he had thought about it, and thought about it, and if he said nothing …
Arin made himself study his tiles again. He tried to think which Sting tile would profit Kestrel least. He discarded a bee. The instant he set the tile down, he regretted it.
He pulled a high Bite tile. This should have encouraged him, yet Arin had the sense of flying toward the inevitable moment when Kestrel won and he asked her what she wanted.
“I thought…”
“Arin?”
She looked concerned. That decided him. Arin took a deep breath. His stomach changed to iron. His body was girding itself in a way he knew well. Arin was tightening the muscles needed before a plunge into deep water. A punch to the gut. The lift of the hardest, lowest, highest notes he could possibly sing. His stomach knew what he’d have to sustain.
“Marry him,” Arin said, “but be mine in secret.”
Her hand lifted from the tiles as if scorched. She sat back in her chair. She rubbed at her inner elbow. She drank the dregs of her wine and was silent. Finally, she said, “I can’t do that.”
“Why?” Arin was hot with humiliation, hating himself for having asked. The cut burned in his cheek. “It’s not so different than what you would have chosen before. When you kissed me in your carriage on Firstwinter, you thought to keep me your secret. If you thought of anything. I would have been one of those special slaves, the ones called for at night when the rest of the house is sleeping. Well? Isn’t that how it was?”
“No.” She spoke low. “It wasn’t.”
“Then tell me.” Arin was damning himself with every word. “Tell me how it was.”
Slowly, Kestrel said, “Things have changed.”
Arin jerked his head to the side, chin up, stitched left cheek tilted to catch the light. “Because of this?”
She replied as if the answer was obvious. “Yes.”
He shoved back from the table. “I think I’ll have that drink.”
Arin began to walk away, then glanced back over his shoulder. He made sure his words were an insult. “Don’t touch the tiles.”
*
Kestrel didn’t understand. His anger made no sense. Wasn’t it clear that Arin’s wound was her fault? And that worse could happen?
He didn’t return.
She thought about what she didn’t understand. She thought about how Arin’s wound might run deeper than the flesh. She remembered his question and her answer. She remembered them again.
Slowly, she began to see the misunderstanding. For her, yes was the emperor’s message carved into Arin’s face. For Arin, yes was the scar itself, not what it meant. His anger was for how he looked … how he thought he looked to her now.
A horror sank into her. She couldn’t wait until he returned. She must find him. She must set things straight.