Arin heard the music long before he reached the room. It came down the hall in an overwhelming tide. It called him like a question his throat ached to answer. He could feel the parts where he was meant to sing. The song tried to batter its way outside him.

He thought he might have dropped the bucket. He didn’t know where it was. He was standing before the music room door. It seemed to have materialized in front of him. He set a palm to it. The door felt alive. The music pulsed in its grain.

Arin used the second key to open the door. The room was empty save for her. Kestrel saw him, and the music stopped.

43

For a heartbeat, Kestrel thought that she’d imagined him. Then she realized that he was real. It shattered her. The icy shell around her shivered into a thousand stinging pieces.

He shut the door. He kept his palm flat against it, his fingers fanned wide. He looked at her.

Later, Kestrel understood what the shock had cost her. She’d been too slow. It wasn’t until he met her eyes that she dropped deep into the knowledge that they were both in danger.

It took every ounce of will not to glance at the screen that hid her father. Her father, who would hear anything that they said, who could see Kestrel now. She saw herself as he must see her. She’d risen to her feet. She must be deathly pale. One hand gripped the music rack. She was staring toward the door, which was just out of her father’s line of sight.

Kestrel raised her hand. Stop, she begged Arin. Stay. Don’t move.

But the gesture set something in him on fire. His palm slid from the door. And she saw the determination in his face, the wild suspicion, the way it was already shaped into a question. With sudden horror, she realized what he was going to ask.

He strode toward her.

“No,” she told him. “Get out.”

It was too late. He was already at the piano. Her father could see.

“You will not shut me out,” Arin said.

Kestrel sank back down onto the piano bench. Her stomach lurched: this was a disaster. She had imagined, again and again, Arin looking at her in this way, saying what he’d just said. Suspecting what he must suspect. She had even—tentatively, feeling like a trespasser—prayed to his gods for the chance to see him again. But not like this. Not with her father watching.

Her options dwindled.

She shuffled her sheet music, then stopped when she saw that her hands were unsteady. “Don’t be so dramatic, Arin. I’m busy. Go away, won’t you? You’ve interrupted my practice.” She reached for her pen. We’re being observed, she planned to scrawl on the sheet music. I’ll explain everything later.

Arin grabbed the pen from her hand and threw it across the room. It clattered on the stone floor. “Stop it. Stop pretending that I don’t matter.”

She stared at the pen. She couldn’t fetch it now. Her father was no fool; he might guess what she wanted to do with it. Even her attempt a moment ago had been a risk.

And then Arin asked his question. “What did you do for that treaty?” he demanded.

She wanted to drop her face into her hands. She wanted to laugh—or weep, she wasn’t sure. Something was churning inside her that felt frighteningly like panic. She would have moved to leave if she didn’t think that Arin might physically stop her—and that, if nothing else, would bring her father into the room.

She tried to speak coolly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she told Arin. “I’m sure I haven’t done anything for any treaty. I’ve had a wedding to plan. I’ll have plenty of time for politics when I’m empress.”

“You know exactly which treaty I mean. You placed it in my hand. And I swear that it has the traces of you all over it.”

“Arin—”

“It gave me my country’s freedom. It saved my life.” His face was pale, his gray eyes urgent. He towered over her as she remained sitting. The piano bench felt like a raft at sea. “What did you do to make the emperor sign it?” Arin’s anxious voice rang loud. It didn’t matter that he had spoken in Herrani. Her father knew Herrani. Kestrel knitted her hands. She thought of how her father had told the deserter to kill himself rather than live with his shame. Would he do that to her if she answered Arin truthfully? What would the general do to him?

“Arin, please. I did nothing for that treaty. I don’t have time for your delusions.”

“But you have time to meet with Tensen. Don’t you?”

Innocently, she said, “Who?”

His mouth went hard.

Don’t say it, Kestrel told him. Please, please. She didn’t know if Tensen had somehow told Arin, or if Arin had guessed, but if he said the word Moth out loud … she remembered her father brushing the moth from Tensen’s painting to the floor. The general’s eyes had questioned the sight of a masker moth—infamous eater of fabrics, denizen of wardrobes—in such an odd place. It wouldn’t take much for her father to guess what that moth was doing there, and why.

Especially if Arin asked her if she was Tensen’s Moth.

Don’t. She wanted to shake him. Don’t.

Frustration rippled across Arin’s face. She saw him war with himself.

Yes, Kestrel told him. That’s right. You can’t tell the emperor’s future daughter the code name of your spy, or admit the part Tensen plays for you at court. No, don’t say it. What if you’re wrong? You’d risk people’s lives. Arin, you can’t.

With forced calm, Arin said, “If I’ve been deluded, it’s because you have been pretending. You’re pretending even now. You are not so cold. You tried to help the plainspeople. When we were together in the city tavern—”