“I don’t understand what the problem is.” Jas’s voice was edged in frustration. Sweat beaded along his hairline dampening his black curls. “Isn’t he your husband? Shouldn’t you be sleeping in his tent?” And then, lowering his voice, he said, “People are beginning to talk.”
She shot her brother a scathing look.
Jas ignored it and forged ahead. “You missed the Gleaning last night. Where were you?”
“It’s none of your business where I was.” It was hot beneath her sandskarf. Roa wiped the sweat from her forehead with her wrist.
“You’re married to the king. You can’t just run off to meet Theo whenever you feel like it.”
Roa glanced around them, but they were far behind the others here. No one had heard him.
“If you knew where I was,” she growled, “why did you ask?”
Jas didn’t answer. Just fixed his gaze straight ahead, where Dax had stopped hammering tent pegs and rose as Lirabel approached him. The two of them walked away from the caravan, then stood close together, deep in conversation.
“And anyway, it’s not what you think,” Roa admitted. “I may have gone to meet Theo, but he didn’t come to meet me.”
Jas jerked his gaze from Lirabel to Roa.
“I haven’t seen him in months. He won’t even answer my letters.”
“Well, I can’t say I blame him. You broke his heart.”
Roa looked away, feeling like a scolded child.
Again, Jas’s gaze wandered to the girl speaking with the king. Roa looked back to Lirabel too. Her friend’s bed had been empty when Roa crawled into it after midnight, and it was still empty when she’d woken at sunrise.
Roa was trying not to think about why that might be.
Now Lirabel’s hair was tied up in her sky-blue sandskarf, but a few black curls peeked out, and there were dark half-moons under her eyes. She seemed... upset about something. More than once, Dax reached to touch her. As if to comfort her.
Roa kept quiet, watching her brother watch Lirabel. Thinking back over the past week, she realized she hadn’t once seen Jas and Lirabel in the same room together. In fact, just a few days ago at dinner, when Jas entered the room, Lirabel had abruptly left it. Roa wouldn’t have thought anything of it if Lirabel hadn’t done the very same thing the next morning at breakfast.
It was odd, the way they were suddenly avoiding each other. For all their lives, Jas could always be found close to Lirabel. He followed her around like a pup, and Lirabel—who’d spent years as a ward in their home and therefore felt indebted to their father—believed she had no choice but to let Jas hover.
Now, ever since the coronation, when Dax had elevated Lirabel’s status from ward to royal emissary, it was Dax who Lirabel spent all her time with. Sitting next to him at meetings. Transcribing his letters. Coming whenever he called, going wherever he told her to. And it wasn’t just Jas who Lirabel kept her distance from. Recently, a gulf had opened up between her and Roa too. One that seemed to get wider and wider all the time. Roa had no idea where it came from. Nor did she know how to bridge it. Because Lirabel was always with the king, or away in the scrublands. As if she were avoiding Roa.
“Theo needs time.” Jas’s voice brought Roa out of her thoughts and back to the present. “Maybe you should give him that. Leave him be.”
Roa stopped. “Give him up, you mean.”
Jas reached his arm around her shoulders, pulling her into a hug. Despite being a year younger than Roa, her little brothertowered over her. “I know it isn’t easy. I just don’t want you getting hurt.”
Roa breathed in the smell on his clothes—smoky-sweet, like the heart-fire. “Theo would never hurt me,” she said.
Jas sighed again, out of exasperation this time. “I’m talking about Firgaard. They consider you an outlander queen. They already don’t trust you, Roa.” He squeezed her shoulder. “Your nightly absences don’t go unnoticed.” It was the same thing Essie told her. “If you give the court in the capital a concrete reason to believe you’re disloyal...”
“Like thekingis disloyal?” Roa’s temper flared. “Everyone seems to be fine with Dax’snightly absences, but I slip away and my own brother accuses me of treason?”
“I’m not...” Jas’s arm fell away from her shoulders. “I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m just trying to keep you safe.”
Roa prickled at that. “I have never in my life needed you to keep me safe.”
“Roa...”
She was done talking about this. Abruptly, she changed the subject. “Are you coming the whole way with us?”
Jas sighed, letting her change it, and nodded. “I promised Papa I’d see you safely to Firgaard.”
