“‘Course I would! I’d be your trusted general, and when we’d won the Empire, you could make me a prince or something.”
She had to smile. “I could do that.”
He smiled back. “In the meantime, you can take Avial out whenever you like. I don’t have the time to run him every day. With all that energy, he needs it.”
“So do I.”
He laughed.
They worked in silence for a few more minutes, and then shut Avial back in his stall.
“Are you really going to marry Wen?” Caiden blurted.
She looked up at him. His jaw was hard in the lamplight, rough stubble showing dark against his skin. “I don’t want to, but the Empress has ordered it and your father said he’d throw me out of the house if I didn’t agree.”
“Damn the Empress—this is why we need to reclaim Enduena!” He softened. “And I would never let my father turn you out.” He touched her cheek, brushing a stray strand of hair behind her ear.
She felt herself grow still at his touch—her breath, her pulse, her whole body. She stared into his eyes and wanted, very badly, to kiss him, to feel him wrap his arms tight around her like he’d done before her ride. It would be wrong, her brain told her, you’re engaged to his brother. But I was forced into it! cried the other part of her. It shouldn’t even count! And then Ayah’s insistent voice: Kiss him and find out, you ridiculous mongoose.
He edged closer, his face only a few inches away. Her heartbeat thundered in every part of her.
“You’re very beautiful, Talia of Enduena.” His voice was quiet and rough.
“I’m betrothed to Wen,” she said without conviction.
He touched her cheek and pulled her softly toward him. “I don’t want to talk about Wen right now.”
“Neither do I.”
He pressed his lips against hers and she lost hold of everything, words and breath and even time, her whole being wrapped up in the sensation of kissing him, his warm fingers tangled in her hair.
Gray, midmorning light filtered in through the music room window, and Talia stood in the doorway, playing with the material of her patterned gown. Wen was sitting behind the not-harpsichord in the corner. He looked incredibly tired, dark smudges beneath his eyes, and she felt for him—she hadn’t slept at all last night either. She flushed. She hated herself for being there, for what felt like her betrayal and the realization that it would hurt him, if he knew. But she couldn’t regret the stolen kiss. She couldn’t regret how she felt every time she thought about Caiden. It was a forced betrothal, she repeated over and over in her head—she wasn’t betraying anyone, she wasn’t breaking any trust. The words she’d spoken to the Baron in the dusty ballroom hardly counted.
“Wen?” she said after a moment.
He jerked his head up, startled. “What do you want?” he asked wearily.
“You weren’t at breakfast.”
He glanced out the window, then back at Talia. “I’ve been up most of the night. Hadn’t realized the time. Come in, if you like.” He stood and bowed politely, though it was clear his mind was far away.
She stepped into the room, glancing around at the crowded shelves, the haphazard collection of flutes and drums and viols, the long-dead fire. “Can you play all these instruments?”
Wen shrugged. “I made some of them.”
She was impressed. “What’s the one in the corner called?”
“A raina. It was my mother’s. She sent for it all the way from Od. She almost attended University herself before she met my father.”
Dozens of sheets of music were spread out on the instrument, and Talia realized, with interest, that Wen’s fingers were covered in ink. “You’re writing something.”
“I’m always writing something.”
She came closer. “Will you show me?”
He picked up one of the pages and handed it to her. She could read a little music, thanks to her extensive schooling in Eddenahr, but the staves and notes dancing before her eyes were too complex for her to properly comprehend. “Will you play a little?”
He took off his spectacles and rubbed at his eyes. “It won’t sound right on the raina. It’s written for a sixty-five piece ensemble.”
“I’m sure you could play some of it. Please?”
He studied her with his owlish blue eyes, and looped the spectacles back around his ears. “Very well.” He sat down at the raina and settled a few pages on the stand. Then he put his fingers on the keys, and began to play.
Music curled up from the instrument, profound and alive, intertwining melodies and counter melodies, with harmonies so intricate they made her ache. Layers of sound washed over her and crept into her. She’d never heard anything more beautiful, more haunting, in all her life, and she felt like she was glimpsing Wen’s true self. Her guilt about kissing Caiden twisted deeper.
The music stopped, abruptly, Wen frowning and grabbing the pen from a little table at his left elbow and scribbling furiously all over the page he’d been playing. For several long moments he crossed out notes and wrote new ones, until the music was absolutely incomprehensible—at least to Talia—and then he sighed, and laid the pen down again.
“Why did you change that?” she said. “It was—it was perfect.”
Wen glanced up at her with a faraway expression in his eyes. “It’s not the same as it is in my head.”
She thought of the music whispering from the sea and wondered what that would sound like to him. Wondered if he ever heard it, too. “It was still beautiful,” she said softly. She wanted him to play more, but she didn’t feel like she had the right to ask.
He looked away from her, studying the raina’s keys, the table with his pen and inkwells. “Miss Dahl-Saida, did you want something?”
His sudden distant formality made the guilt gnaw sharper. “I wondered if you knew where Caiden was. He said I could take Avial out any day I liked, but he’s not in the stable, and—”
“He’s gone to settle a dispute between two of my father’s tenants. Some difficulty over a cow.”
“Oh.” She tried not to feel the disappointment crashing through her like a black wave.
A hard line came into Wen’s face. “Was there anything else, Miss Dahl-Saida?”
She wanted to ask him how long Caiden would be gone and why he hadn’t said goodbye. But she didn’t. “Thank you for playing,” she told him, and left the room.
She penned a letter to Ayah in the garden, sitting on the stone bench by the ruined pool and the drooping willow. She’d left the letters she’d written aboard ship with Hanid, who had promised to see them posted back to Enduena as quick as may be, though they wouldn’t reach Ayah until the spring at least. She’d already given Ahned several new ones to post, and he’d frowned deeply but hadn’t refused her.
She dipped her pen in the inkwell. You’d probably love it here, it’s dreary and dreadful and awful. Rains nearly every day.
She scowled at the willow.
But I know you don’t want to hear about the weather.