“I have to go back.” She hated the idea, but it felt good to keep her vow. “I promised Moriah and if I want to be a good person, I need to keep that promise.”
He frowned. “Moriah?”
“The black cat. She stopped the dream vines at the inn—but only if I promised to go back.”
His face sharpened. “Is she your jailer then, along with this Jada?”
“No. Moriah helped me.” She nodded, straightening her spine. “I have to be accountable. I have to learn how I can be in this world without hurting people.”
He watched her a moment longer, seeming to be thinking. At last he smiled ruefully. “I can see a lot of Rose in you. You’re both good people, to the core. Neither of you would ever hurt someone to benefit yourself.”
“I think most people are that way.”
He laughed, a bitter edge to it. “Oh, youareinnocent. Smart, but that tells me right there that you don’t know the world. Very few people are that way.”
“I’ve been selfish,” she insisted. “I know that.”
He contemplated her. “I think… I think that there’s nothing wrong with being selfish, with taking care of yourself first, especially someone like you, who hasn’t ever been cared for.”
Biting her lower lip so she wouldn’t start crying again, Thorn nodded. “I don’t want to be a bad person.”
He shook his head slowly. “I don’t think you are. Can I see that jewel again?”
She pulled it back out of her pocket and handed it to him. He scraped the wax away from the jewel with a thumbnail, holding the gem to the light and turning it back and forth as if it might reveal something.
“What did you see in this?”
“I saw your father give you the belt buckle and you were so happy.”
“I was happy. My father gave me very few gifts. I was sad that it disappeared and he was… angry. But I said that already.” Sebastien pressed his lips together as if to stop more words, his face shadowed. “Do you still have it?” he asked suddenly, brightening. “My belt buckle.”
“No.” She felt terrible. How she wished she could be the one to return it to him. “Jada sold it years ago. I only kept out the one jewel.”
“Why?” he asked.
She shrugged, more than a little embarrassed. “I liked your memories. They made me feel better.”
“I’m glad something of mine could help,” he said. “What other memories?”
“Two brown-haired women. You had tea with them a lot.”
“My older sisters.”
“Ah, you love them. I could always feel that. And you were riding a horse in the forest. Not Kismet, I think, but you felt free and at peace.”
“My father gave me Kismet after I lost the belt buckle,” Sebastien said. “Mostly because any son of his should have a proper steed,” he added, in a deeper voice, clearly an imitation of the king, “but a relief to me that he wasn’t still angry about my carelessness.”
“But you didn’t lose it—it was stolen from you.”
“Carelessness is carelessness,” Sebastien said ruefully. They both started at a knock on the roof of the carriage and he moved to look out the window. “We’re here.”
“Oh.” Time had flown by while they were talking.
She tried to put on a brave face, but something of her trepidation must have showed because Sebastien said, “I’ll go in with you. Have a word with this Jada, if she’s returned.”
“Oh, but no,” she exclaimed, then realized she’d contradicted him. Still, what if Jada harmed him? “I’ll be fine.”
The carriage came to a halt and he opened the door, Nonna leaping out with a yip. Sebastien followed Nonna, then held a hand toward Thorn. Taking it hesitantly—his skin was so smooth, so warm, that she imagined tingles running up her arm—she stepped down. They stood before the briar-wreathed gate, the thawing early-spring garden mostly hidden behind the black lattice of the thorny rose canes. Small knobs bulbed here and there along the length of the canes, the early promise of leaves to come. Sebastien still held her hand uplifted between them and she wasn’t at all sure what to do.
