When Kiyan was close to me, my entire body feltalive.
“Are you going to tell him?” he asked, an echo of my own question.
There was so much more intertwined in this than I realized. Kiyan was hunting and torturing his own people at the bidding of the Viceroy. But was it because he wanted to? Or was he like I was—working for the Citadel and at night staging my own rebellion? He was so wrapped up in different layers that every time I thought I understood him I got caught on another facet of who he was under the cold mask.
“No,” I responded, tucking a freshly cut curl of hair behind my ear. His gaze followed my hand, then traced down my neck and back to my face. “I’m not going to tell him. Neither of us are. Because in the end, it doesn’t serve us for the Viceroy to know our secrets. We’ll just continue as we are.”
I swallowed, taking in his blazing eyes, his nose, slightly crooked from a bad break, and the scar that sliced across his cheek. He had an incredibly hard exterior, but underneath he seemed as desperate and passionate about his land as I was about mine.
That had to count for something.
“So do we have a truce between us then?” I held out a hand as if to shake it.
He looked down at my extended palm and then back up to my face, rubbing his hand across his chin. Something then crossed his face that I couldn’t read—surprise maybe, or perhaps relief.
Instead of taking my hand to shake it, he took it in his calloused fingers and brought it to his lips.
“A truce,” he repeated against my skin, his lips soft on my hand. He looked down at me, the momentary exhaustion and weariness gone from his gaze. “I’ve never had one of those before.”
* * *
After Kiyan left, I still felt his presence like a storm cloud in my periphery, foreboding, and perhaps just the slightest bit of excitement in the air.
I slept fitfully, after combing through my mother’s journal for any other details that might help us with what lay ahead. But amongst the riddles and songs and letters, I couldn’t find anything that might speak to what she had uncovered about Queen Azari’s crown.
In the morning we packed up quickly, my fascination unending when the silver-helmeted guards reduced the tents to twigs and leaves once more. It had been a veritable palace compared to my home with Safiyya and Nani, and now it was nothing more than forest debris.
The Viceroy rode ahead with the other guards, leaving me and Kiyan to travel together.
I thought about our conversation from the night before over and over.
I didn’t want Kiyan to be suspicious of me—distrustful was fine, but as long as he didn’t suspect I was going to take off with the crown, things would be easier. Which meant I had to get him to see past my initial lies and trust me, at least a little.
A truce, then.
It was time I laid the groundwork of that truce.
“Do you have any family?” I asked as we rode through the forest toward the lower mountains.
His head snapped to me, his forehead creasing in confusion. “Did you think I just sprang up, fully formed?”
My face heated, but I persisted. “Not quite. But you are alone.”
He studied me for a moment.
“There’s no one,” he said after a long pause. “That’s why I work for the Viceroy. Even if there was, they wouldn’t want me as their family anymore. Not after what I’ve done.”
What I’ve done.
His words were bitter.
“So why work for him? Why do his bidding?”
He set his jaw and stared straight ahead, his gaze focused on the mountains.
“Why not?” His knuckles were white on his reins. “I was living on the city streets when I got the job at the palace. I was scraping by, getting beaten and spat on by hags and giants, fighting soldiers for coins and not doing much of anything. I was good at hunting and good at ferreting out traitors.”
He kept staring straight ahead. I leaned forward in my saddle, and my metal-legged horse Cheeni sensed my mood, and matching Kiyan’s pace. “What a load of bullshit.”
