I shook my head. I absolutely would not exchange one prison for another. “I’m not in danger. If he’d been interested in me, he could have taken me with him.”
He ignored that. “I’ve already asked the Lady; she was agreeable for a very generous sum. Wren was not so agreeable, and she was loud about it. But she’s afraid you’re in danger.”
I stared at him. “You talked to the Lady about me staying in the palace? And without checking with me first? Asking how I felt about it?”
“Two days unconscious,” he said, eyes flashing with anger. “That’s what he did to you. You’re only here because Luna happened to find you. If she hadn’t, gods only know how long you’d have been in that place before anyone found you.”
“I can’t stay in the damned palace.”
“Why not?”
The softness in his eyes was too much, too dangerous. I had to add another course of bricks to the wall between us.
“Because…I’m a thief.”
He blinked. “You’re—what?”
“I have good, steady hands because I steal things in the market. Only what me and Wren need in order to stay alive, in order to maybe, possibly, have the hope of freedom one day. We only take from people who can afford it, but we take nonetheless. Things we aren’t entitled to have.”
I knew it was a risk to tell him, to Wren and me both. But I had no power here beyond the truth.
“A criminal,” he said. “A criminal in my palace. Although that does explain the seams.”
“The seams?”
“ ‘You didn’t check the seams,’ ” he added in a high-pitched voice.
“I didn’t sound like that.” But I suspected I soundedexactlylike that, and I didn’t like that he’d been able to capture me so well.
“You did.” He frowned. “You also recognized that the bandits were thieves and you knew how to search the smithy. I was a spy in the Eastern Army. I know how to read people, and I should have put that together.”
“I cannot relate to that feeling. Please explain it to me. Is it difficult to realize that you misjudged someone, that you missed signs, and that you have to completely reevaluate who they are?”
“It’s getting easier,” he said dryly. “Have you ever been caught?”
“Not yet. I’m good, and I’m careful. I try to avoid notice. Or usually.”
“Except when saving a prince from assassins?”
“I broke a rule.”
He watched me in silence for a moment. “Do you regret it?”
“Would you, if you were me?”
He was quiet for a moment. “Probably.”
I nodded. “Sometimes it’s better—safer—to be invisible.”
“I see you.”
He said the words slowly, softly, and sent a shard of heat through my chest, an arrow hitting its mark. I should have kept moving to the door, quickened my step. Anything to get clear of the crackling connection between us. But the fact that he’d read me so well still felt like a vulnerability. A tender spot that could be poked.
“You shouldn’t.”
“While we’re clearing the air about our secret identities, isthere anything else I should know about you? Are you secretly a foreign spy? Juggler?”
“No and why?”
