“One of Teague’s warehouses. Stolen goods, drugs, and sometimes people he’s taken as slaves to be sold in Balavata are kept here.” Sebastian’s voice was barely audible. “Few know where it is. It could make sense for Daan to have gone here after visiting the palace. If his body is found nearby, it will deflect suspicion from you and your brother because you’d have no idea how to find this place.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to ask how he knew where to find it when a shadow detached itself from the wall of the building and became the figure of a man, sword out, walking briskly toward the road as if to intercept them.
Ari’s palms grew slick. The last thing they needed was an armed man finding Teague’s dead collector in the wagon bed. “What do we do?” she breathed.
“Act normal,” Sebastian whispered. “We’re just two ordinary people driving home after a day of selling goods in the markets.”
Ari scooted closer to Sebastian. His body was coiled with tension, his jaw locked tight. He looked like a fighter about to launch himself into a fray.
Which, to be fair, was probably his version of acting normal, but to an onlooker was going to be a glaring clue that something wasn’t right. They had to do more than act normal. They had to hide their faces so that when Daan’s body was found, no one could give an accurate description of the couple who’d passed by in a wagon.
She had to fix this before they reached the man with the sword.
She could pretend to be sick and draw all the man’s attention to herself. It wouldn’t take much to put on a convincing show. But then she and Sebastian would be far more memorable than they wanted to be.
She could pretend they were arguing, which would explain the tension that radiated off Sebastian, but that would give the man a chance to memorize what their voices sounded like. Plus, she doubted Sebastian’s ability to argue. He’d probably sit there like a rock while she caused a (far too memorable) scene.
That left option number three. Her stomach pitched at the thought of it, but this time instead of feeling nauseous, she felt like the time she’d (accidentally on purpose) drunk fizzy wine at the winter ball while hiding in the servants’ hall watching the guests dance. Which was a foolish way to feel because this was an act.
“Follow my lead,” she whispered as she leaned into Sebastian’s space.
He jerked the reins, and the horse shied.
“We have to act normal, but you look like you’re about to start a fight, and I probably look like the princess wrapped in a stable blanket.” She breathed the words as her thigh pressed against his, and her head tipped toward his shoulder. “We need to hide our faces and make him believe there’s nothing to see here.”
“What are you doing?” There was a note of panic in his voice.
Not exactly how Ari had thought her first kiss would go, but she couldn’t think of another way to handle the situation.
“Kissing you,” she said. “Please play along. We’re going to be discovered in a minute.”
The wagon was eighty paces from the man. Ari angled her entire body toward Sebastian and tipped her head back. His eyes glinted dark and mysterious in the starlight.
All right, fine, they weren’t mysterious. They were full of panic and dismay, but mysterious sounded much better for a first kiss.
She couldn’t force him to do this. Not even when it seemed like the only option. She waited and hoped he’d see that hiding their faces and appearing to be just another couple returning home after a long day of work was the best way to deflect any suspicion.
He wasn’t going to do it. His body was rigid, his breathing rapid. She’d asked for too much. The man with the sword was going to see that something was wrong and was going to stop them and find the dead man, and then Sebastian would get into a fight, and Ari was going to probably have to hit the man with a rock, and then they were going to have two dead bodies to bury and—
He covered her lips with his, and every racing thought in her head dissolved into bubbly, skin-tingling surprise.
The wagon creaked, the body thumped, and at some point they passed the man with the sword and left him and the building he guarded behind, but Ari wasn’t aware of any of it.
Her world was the gentle roughness of Sebastian’s lips and the warmth of his body chasing shivers across her skin.
Her heart pounded, and she tilted her head to get a better angle.
This was much more fun than the practice kissing she’d tried on her bedpost when she was twelve. Sebastian made a tiny noise in the back of his throat, and Ari grabbed the front of his tunic as a delicious tingling swirled through her belly.
Sebastian pulled back, his breathing unsteady. “Your Highness—”
“Ari,” she said, still leaning toward his lips.
He winced at the same moment that Ari realized with absolute mortification that her mouth still tasted vaguely of vomit.
She scooted away from him. “Oh, stars.”
“Princess Arianna—”
“I am so—”
“That was—”
“Awful. I know.”
He stiffened and fell silent.
She buried her face in her hands. “I’m so sorry. There are no words for how sorry I am.”
“It worked. That’s all that matters.” He was using his formal, reserved, I’m-dealing-with-nobility voice.
“I forgot,” she said quietly, still hiding her face.
“Forgot what?”
“That I’d recently been sick and hadn’t had any mint. I don’t think I can ever look you in the eye again.”
Which was definitely going to put a crimp in their developing friendship.
Well . . . more of a crimp than kissing him with vomit breath had already accomplished.
He was silent for an agonizingly long time. Ari contemplated jumping out of the wagon. Changing her name and moving to Ravenspire. Hiding in her room for the next five years.
Finally, he spoke. “I wasn’t going to say it was awful.” He sounded friendly and amused. “I was going to say it was smart. I would never have thought of it. And it’s okay that you hadn’t had mint. We weren’t kissing for real. It was an act. No need to be embarrassed.”
She was pretty sure she was going to be embarrassed for the rest of her life.
The wagon swayed to a stop.
“Princess Arianna, you don’t have to cover your face anymore.”
Slowly she peeled her fingers away from her eyes and risked a glance at his face.
His eyes crinkled.
If he could smile about this, then so could she. She made herself give him a wobbly grin, which disappeared the instant she looked around and realized they were at the edge of a ditch that had been dug across the back of an empty field. The road was at least three hundred paces behind them.
“What is this?” Ari looked over her shoulder, half expecting the man with the sword to have followed them up the road, but no one was there.