Dax’s crooked arm cradled his head of dark curls and his fingers were stained with ink. Beside him glowed a candle nearly burned down to the base of the brass holder.
Roa crossed the room and shook him awake. “Dax.”
He startled, arms flailing, nearly knocking the candle over. Roa snatched it up before that happened, spilling wax on the floor.
He squinted through the soft light. When he finally recognized her, his spine straightened.
“What are you doing in here?” she asked.
Dax looked from the rush pen to the alabaster inkwell. When his gaze fell on the scattered parchments laid out across the desktop, he immediately tried to shuffle them all into a pile.
Roa touched his shoulder and Dax stilled. Setting down the candle, she reached for the piece on top of the pile.
It was a letter.
From Roa.
She’d been sending him letters all winter as part of her lessons. It was practice, her tutors told her, for the day she became mistress of the House of Song.
She stared at her own elegant handwriting. He’d circled various words from her letter and copied them over and over all down the back ofthe parchment. It was an exercise one of her own tutors had given him last summer, to help with his reading and writing difficulties.
She glanced up from the page. “I thought they never reached you.”
Dax stared miserably into his lap.
“Why didn’t you send any back?” she demanded.
“Why do you think?” he whispered, his knee bouncing nervously.
“If I knew,” she muttered, “I wouldn’t have asked.”
“Because I couldn’t read them!”
Her lips parted. This was part of the reason he’d spent last summer in the House of Song, learning from her tutors—because his own tutors had failed to teach him.
Roa had thought he’d been getting better.
“You didn’t read them? Not any of them?”
His silence confirmed it.
For some reason, this made her angry. “You’re the son of the king, Dax. You could have had someone read them to you.”
That blush crept into his cheeks again.
“You could have dictated a response,” she continued. “People dictate letters all the time.”
Dax glanced up at her now, looking even more miserable. As if she didn’t understand at all.
Roa looked down to the parchment in her hands, her attention catching on her name.
He’d written it over and over in shaky black letters, all down the page.
Her pulse sped up at the sight of it.
“What if Theo’s right?” he whispered, staring at the quill and the inkpot. “What if there’s something wrong with me and I never learn how to do this?”
The thought of Theo and the things he’d said in the boats that morning made Roa burn with anger all over again.
