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“So we will both…forget, then?”
“As much as we can.”
The wind blew across the balcony and she shivered. He shook his head. “Come inside, your lips are turning blue.”
“They are not,” she disagreed. As if she could even see her own lips. But when he pushed the sliding door open, she preceded him through it without argument.
Clare wandered through Numair’s bedroom, grateful for the room’s warmth, no matter that she would never admit it. His room was like the rest of his estate—dark and alive. Dark paint on the walls, black wooden furniture, and growing things everywhere. Tall planting vases, their outer shells painted deep indigo, rested on every piece of furniture save the bed, vines crawling out of them and up the ironwork trellises that covered portions of the walls.
A scrap of green cloth caught her attention, a scarf hanging from his dresser mirror. A familiar scarf. One purchased by a man she’d accosted in an alley.
Shit. She’d punched the second prince of Faelhorn in the throat.
“I can explain that,” he said quickly. Did he sound...embarrassed?
“Please do.”
“I was...curious. You did bend a man to your will with a single sentence.”
Ice went down her spine. “So you were awake at the bar.” Of course he’d been awake. He’d never been drunk in the first place.
“I’ll keep your secret, if you keep another of mine.”
“Such as?”
“This.” A nearby vine grew, reaching for her, threading through her fingers. A bud opened at its tip, a brilliant purple flower blossoming in her palm. The petals, soft like velvet, brushed against her skin.
She frowned. “They don’t know you’re a nature mage?”
“No.”
And he’d shown her that side of himself because he hadn’t thought he was going to be alive long enough for it to matter. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. “I’ll keep it to myself, for the answer to a question. When you pulled that knife on the king, did you honestly think you had any chance of succeeding?”
“If I said I had no idea what you’re talking about, would you forget that, too?”
“Not that one, no.”
He was quiet for so long that she turned to look at him. He leaned against the wall, his hands shoved into his pockets, his eyes dark. “You stood,” he said finally. “No one stands under his power.”
“You weren’t kneeling.”
“He doesn’t use it on me. Not in public. If you decide you want to confess my sins to him, find an anonymous way to do it. If he discovers you can so much as blink without permission under his hold, he’ll kill you.”
She sighed. “I have no interest in telling him.” And from what little she’d learned, she didn’t need a reason for why Numair would want to kill Alaric. She just wanted to know if he’d actually thought he could, but she could tell by the set of his shoulders he wasn’t going to answer.
Which was answer enough, really.
“I barely know you,” she said, “and yet all of our secrets are tangled up together. Should I be afraid of that? Should I be afraid of you?”
“I don’t mean you any harm, but many a person has caused a great deal of harm they never intended. Should I be afraid of you?”
The Song chose that moment to stir in her chest, a brief flare of heat within before she silenced it, images of islands sinking beneath the depths of cold water filling her mind.
“Yes.” She said it with a sadness of certainty that left no room for doubt. She was, to admit a truth she would never admit, afraid of herself, and not only because of the Song. There existed facets of her soul ground long ago to dust and hardened by cold, and when she thought and acted with those parts of herself there were few cruelties she could not imagine, and very little that could move her in the way of tenderness. “If you were smart, you’d throw me out and never talk to me again.”
“I thought we established earlier that I’m a fool.”
She shook her head. “We established that you act like one.” But he obviously wasn’t going to throw her out. Before she could change her mind, she pulled the red envelope from her pocket and held it out to him. “What does it say?”
