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Arryn turns to me with a sad sort of smile.
“I’m not prying,” she says, “but it’s clear that something happened between the two of you last night, and it’s clear it wasn’t good.”
I pull back like I’ve been slapped. Arryn holds her hands up. Her palms flash in the blue-green light of the glowsoft orbs like a flag of surrender.
“Hey, I don’t want to get involved,” she says. “I just— I think Phaedron is a good guy, is all.”
I make a sound that comes out louder and harsher than I’d expected. A week ago, I’d have agreed with her. In the Silver City or hells, anytime before the disaster that was last night, I’d have agreed with her. I thought Phaedron was a good guy.
And maybe he still is. Maybe it’s just too much to ask a good guy to care for a parasitic magician. I don’t know anymore.
“Could you give him a second chance?” Arryn finishes.
I suck in a breath and press my palms against my eyes.
“Look,” I begin. “It’s not— I mean, I’m not—”
My voice fades, evaporating before the sheer impossibility of describing this mess to another person. Behind us, music rises, crests, and then dissolves into a fit of cheers and applause. Arryn laughs, low and soft.
“Just so you know,” she says, “I’m about to go have this exact same conversation with Phaedron.”
I let my hands fall and blink at her. She just told me Phaedron is a good guy. Is she going to make some version of that same stupid argument to Phaedron? And how could she possibly claim I’m anything like good? She knows what I am.
“But,” I stammer as objections pile up against themselves in my head. “You don’t even know me.”
I’m expecting her to smile or giggle, something a noblewoman would do when confronted with a serious question, but instead, she stares at me with an intensity to her dark eyes that makes me want to step backward.
“I know you,” she says. “I was part of Grathgore’s court, same as you.”
I shake my head. The differences between a nobleman’s daughter who was favored to marry the prince and a magician who was kept as a prisoner seem as vast as the ocean that spreads between the continents. But Arryn leans forward and catches my hand in hers. Her skin is rough and cool against mine.
“You don’t know Rowan,” she says, in a whisper as abrasive as the skin of her hands. “You’ve never even met him. And yet here you are. You left everything in your life behind to help a complete stranger.”
I make a little whimpering noise.
“I— I have my reasons,” I reply, in a voice that sounds like I’m being strangled.
“I’m sure you do,” Arryn says, with a shrug. “And I’m sure those reasons could have led you down a lot of paths that wouldn’t help Rowan at all.”
I swallow hard as my mind spins. Is that true? Looking back, it seems like there was only ever one path laid out for me. But perhaps I’m wrong? Perhaps I could have turned away from Phaedron in the Silver City, or stolen the horse without him, or gone back to the Kingdom of the Summer and left him waiting for me in the canyons of the Barrier Mountains. Hells, perhaps Ithronel and I could have fled from the Kingdom of the Summer together, and she would have never met the man who escorted her into the ballroom tonight. My shoulders curl forward as Arryn rocks backward.
“Well,” Arryn says, with a little grin. “Nice talking to you.”
“You too,” I mumble.
She vanishes around the corner of the ballroom, drifting out of the golden light and into the welcoming shadows. My heart tugs inside my chest like perhaps it wants me to follow her, but instead, I yank my hood down and press my shoulders against the stone wall.
Arryn doesn’t know a damn thing.
Chapter30
Alindra
HEART MAGIC
Ilean against the stone wall for so long that my legs begin to ache, and my eyes burn with the memory of all the sleepless and interrupted nights that stretch between now and the moment a portal opened in my bedroom and a man stepped through. The music leaking out of the windows of the ballroom grows livelier, faster, and more frantic, and the cheering comes in explosive, unpredictable bursts. The glowsoft orbs slowly dim, until finally the strange blue shadows they cast on the ground, that delicate, lacy pattern of light and darkness falling over the soil, fade into nothingness. I rub the toe of my heavy boot in a circle on the ground, wondering if maybe it’s soft enough to try curling up for a nap.
Until I hear voices. Several voices, speaking softly, and heading toward me. I freeze, my back stiff against the stone. In my cloak, hopefully, I’ll just look like an oddly symmetrical bush. The voices fall silent long enough for me to think they’ve passed, and then there’s an explosion of hushed whispers behind me.
