She curled her fingers into the green earth.

Chapter 44

The night was fresh and foretold summer’s end. The slow, hot day gave way to a breeze as cool as laundered sheets.

Kestrel, in the stables, fed Javelin a carrot. She promised him apples. “Soon,” she said, and wondered if horses notice how the seasons change. Do they see apples swell on the trees? Have they any way to mark the passage of time, or is it always now for them, with no sense of then? Maybe soon had no meaning either.

She’d meant to visit her father. She’d wanted to ask him about her childhood. Her memory was still a tattered thing sometimes, and Arin couldn’t tell her what he himself didn’t know. She wanted to ask her father: How was it when you gave me Javelin? What was my first word? Did you save my milk teeth, or did my nurse plant them in the ground as the Herrani do? What was I like, and how were you with me, and with my mother?

She wouldn’t have known some of the answers even if her memory hadn’t been damaged. Every one loses pieces of the past. But then it occurred to her that her father might not know either, or that he would, and say nothing. Or he would, and try to bargain his memories for the use of her dagger. Kestrel’s courage failed her. She didn’t go to the prison.

“You will when you can,” Arin had said when she’d told him.

“I should be able to now.”

“This isn’t a wound in the flesh. No one can say how long it takes to heal.”

Then she had noticed that Arin’s fingernails were blackened, and how he kept reaching into his pocket as if to reassure himself that something was there.

She had told herself not to guess. But she could never help guessing. A smile warmed her face.

He shut his eyes in mock chagrin. “Gods, can I keep nothing from you?”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“Devious thing. I won’t give it to you yet. It’s for Ninarrith.”

Time seemed strange; it was as if the ring were already on her smallest finger, the most vulnerable one.

“It’s simple,” Arin had hastened to say.

“I will love it.”

“Will you wear it?”

“Yes.”

“Always?”

“Yes,” she had said, “if you show me how to make one for you, too.”

Kestrel gave her horse a final caress. It was full night. She left the stables. Fireflies spangled the black lawn.

She thought about Arin’s expression when she’d asked if he would teach her how to forge a ring for him, and the whole conversation glowed within her like one of those fireflies. Watching them, you’d almost think that a firefly winks out of existence, then comes to life, vanishes again, returns. That when it’s not lit, it’s not there at all.

But it is.

A night breeze ruffled a curtain. Arin’s bedroom—she realized with soft surprise—had come to feel like her own. He was lazily tracing circles on her belly. It hypnotized her into a rare, pure unthinking.

He settled back on the bed, propped on one elbow. “It occurs to me that there is something we have never done.”

Her thoughts rushed back. She arched one brow.

He moved to whisper in her ear.

“Yes,” she laughed. “Let’s.”

“Now?”

“Now.”

So they reached for dressing robes and the bedside lamp, and padded barefoot through his suite, rushing slightly, and then through the silent house, suppressing giddy breaths. They couldn’t look each other in the face; a wild, loud joyousness threatened to break free if they did. They wound down the staircase and into the parlor.

They shut the door behind them, but still . . .

“We are going to wake the whole house,” Kestrel said.

“How should we do this?”

She led him to her piano. “Easy.”

He placed a palm on the instrument as if already feeling it vibrate with music. He cleared his throat. “Now that I think about it, I’m a little nervous.”

“You’ve sung for me before.”

“Not the same.”

“Arin. I’ve wanted to do this for a long time.”

Her words silenced him, steadied him.

Anticipation lifted within her like the fragrance of a garden under the rain. She sat at the piano, touching the keys. “Ready?”

He smiled. “Play.”