She said, “I lied.”

“Yes.”

“Tell me my lies.”

“Gods.” He raked a hand through his hair. “You lied about the treaty. You agreed to marry someone else so that I could have a piece of paper. You tried to help the eastern plainspeople, yet let me think that you were responsible for their deaths. The way you acted. Selfish. Horrible. You worked for my spymaster and you lied about that, too, and he lied to me, and it makes me hate him now. I hate myself for not seeing it. He knew. He let you. You committed treason, Kestrel. How could you do that? You should be dead.” His voice lowered, dug in deep. “The worst—I don’t know—the worst is that you lied about—” He stopped himself, drawing a ragged breath. “You lied for a very long time.”

There was a silence. Slowly, Kestrel said, “I did all that for you.”

He flushed. “Maybe you had other reasons.”

“That’s the one you care about.”

“Yes.”

She warred with what to say. It was strange to talk about reckless choices she didn’t remember. It helped to see his anger, the way it blistered the surface of things. It was a relief not to be alone in her anger. It was folly, what her old self had done, but brave, too. She could see that. She could see how he saw it, and how it made things worse for him.

Easier, though, for her: to know she hadn’t always been this husk of a vanished person. Then harder, to glimpse who she’d been. She saw the great difference between that person and the one sitting in a chair because she was too weak to stand. Emotions whirl pooled inside her. “Your question.”

“Never mind.”

“I’ll tell you.”

He shook his head. “Not necessary.”

“It is you. It’s true, I haven’t wanted it to be you who tells me things I can’t recall. Not you.” She saw his flinch, and the effort to hide it. Tears sprang to her eyes. “Who are you, that you get to know so much about me that even I don’t know? Why do you get to tell me who I am? How did you get so much power? I have none. It’s not fair. You are unfair.” Her voice broke. “I am unfair.”

His expression changed. “Kestrel.”

She held her breath until her lungs ached. She couldn’t speak. Here was the truth, it peeled itself open: she was the reason she was in that prison. She had made some fatal, unknown mistake. Arin looked like a good culprit, but he wasn’t the right one.

She was. It had been her fault, hers alone.

He reached across the table. His warm hand dwarfed hers. She saw it through her swimming vision. Those black-rimmed nails.

Blacksmith.

A sudden understanding held her still. She became aware of the weight of the dagger at her hip. Her sight cleared. She looked at Arin. He looked young. And too careful, and worried, and uncertain, and . . . something new was emerging, she saw it. It changed the quality of his expression the way light changes every thing. A small sort of hope.

“Maybe,” he said, “we could try being honest with each other.”

She wondered what was in her expression that hope would grow in his. She wondered what he saw. “Arin,” she said, “I like the dagger.”

He smiled.

Chapter 13

“They have a foothold in the south now,” Roshar said.

“I know,” said Arin.

“I doubt you know anything that doesn’t have to do with that wraith of yours.”

“Enough.”

They had been talking like this for some time, Roshar gradually dropping his veneer of needling humor to vent real frustration, Arin growing quiet, entrenched. They were in an office adjacent to the library, the table between them blanketed with maps and papers. The room had been chosen for privacy. Prob ably no one could hear them beyond the locked door. Or if people did, down the first floor’s north hallway, they heard not words but muffled tones. Despite the hot day, the diamond-paned windows remained shut because Roshar had complained of a chill. In truth, the prince hadn’t wanted their conversation to carry into the garden. But this meeting, which was supposed to develop tactics to keep the Valorian general off the peninsula’s shores, was deteriorating to the point that Arin wouldn’t have been surprised if Roshar broke something, possibly one of the windows, if only because they’d make the loudest noise.

“We lost that island, and you . . . where are you?” Roshar’s tight hands opened and spread wide. “Are you even here? No, you’re not. You’re upstairs, roaming her halls, roaming her head. Arin, this needs to end.”