“Would you consider changing his name?”

“No.”

“What if I begged?”

“Not a chance.”

“Roshar, the tiger has grown.”

“And what a sweet big boy he is.”

“You can’t bring him into a dining hall filled with hundreds of people.”

“He’ll behave. He has the mien and manners of a prince.”

“Oh, like you?”

“I resent your tone.”

“I’m not sure you can control him.”

“Has he ever been aught but the gentlest of creatures? Would you deny your namesake the chance to bear witness to our victorious celebration? And, of course, to the vision of you and Kestrel: side by side, Herrani and Valorian, a love for the ages. The stuff of songs, Arin! How you’ll get married, and make babies—”

“Gods, Roshar, shut up.”

Even if Arin hadn’t known how much Kestrel hated to enter the palace built for the Valorian governor during the period of colonization, he would have seen it in her tense shoulders, the way she touched the dagger at her hip, and practically snarled at Roshar when the prince had suggested that surely she could forgo, this one night, the barbarism of openly bearing a weapon.

Arin gave him a warning look. The prince pretended to look innocently confused, then shrugged and moved to walk ahead of them, the half-grown tiger slinking at his heels. The tiger was eerily docile, even for a young one raised by humans. It pushed its head up under Roshar’s hand like a house cat. Arin watched its solid sway, the already powerful shoulder blades rising and falling under its fur. Arin sensed but couldn’t name the origin of what made people (animals, too, apparently) long to follow the prince. With an uncomfortable prickle, he suspected that if he asked and Roshar deigned to give a straight answer, the prince would say that what ever it was, Arin possessed it, too.

A strange feeling: as if filaments trailed from Arin’s body. A thousand fishing lines snagging attention. Here and there. Little tugs. People caught on the lines. The way sometimes people couldn’t look him in the eye, and when they did they became fish trying to breathe air.

He wished it weren’t like that.

He knew it would be necessary.

Roshar and the tiger dis appeared inside, leaving Kestrel and Arin alone on the path.

Kestrel was stiff, her delicate shoes planted in the walkway’s gravel. She had lifted the hem of her storm-green skirts, the gesture of a lady, but he saw how she made fists of the fabric.

“I’m sorry,” he said, guessing what troubled her: the memory of the Firstwinter Rebellion. Her dead friends, Arin’s deception, the halls of the governor’s palace choked with corpses.

She gave him a narrow look. “Part of you isn’t sorry.”

He couldn’t deny it.

But she softened and said, “I’m not innocent either. I, too, feel sorry and not sorry about things I’ve done.” She let her dress’s hem fall to the stones and touched three fingers to the back of his hand.

Arin forgot, for a moment, where he was and what they were discussing. A marvel: that such a light touch could feel like a whole caress, that his body could ignite so easily.

Now she looked amused.

“Let’s leave.” He slid a hand beneath her loose hair and thumbed the slope of her neck, feeling the fluttery pulse there. Her expression changed, amusement melting into slow plea sure. He said, “Let’s not go in.”

“Arin.” She sighed. “We must go in.” Her slightly parted mouth closed again into a tense line.

“What else is troubling you?”

“The queen hasn’t said a word to you.”

“Well,” Arin said, uncomfortable, thinking of various reasons for Inisha’s silence.

“All of the Dacrans are too quiet.”

“Not Roshar.”

“Him, too. He just says a lot without meaning much.”

Arin paused, then said, “I believe in our alliance.”

“I want to, too.”

He offered her his hand.

They went inside.

They sat at a table on a raised dais in the dining hall, the four of them in a line, Arin and the queen occupying the center and Kestrel and Roshar to their sides, an arrangement Roshar maneuvered without seeming to as the hundreds of people already seated watched them.

The queen gave Arin a sidelong glance, her black eyes unreadable. She said nothing, and didn’t look at him again.

Roshar, the tiger curled at his feet, barely touched his food as the first courses were served, but instead drank the green Dacran liqueur he favored. Arin saw, beyond the silhouette of the queen, how Roshar clenched and released the glass. His fingers were unsteady.