Verex came, but refused to hunt. The emperor smiled widely. “There’s my milk-blooded boy,” he said.

“Walk with me, Verex,” said Kestrel. “I’ve no interest in hunting either.”

They took the trail ahead of the emperor. Kestrel’s puppy bounded alongside her.

“What a sweet dog,” Kestrel heard Maris say.

The emperor’s cheerful voice floated clear. “Do you like her?”

Verex stiffened beside Kestrel.

“She’s yours,” the emperor told Maris.

Kestrel turned. “No. She’s mine.”

“What do you care if Maris has her?” There was that smile again. “You haven’t even named her.”

“Let her go,” Verex whispered in Kestrel’s ear. “Remember.” He didn’t say what she should remember, but Kestrel did anyway: Arin’s stitched face.

The dog nudged her damp nose against Kestrel’s trousered leg.

“Her name,” Kestrel told the emperor, “is Mine.”

He shrugged and looked careless. Maris, with a courtier’s instinct, had caught the scent of danger and waited to see what would happen next. When nothing did, and nothing more was said, she moved to catch up with her friends.

Later that afternoon, the emperor shot a fox. “For my daughter.” Blood marbled its reddish ruff. Its little black feet looked like dried paintbrushes. The emperor declared that its fur would be made into a stole for Kestrel.

When the court headed down to the castle and Verex was walking alongside Risha, the emperor fell in step with Kestrel.

He wasn’t smiling anymore, but the smile was in his hardened voice, trapped there: an insect in amber. “Don’t be more trouble than you’re worth,” he said.

* * *

“Give the dog away,” Kestrel told Verex. She had held the prince back on the palace lawn, its grass soft and fine, the green brightly pale. The other courtiers had gone ahead. “Find her a home far from the court. Find the right person.”

“You are the right person.”

Kestrel’s eyes stung. The puppy sat and happily chewed her paws.

Verex said, “This is my fault.”

Kestrel said no. She said that she could no longer look at this dog, this warm and perfect gift, without seeing it hurt. It was different to give something up than to see it taken away. The difference, Kestrel said, was choice. A limited freedom, but better than none. Or so she had thought when Arin had given her two keys to his guarded house. She had thought the same when she’d offered him his country, nailed and bound and screwed tight with certain conditions. Better than nothing. She’d thought this before, and thought it again, but she didn’t believe it anymore. Now she knew that to give something up was to have it taken away.

Kestrel said all this silently to herself. The words felt so loud inside her head that she almost forgot that she hadn’t actually spoken them. But then she looked again at Verex and saw him waiting, worried, and remembered what he’d said last. She shook her head: no.

Quietly, Verex said, “My father needs for you to love him best. He needs for you to love what he loves. There’s no room for anything else.”

“I know.”

“I’m not sure you do. Kestrel, your dressmaker is dead.”

The news dropped hard. It sank and hit bottom. Kestrel saw Deliah, the woman’s gray eyes lined with heavy lashes—Arin’s eyes—as she lifted the ivory hem of the dress. The fabric went sheer, then solid as it settled. The skirt had swelled like a lung, then sighed.

Fear came over Kestrel in a nasty, shimmering breathlessness.

“She was seen meeting with the Herrani minister of agriculture,” Verex said. “Later, the captain of the guard came for her. She killed herself with her own shears.”

Kestrel remembered Thrynne’s bloody fingers in the guttering prison light.

“The meeting with the minister wasn’t why the captain was sent,” Verex said. “That was an excuse. The real reason happened the day your governor left. The reason was the stitches on his face. Neat seams. Kestrel, don’t you remember how perfect they were? My father saw. That dressmaker’s loyalty to Arin was clear on his face.”

The puppy was licking Kestrel’s palm. Warm wet skin, cooling. Breath gently huffed into Kestrel’s hand. The sky was a feather blanket of clouds, save for one blue hole in the fabric. A blue cloud in a white sky.

The hole grew wider, bluer. It pulled itself open. It silently stretched, like Kestrel’s guilt, like the moment when she’d seen Arin’s sewn face, like her father’s gaze, drawn to the moth on the painting’s frame. Kestrel saw satin blue, the color of Jess’s dress. Powdered-sugar clouds, Kestrel thought. In her memory, Ronan handed her a cake. She tasted it. It ate into her tongue like poison.

Verex said, “You need to watch yourself. If you play against my father, you’ll lose. This kind of game isn’t about intelligence, Kestrel. It’s about experience. And you’re conflicted, and so … hurt that…” He shook his head. “Please, just don’t do anything reckless.”

“For how long?”

“You know.”

Kestrel rested her wet palm on the big puppy’s black skull. Mine, she thought. Then she lifted her hand away and told Verex to take the dog by the collar.

How long? Until the emperor was dead.

“Kestrel … one day, we could change things.”