Everything had slid and locked into place along well-oiled grooves.

Except …

Except.

The general’s daughter had taken an interest in Arin. It was a gods-given opportunity, yet even in those early days as her slave, Arin had had the misgiving—uncomfortable, low, electric, like sparks rubbed off clothes in winter—that her interest would lead to his undoing.

And Arin was Arin: he pushed his luck, as he always did.

His habit was worse with her. He said things he shouldn’t. He broke rules, and she watched him do it, and said little of the breaking.

It was, he decided, because she didn’t care what he did.

Then came an impulse whose danger he should have seen—would have seen, if he had been able to admit to himself what it was that made him want to shake her awake even though her eyes were open.

Why should she care what a slave did?

Arin would make her care.

* * *

Arin remembered.

How he couldn’t sleep at night in the slaves’ quarters for the music that needled its way through the dark, across the general’s grounds from the villa, where the girl played and played and didn’t care that he was tired, because she didn’t know that he was tired, because she gave no thought to him at all.

He was whipped barebacked by her Valorian steward for some slight offense. The next day she had ordered him to escort her to a tea party. Pride had kept him from wincing as he moved. The fiery stripes on his back split and bled. She wouldn’t see, he would not let her see, he would not give her the satisfaction.

Nonetheless, he searched for a sign that she’d even heard of the flogging. His gaze raked her face, finding nothing there but a discomfort to be so scrutinized.

She didn’t know. He was certain he would have been able to tell. Guilt was an emotion she was bad at hiding.

Across the distance, where she was sitting on a brocade divan, teacup and saucer in hand, she dropped his gaze, turned to a lord, and laughed at something he had said.

Her innocence was maddening.

She should know. She should know what her steward had done. She should know it to be her fault whether she’d given the order or not—and whether she knew or not. Innocent? Her? Never.

He pulled the high collar of his shirt higher to hide a lash that had snaked up his neck.

He did not want her to know.

He did not want her to see.

But:

Look at me, he found himself thinking furiously at her. Look at me.

She lifted her eyes, and did.

* * *

The memories were strange, they were a network of lashes, laid one on top of the other, burning traces that might have resembled a pattern if it wasn’t clear that they had been left by a wild hand with no restraint. The lashes were lit with feeling.

He was stinging, stinging.

“Arin,” Tensen said during their meeting with the Herrani treasurer, who was even grimmer than usual, “where is your head? You’ve heard nothing I’ve said.”

“Say it again.”

“The emperor has had a new coin minted to celebrate the engagement.”

Arin didn’t want to hear about the engagement.

“I think that you should see it,” Tensen said.

Arin took the coin, and didn’t see whatever it was that Tensen thought he should see.

Tensen told him the story of Jadis.

Arin dropped the coin.

He remembered.

He remembered changing.

He saw Kestrel give a flower to a baby everyone else ignored. He watched her lose cheerfully at cards to an old Valorian woman whom society giggled about, not even bothering to hush their words, for she was too senile, they said, to understand.

Arin had stood behind Kestrel during that card game. He’d seen her high hand.

He saw her honesty with him. She offered it like a cup of clear water that he drank deep.

Her tears, glinting in the dark.

Her fierce creature of a mind: sleek and sharp-clawed and utterly unwilling to be caught.

Arin saw Kestrel step between him and punishment as if it meant nothing, instead of everything.

“Arin?” Tensen called through the memories.

Arin remembered the sunken days after he’d seen her last, after she’d handed him her emperor’s decree of Herrani freedom and told him about her engagement. “Congratulate me,” she’d said. He hadn’t believed it. He had begged. She hadn’t listened. “Oh, Arin,” Sarsine said to him during the time when he wouldn’t leave the rooms Kestrel had lived in. “What did you expect?”

Grief. It had all come to this.

“Arin,” Tensen said to him again, and Arin could no longer ignore him. “For the last time, are you going to the capital or not?”

6

Officials and aristocrats began to arrive in the capital in preparation for the ball. Every day more sets of fine horses were brought into the imperial stables, limping from the bitter ride down winter roads. Although Kestrel had pointed out the difficulties of bad travel conditions for their guests, the emperor apparently thought this was unimportant. He had invited them; they must come. Fires were laid to warm palace guest suites that would be lived in for quite some time: after the ball, there would be parties and events right up until the wedding.

One afternoon, Kestrel took a carriage down through the city to the harbor, a maid shivering beside her. There was no reason why this girl couldn’t be the one in Verex’s employ, but Kestrel heaped furs on their laps and encouraged the maid to nudge her toes closer to the hot brick on the carriage floor.