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Clare found herself staring at Nissa’s chest, where a pendant dangled from a thin gold chain. The pendant was the same gold as the chain, a long slender rectangle with symbols etched onto the surface. There was something about it—the simplicity or the elegance of the etchings, she wasn’t certain—that appealed to her.
“I like your necklace.”
Nissa studied Clare, as if looking for sincerity or an ulterior motive. Then she shook herself and said, “Thank you. It’s…from Arlan.” She tucked it behind her shirt and Clare had the sense of having made a misstep. But how was she supposed to have known it was from the husband Nissa was fighting with?
“Now,” Nissa said, forced brightness in her voice, “I think I know just the look for you.” She proceeded to paint Clare’s face, then moved on to twisting her hair into an elaborate upsweep, chattering endlessly the entire time. Clare only half-listened. Numair’s cousin had a pretty voice, and she found herself focusing on the cadence and tone of the words rather than the content.
It was only once that cadence halted, and she found Nissa looking at her expectantly, that she realized she’d missed a question. “I’m afraid I missed that.”
“You and Numair—how did you meet?”
I watched him pickpocket a man, then followed him to an inn, then punched him in the throat a few days later because he was following me. Then he helped me scheme my way into getting noticed by all of high society, and then I discovered he was the second prince of Faelhorn. “That is…a long story.”
“I love stories.”
“Yet I’m afraid I’m not much of a storyteller.”
Nissa’s hands paused, having put the final pin in the delicate twists she’d formed in Clare’s hair, her eyes meeting Clare’s in the mirror. “I care about my cousin. As much as he allows us to. I don’t want to see him hurt.”
Clare had a deep suspicion she wouldn’t like where this went.
“I don’t want you to be hurt, either. And if the two of you could be here, if he could be who he is here, I wouldn’t warn either of you away from each other. But you’re both returning to Veralna tomorrow. And I know a thing or two about wanting a man who feels like he can’t be who he truly is. It’s not something I’d wish on anyone.”
Denial was a hard kick in Clare’s stomach. For the first time in her life, she thought she understood how a person might end up spluttering, though she had no intention of allowing herself to do so. She took a moment to be sure she wouldn’t and then said, in calm, measured words, “Numair and I are friends.”
“And I am suggesting that that is what you stay. For both of your sakes.” Nissa smiled, a little sadly. “For what it’s worth, Clare, I like you. And in another world, I think you could have made him happy.”
Nissa’s words wouldn’t leave Clare’s head as she paced back and forth in the small common area, waiting for Numair to come out of their room. She’d left Nissa to finish her own preparations, hoping to hurry them along. She wanted to be moving, leaving, and to that effect she’d put on her coat—Numair’s coat. It was pulled tight around her, and she clung to it as she’d never clung to anything but her guitar in her life.
She wanted to go back half an hour and un-hear Nissa’s opinion. And then she told herself it didn’t matter, because Nissa was wrong. Clare had never expected, never wanted, anything more from Numair than friendship. He didn’t want anything more than that from her. So she didn’t need to panic or feel like she stood on a rug that was being pulled from beneath her, because nothing had changed. Nothing would change. So there was nothing to worry about.
I don’t mind so much.
I don’t either.
Their door opened. Her gaze snapped to it and everything in her settled. Numair looked good, in the black he almost always wore, but with detail work in silver threading. But it wasn’t his clothes or how he wore them that made her stare, unable to draw her gaze away. It was the way he looked at her—open and unguarded as he never was in Veralna, and staring in return, a smile curving his lips.
Nissa’s door opened. She stepped into the hallway, looked between them and sighed. “We should go before we’re last in line.” She marched past them, opened the door, and let out a startled, “Oh.”
A man stood on the threshold. He was easily a foot taller than Nissa, with broad shoulders and biceps the size of saplings. For all his bulk, the immediate impression Clare got from him was, oddly, gentleness.
“Hey, Niss.”
“Arlan,” she said softly.
“Are the girls here?”
Nissa shook her head. “With my mother, at Averna’s.”
“Can I come in?”
Nissa bit her lip. “Numair is?—”
“Leaving,” Numair said firmly, nodding to Clare, who took the hint and followed him to the door. They slipped out, but ten paces from the door Clare stopped, looking back at the house where Arlan was disappearing inside.
“Are you sure she’ll be all right?”
“Neither one of them would ever physically hurt the other, if that’s what you’re concerned about.” It was. “Trust me, I know precisely what’s wrong with their marriage, and it’s nothing like that.”
