“Why is she here?”

“To take command of the city.”

“Arin. Why is she here?”

He was silent, and she saw from his expression that he guessed what she was going to say.

“She’s here,” Kestrel told him, “to show her soldiers that this land is as good as hers. The Dacrans don’t like the alliance. They don’t see what they get out of it. But they will begin to see, once she establishes herself in this city. It’s not just for your new weapon, or for the sake of keeping the empire at bay that she agreed to help a small country with a weakened population. It’s because if you win this war, she can annex Herran and make it part of the east.”

He didn’t deny it. “She doesn’t need me to do that,” he said finally. “She could take it by force. Using me wouldn’t help much.”

She saw what he meant. It was true: Arin’s people loved him—she’d seen it, it was plain and powerful, the love flared up every time he smiled at someone, said a brief word—but he was no governor. No resurrected member of the massacred royal family. His political power was uncertain. Kestrel didn’t think she was wrong about the queen’s designs on this country, but her stomach clenched as she recognized how unavoidably, obviously true it was that the queen had wanted Arin for himself alone. “She must enjoy you, then. Maybe marriage isn’t exactly what she wants from you. Still, you should give her what she wants. You might get a nice future out of it. At the very least, you should ask.”

His expression seemed to shrink and tighten. “I won’t.”

She hitched the basket into the crook of her arm. “I must go. The cook needs these supplies.” She was mortified to hear her voice break.

Arin’s face changed. “Kestrel, forgive me.”

“There’s nothing to forgive.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“I don’t care.”

He shook his head, eyes not leaving hers. He was wholly altered now, quiet with surprise, alive with some new idea. He touched fingertips to her cheek, traced the path of a tear. “But you do,” he said wonderingly.

She broke away.

“Wait.”

She kept her back to him as she hurried, basket banging against her hip. “Don’t follow me.” She wiped her dirty wrist across her face, heard her breath escape in an ugly sound. “I will never speak with you again if you follow me.”

He didn’t.

Kestrel turned down the lamp and climbed into the high bed next to Sarsine. She could have slept on a divan in another room in the suite, but Sarsine wouldn’t hear of it, and Kestrel, though shy, had been touched.

Sarsine turned beneath the light blanket and studied Kestrel, her loose hair and lashes and brows very black against the white pillow. She was looking at her in a way difficult for Kestrel to name, though maybe only because her own emotions were such a mess. Sarsine looked too much like Arin.

Abruptly, as if changing a conversation, Kestrel said, “I used to share a bed with my friend Jess.”

“I remember her. You saved her life.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“I was there. She’d been poisoned. She would have died if not for you.”

But all Kestrel could recall was Jess’s accusation of betrayal. She tried to explain to Sarsine, but didn’t have enough pieces of the story for it to make sense. Sarsine listened, then said, “Maybe you both changed too much. Or you’ll see her again one day, and things will be clearer between you. But I saw what you did for her. How you loved her.” Sarsine pulled the blanket up over Kestrel’s shoulder.

Protective. That was the word for Sarsine’s furrowed brow, her gentle mouth.

“Does something else trouble you?” she asked. “You can talk to me. I can keep a secret.”

Kestrel felt her eyes glitter. She started and stopped and finally said, “I don’t know how to say what’s wrong. I don’t know anything.”

“I’m your friend. That much, you can know for certain.” Sarsine touched Kestrel’s cheek, letting silence be a comfort. Then she blew out the light.

But Kestrel couldn’t sleep. Sarsine was an eerily quiet sleeper. Kestrel was used to Jess, and remembered how her friend would kick. Jess muttered as she dreamed. Kestrel missed her, remembered and missed her at the same time, which made her wonder if memory is always a kind of missing. The pillow was hot and damp beneath her cheek.

Kestrel imagined a melody. A tight rhythm, each note crisp and clean. She imagined how she’d play it. The control. Little bright pops of sound. She focused on that, because if she didn’t, she knew where her thoughts would go next . . . though as soon as she glimpsed what she’d have to avoid, it rose up within her in full being.