And then they would come for her.

Kestrel’s throat closed when she thought of faking joy at her engagement. Yet she would have to do it. She would have to dance all night long and into the gray hours of morning, until the last reveler had left the ballroom and her shoes were worn out and her heart was in shreds.

Kestrel stood. The emperor wasn’t watching her, at least not for now. His eyes were on his son. She threaded through the crowd, telling each person who stopped her that she had promised a dance to someone else. The ballroom was thick with people. Faces clustered around her like children’s puppets on sticks.

Somehow she dodged them, and slipped down a hallway where the air was cooler. No one lingered here. There was nothing to see, nothing to do. This area was used only in fine weather when the balconies lining the hallway were open to the palace gardens below. Each balcony was now curtained off from the hallway, and Kestrel knew that the glass shutters attached to each balustrade had been drawn and fastened for the winter. Despite every attempt to ward off the cold, it seeped beneath the velvet curtains. It lapped over Kestrel’s slippered feet.

With a quick glance behind to make certain that no one was near and no one saw her, she dove through a curtain and pulled it shut behind her.

The balcony was a box, its glass walls like black ice: sheer slices of the night outside. Light from the hallway lined the seam of the curtain and glowed at its hem, but Kestrel could barely see her own hands.

She touched a glass pane. These windows would be open on the night of her wedding. The trees below would be in bloom, the air fragrant with cere blossoms.

She would choke on it. Kestrel knew she would hate the scent of cere flowers all her life, as she ruled the empire, as she bore her husband’s children. As she aged and the ghosts of her choices haunted her.

There was a sudden sound. The slide of wooden curtain rings on the rod. Light brightened behind Kestrel.

Someone was coming through the velvet.

He was pulling it wide, he was stepping onto Kestrel’s balcony—close, closer still as she turned and the curtain swayed, then stopped. He pinned the velvet against the frame. He held the sweep of it high, at the level of his gray eyes, which were silver in the shadows.

He was here. He had come.

Arin.

8

Kestrel had forgotten. She had thought that she remembered only too well the lines of his face. The restless quality to how he would stand still. The way he looked fully into her eyes as if each glance was an irrevocable choice.

Her blood felt laced with black powder. How could she have forgotten what it was like to burn on a fuse before him? He looked at her, and she knew that she had remembered nothing at all.

“I can’t be seen with you,” she said.

Arin’s eyes flashed. He raked the curtain shut behind him. The closed-off balcony became deeply dark.

“Better?” he said.

Kestrel backed away until the heel of her shoe met the balustrade and her bare shoulder blades touched the glass. The air had changed. It was warm now. And scented, strangely, with brine.

“The sea,” she managed to say. “You came by sea.”

“It seemed wiser than riding my horse to death through the mountains.”

“My horse.”

“If you want Javelin, come home and claim him.”

She shook her head. “I can’t believe you sailed here.”

“Technically, the ship’s captain did, cursing me the entire time. Except when I got sick. Then he just laughed.”

“I thought you weren’t coming.”

“I changed my mind.” Arin came to lean against the balustrade beside her.

It was too much. He was too close. “I’ll thank you to keep your distance.”

“Ah, the empress speaks. Well, I must obey.” Yet he didn’t move except to turn his head toward her. Light from the curtain’s seam cut a thin line down his cheek in a bright scar. “I saw you. With the prince. He seems bitter medicine to swallow, even for the sweets of the empire.”

“You know nothing of him.”

“I know you helped him cheat. Yes, I watched you. I saw you play at Borderlands. Others might not have noticed, but I know you.” His voice grew rough. “Gods, how can you respect someone like that? You’ll make a fool of him.”

“I wouldn’t.”

“You’re a bad liar.”

“I won’t.”

Arin went quiet. “Maybe you won’t mean to.” He edged away, and that line of light no longer touched him. His form was pure shadow. But her sight had adjusted, and she saw him tip his head back against the window. “Kestrel…”

An emotion clamped down on her heart. It squeezed her into a terrible silence. But he said nothing after that, only her name, as if her name were not a name but a question. Or perhaps that wasn’t how he had said it, and she was wrong, and she’d heard a question simply because the sound of him speaking her name made her wish that she were his answer.

Something was tugging inside her. It yanked at her soul. Tell him, that part of her said. He needs to know.

Yet those words had a quality of horror to them. Her mind was sluggish to understand why, so caught it was in the temptation to tell Arin that her engagement had been the bargain for Herran’s freedom.

“I don’t want to talk about your fiancé.” Arin pushed away from the balustrade and stood tall enough to cast a shadow over her if there had been any light. “I seek information.”