“You want to invite them to the Fort?”
“No, I’ll meet them wherever they’re planning to meet. Make it clear that we know everything about them, but that this isn’t a threat. I need to talk to them about their ideas.”
“Your Majesty! They tried to murder you.”
“One of them did. But she said the others didn’t help her. That most of them didn’t agree. And I need to find out what they think. It’s important.”
“It’s dangerous, Your Majesty.”
I looked him in the eye, hands shaking slightly. This man who might have killed everyone, for me, the man who might want to kill Fitzroy, too. “What isn’t?” I said.
TWENTY-SEVEN
I COULDN’T SETTLE TO SLEEP THAT NIGHT. THE DAY’S events still pulsed through me, and, now that I was safe in the dark, I finally allowed myself to dwell on that kiss.
Fitzroy hadn’t really spoken to me all evening. Shouldn’t he have at least given me a significant glance? Something? Things shouldn’t continue as normal, unless the kiss didn’t mean anything at all.
And all right, yes, I wasn’t entirely hopeless. I could weigh the evidence, gather the facts, and see where they might point in any other scenario. His refusing to leave, his telling me he liked me, that kiss. The pointed looks during our conversation, the fact that he opened up to me, even when we had just met, despite almost never opening up to anybody . . . a bystander might look down the list and decide the answer was obvious.
But that missed the clear argument to the contrary. This was happening to me. I could imagine people occasionally deciding to be my friend. They’d listen to my ideas, yes. But they couldn’t like me beyond that.
I was queen, but I was still me. People like me might get one small, brief kiss of friendship. And we might confuse that for something more. But we didn’t . . . it didn’t make sense.
With a grunt of annoyance, I climbed out of bed, waking up Dagny from her spot by my feet, and grabbed some paper. Written down, the evidence for and against seemed ridiculously unbalanced. “Because it’s me” did not look like a reason at all, once it was detached from my brain. But still . . . it felt like reason enough.
“Freya? What are you doing?” Naomi peered around her bedroom door, rubbing her eyes. “I saw your light. Did you have a breakthrough?”
I clutched the paper. “No, it’s all right. I was just thinking. Go back to sleep.”
“You’re making a pro and con list about Fitzroy, aren’t you?”
“It’s not that.” She raised her eyebrows expectantly, and I sighed. “It’s a ‘what does Fitzroy think about me’ list.”
“Just go talk to him, Freya. He’s the only one who could tell you.”
I could, technically, but . . . “I don’t know where he’ll be.”
“He’s waiting down in the lab for you. Where else would he be?”
“You don’t know that.”
“Oh, I do.”
At least if I asked him, I would know. I could stop this obsessing. The thought terrified me, the risk of humiliation too great, but I’d faced the court, hadn’t I? I could do this. “I guess I could—gather evidence. To reach a proper conclusion.”
Naomi laughed. “Well, go on, then. Be sure to tell me how it goes.”
Naomi was right, of course. I wasn’t sure whether that was relieving or annoying. Fitzroy was in the laboratory, more papers spread in front of him. He looked up when I walked into the room, and his smile was a little more tentative than usual. Maybe slightly awkward. Because of how I was acting? Because he regretted the kiss?
I had to speak before doubt got in the way. “What did you mean,” I said, “when you said you liked me?”
His smile shrank another fraction. He looked decidedly unsure now as he stood. “Was it not clear?”
“Well, I assume it means you like me. But how do you like me? It’s an imprecise word, really, don’t you think? I mean, do you like me like I’m your friend, or do you like me like you—like me in a different way.”
He was walking slowly toward me. I resisted the urge to take a step backward. “You said ‘like’ a lot there. It was confusing.”
“You understood what I meant.”
“I did.” He moved closer still. An arm’s length away. “Do you tend to kiss your friends like that, Freya?”
“No.” The word came out quieter than I’d like. “But some people do. And it was just a tiny kiss, and—”
I knew this time, a moment before it happened. Fitzroy moved closer, and I shifted forward to meet him.
My second kiss. I was kissing Fitzroy. Fitzroy’s hand was curled around the back of my neck. Fitzroy’s fingers were tangled in my hair. Fitzroy was . . . Fitzroy.
How could I possibly have ever thought I didn’t like him? That the way my stomach swooped, and my heart raced, and my thoughts calmed, was an inconsequential thing?
I was aware of every breath, of the blood racing through my veins, of the spot where Fitzroy’s nose bumped against mine. The slight difference in height, the tiniest shift of Fitzroy’s hand. I cataloged every detail, savoring them, saving them.
He pulled back, paused a couple of inches from my face. “Does that answer your question?”
I shook my head, just an inch, left and right. “No.” My voice came out breathy, like someone else was speaking. I had to know. “There are many potential interpretations for that.”
“Such as?” His eyebrows rose in a challenge.
“You just wanted to stop me talking. Or maybe you want to practice kissing. Or you just want to kiss the queen, but you can’t admit it, so you keep kissing me so you don’t have to lie to me. Or you’re just . . . very friendly . . . with your friends.”
“Then how’s this?” The question sounded grandiose, something Fitzroy the courtier would say, but then he paused. “I like you not just as a friend. And I don’t usually go around kissing my friends like that.”
“Not usually?”
“Not as a rule. I like you because you’re you, Freya. In all your stubborn strangeness. And because you make me feel like me. I told you the first time I talked to you, that’s not—I’m never sure who I really am. And it’s different when I’m with you.”
“Well,” I said, with a slight smile. “I think I like you, too.”
“You think?”
“I think.”
He laughed softly. “But do you like me as a friend, or as a lab assistant, or perhaps as the old king’s son who now won’t leave, or—”
“I like you as Fitzroy,” I said, with a decisive nod.
“Well,” he said. “I guess I’ll take that.”
And he kissed me again.
The Gustavites did not agree to meet me. Holt didn’t even ask them. “They would run, Your Majesty, before the request was complete,” he said the next day, in a soothing voice. “They’d think it was a trap, or else lay a trap for you.”