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I lean close. “Never once.”
“I’m going to stab you.”
“I don’t really believe you have a dagger.”
She draws herself up, challenge flaring in her eyes, brighter than the arch. This bickering reminds me of the way we’d tease each other in the workshop, and at once it’s both disheartening and exhilarating.
But suddenly her expression shifts, turning pained, and she presses her hands to her chest, as if it’s hard to breathe.
Istraighten, alarmed. “Tessa—”
“How could you do that to me?” She shoves me right in the chest, and I can feel all of her sorrow in the motion. Her voice breaks. “How could you?”
I freeze. For a moment in the darkness, I forgot.
Maybe I really did need Quint’s warning.
She’s so tense beside me that it feels like a cruelty to sit here. I shift back to my side of the carriage and tug my jacket straight. Shadows fall across her face, reminding me of the mask she once wore.
“Do you have any idea what I went through?” she whispers, her voice thin and reedy. “Do you?”
“No,” I say quietly. “Tell me.”
She goes still and looks at me.
“You died,” she whispers, as if it should be obvious. Her eyes fall closed, and she shudders. “You were my best friend. You were . . . ? I was . . . ?I was in . . .” She draws a breath. “Everything was so awful. I just wanted to help people. You did too—or so I thought. And then . . .” Her voice hitches. “You went . . . ?you went over the wall for me, and I heard the alarms . . .” She sniffs and dabs at her eyes. “And then, at daybreak, I saw . . .”
Her voice trails off.
I know what she saw.
She dabs at her eyes again and fixes her gaze on the window. Stonehammer’s Arch is fading into the distance. We’re nearing the end of the private road behind the palace now, and soon we’ll be thrust into the midst of the elites again.
“Tessa.”
She swallows so hard it looks painful. “Don’t.”
“I need you to understand something.”
“I don’t care.”
I lean forward and brace my arms against my knees. “Do you know,” I say evenly, “that every time I am called to the Hold, I worry I’ll find you in one of the cells?”
“I suppose that would have put a quick end to your game.”
“It wasn’t a game,” I snap.
She finally looks back at me. “Then what was it? You are King’s Justice. You are the brother to the king. One death away from the throne yourself. You have more power than almost anyone in Kandala.” She spreads her hands. “So what were you doing? Was it some kind of penance? Some way to assuage your guilt?” Her voice breaks again. “You’ve seen what’s happening to the people! You’ve seen it with your own eyes! I can’t blame your brother. He’s surrounded by people who probably only tell him what he wants to hear. But you’ve seen the suffering, the deaths and the desperation, and still you lined those prisoners up on the stage, and you—you—”
“Tessa.” Every word pelts me like a stone. My own chest feels tight.
She presses her fingertips to her eyes. “Why are you doing this to me?” she whispers. “Just throw me in the Hold with the others.”
“I can’t.” My voice is rough and broken, and it gets her attention.
She lowers her hands to blink at me.
“I can’t,” I say again, my eyes burning into hers. “I can’t, Tessa. You don’t know how many times I wished dawn wouldn’t come so quickly. How many times I wanted to stay with you instead of returning to this. How many times I wished I were truly Weston Lark, that Prince Corrick was the fabrication.”
