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“You did tell him.” It hurt some, that she’d betray me. I’d trusted few among the Court of Love, but she’d been among them. “He’s been watching me through you.”
“I told him… some things, yes. But it’s not as though I had a choice.”
I picked up my cup and downed my wine, sour as it was. “How long?”
"A while,” she said, sulkily.
That was how he’d known so much about me when I knew nothing about him. That was about to change. “Why me?” I asked. “Why did I catch his eye?”
She chuckled. “You’re you… Whose eye have you not caught?”
“No, with him, it’s different. He’s using me,” I admitted. “And I need to know why.” I had three days to know what he was planning, if anything.
“Arin is… He’s not like the rest of them.”
Someone at the bar laughed loud and hard. When I looked back at Ellyn again, she was watching the men and woman jest. Market farmers, most of them. Fruit and flower sellers. “How is he not like the rest of them?” I asked.
“His aides say he barely talks to them. He doesn’t have company. Sometimes he’s…” She trailed off, possibly wondering too late if she’d already said too much.
“I promise not to tell,” I lied. “Go on.”
“I don’t know if I should.”
“Ellyn, this is me. We are friends, are we not?” A friendship she’d betrayed. “Trust me.”
“The lords and ladies think he hides in his room, y’all think he’s behind his door, like a recluse. But he’s rarely there.” She’d whispered that last part, as though anyone here cared where the prince was or wasn’t.
“Then where is he?”
“Where else can he go, but here, in town?” she said.
No, that didn’t ring true. Arin would draw too much attention. I’d have known if he’d visited the inns and taverns. But she clearly assumed it. “Do you know why?”
“No, of course not. He doesn’t tell me anything. He just… he asks about you. Maybe he comes here, like us, to drink and make merry, to be someone else?”
“He can do that at dinner every night, like his father.” No, there was more to the man, more to all of this. Arin was too clever to tell Ellyn more than he needed to. I wouldn’t get anything else of use from her.
“He always asks about you, what you’re like, who you spend time with.”
“And what did you tell him?”
“The truth, I suppose.”
I chuckled and peered into my drink. “Well then, is it any wonder he hates me?”
She gave me a strange look, a look of confusion and disbelief. “He doesn’t hate you, Lark—”
“No?” The remains of my bruises declared otherwise. “He is not what he appears, Ellyn. I cannot get the measure of him. He’s dangerous. You should be careful around duplicitous men like him.”
She blinked, then frowned and tilted her head, studying my face. “He said almost those exact words about you.”
“He thinksmedangerous?” I laughed to cover the fact he was right. “Why?”
“I don’t know, precisely, just that he said…” She teased her cup, rolling its contents.
“He said what, Ellyn? You cannot leave me hanging.”
“When now I’ve said too much… So, what’s one more? He said you are ‘a beautiful lie.’”
