The glass against her back was a blaze of cold. She shivered. He was so close. All she had to do was uncurl her fingers from the balustrade and lean forward into him. It felt inevitable, like an overfull cup ready to spill.

The rasp of his unshaved cheek brushed hers. “Do you?” he said. “Do you want him?”

“Yes.”

“Prove it,” Arin murmured into her ear. The heat of him settled against her. His palm squeaked against the glass by her head.

“Arin.” She could barely speak. “Let me pass.”

His lips caught at the base of her neck, slid upward. “Prove that you want him,” he said into her hair. His kiss traveled across her cheek. It brushed her forehead, then rested right on the golden line that marked her engagement.

“I do,” she said, but her voice sounded like she was drowning.

His kiss was there, waiting near her lips. “Liar,” he breathed.

Her hand came between them, and pushed. She was shaken, startled by the way she had shoved him. She felt suddenly, cruelly starved—and angry at herself for this hunger of her own making. “I said, let me go. Or will you hold me here against my will?”

He recoiled. His boots scraped back. She couldn’t see his expression, only the way he snatched his arms to his sides and stood stiff. He covered his face as if it weren’t already hidden by the dark. He muttered something into his palms, then they fell away.

“I’m sorry,” he said. He tore open the curtain, and was gone.

The light hurt Kestrel’s eyes. She blinked, her lashes wet, her vision too bright, blurry.

When her pulse had steadied and she could see and breathe and think again, she tentatively stepped into the hallway.

It was empty. She could hear music now. She hated to hear it. Her whole future was in that airless ballroom. She wondered if this ache inside her would ever go away—and if she might feel even worse when it did.

She had to return to the ball. Surely she’d already been missed. The emperor would be wondering where she was.

Kestrel slowly walked down the hall toward the ballroom.

She had almost reached it when someone came out of its open doors. Tensen took one look at her. His eyes widened, and he shook his head, striding toward her with an urgency that defied his age and made his cane seem purposeless.

“You can’t go in there,” he said.

“I must.”

“No, you must find a mirror. A private one. Because Arin just stormed through the ballroom. His mouth was shiny. Maybe people will think it was from wine and not glittered oil, but they won’t if they see you, too.”

Kestrel’s fingers flew to her forehead and the engagement mark Arin had kissed moments ago. She touched her hair, its loosened tendrils.

How did she look?

Like someone who had had an illicit liaison?

“That’s right,” Tensen said grimly.

“Come,” Kestrel said, turning to retrace her steps back down the hall, away from the ball.

“With you?”

“You and I need to talk.”

9

Kestrel led Tensen to a small, empty salon where lamps and a fire burned. Tensen shut the door behind them.

“Block it with your cane,” Kestrel said, pointing at a tapestry hook that was about level with the doorknob. “Since you don’t need it anyway.”

Tensen glanced ruefully at her before setting the curved end of his cane around the doorknob and latching the straight end into the hook. “That won’t hold. Not if someone really wants to get in.”

She ignored him. She came close to the mirror above the fireplace’s mantel, which held a wide-bottomed vase of hothouse flowers.

Maybe it was the roses, the way that they covered her neck in the mirror’s reflection, reaching up to her chin. Maybe it was the hurried escape down the hallway.

Kestrel looked breathlessly in bloom. Color was high in her cheeks. Her lips, though Arin had not in fact touched them, were bitten red. The blacks of her eyes were wide pools. The necklace Jess had given her was broken, the cracked glass petals hanging limply from their ribbon, crushed from the pressure between her and Arin.

Kestrel’s reflection stared back. She had the air of something that has been opened and cannot be shut again.

She looked like pure scandal.

Her hair wasn’t the worst of it. Yes, the upswept arrangement was coming loose, a lock slipping here and there, but her hair was too short for intricate braids, which meant that it often came undone. Kestrel was in the habit of appearing a little disheveled, and pinning her hair back in place herself.

The real problem was the mark. The golden line on her brow had become a smear.

“Do you have extra oil and glitter with you?” Tensen said.

Kestrel gave his reflection in the mirror an exasperated glance. She wasn’t carrying a purse. Where did he think she’d keep such items? The cosmetics were on the dressing table in her suite.

“I’ll find one of your ladies-in-waiting in the ballroom,” Tensen said. “Or do you have a trusted friend? Someone who can fetch what you need and bring it here?”

Kestrel thought about how long that would take. She thought about how one of her maids reported to Verex. She thought about Jess, and what her friend’s reaction would be if the Herrani minister of agriculture approached her at the ball to request her assistance in making Kestrel look respectable again.

“No,” Kestrel said. “Bring me a lamp.”

Tensen’s expression was disapproving. It said that he didn’t see how a lamp could serve, and that time was being wasted. But he did what she asked.