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“You must be, to survive and still smile as though all of this is easy, when we both know it’s far from it.”
“Perhaps I smile because I like the pain?” His eyes fluttered open. “And if I like it, does that make me brave, or does it make me like my brother?”
I couldn’t pretend to understand any of what he’d been through. But I knew he was brave. The same way I knew he wasn’t like his brother at all.
“What drives him, what does he want?” I asked.
Lark opened his eyes. He stretched out a dusty leg and stared at the stars beyond the cave. He stayed quiet, clearly not wanting to talk about Razak.
“You don’t have to tell me—”
“He hungers,” Lark blurted. “Nothing is ever enough. He always wants more—more power, more pain, more knowledge, more wealth. Even if he gets his wish and becomes a god—if such a thing is possible—it will never be enough. He’s never satisfied.” Lark bowed his head and the remaining fingers of his right hand twitched in his lap. He curled them into his palm.
“Has he always been that way?”
“I think so. I only really began to know him after our father made me watch as they hung my mother. I was due to hang alongside her. Razak saved me from the noose.” Lark huffed a humorless laugh. “You claim I want to end my life, and there have been many times I’ve wished I’d died that day beside her. Whatever comes after death, at least it would be better than my life here.”
A swell of emotion cinched my heart and clogged my throat. I had no words, nothing to say that would lessen his pain. Was his life truly so terrible that he’d rather die than live it?
He cast me a sad smile, and a little of my heart broke away. “I suppose you know I sang for coins?”
“I’d heard,” I croaked. To be so alone, to have nothing and nobody, and have to plead with strangers for charity. I’d lost much, but I’d never had to beg strangers for aid.
“It wasn’t what you think.” He rippled his two remaining fingers. “You come from your palace of white and gold, and you see my life as one long string of torture. It wasn’t like that. I’m not saying it was an afternoon tea party either, but please don’t waste your pity on me. I escaped Razak, for a while. I made a life for myself on the streets, before Razak’s court found me again. There were times I enjoyed it. I was capable enough to protect myself. For all its pain, I was free. Briefly.”
“If I still had a court to call my home, I’d set you free there,” I said, in a moment of carelessness. It was a silly dream, but I wanted that for him. A home, where he didn’t have to sell himself for coin, where he wasn’t used, where he could sing and dance because he wanted to, not because he had no choice. “If you wanted that.”
Lark’s smile turned sly and brightened his whole face. “Tell me, Prince Arin, was I your first?”
“My first what?”
“Don’t play coy. You’re not as innocent as you pretend.”
I swallowed, cheeks reddening. “We were talking about you.”
“Hm, let’s talk about you.” He drew his knees to his chest and rested his forearms over them, getting comfortable. His face was all large, dark eyes and pouting, soft lips. Gods, he could seduce the knickers off a nurse with that face. “If we’re to die here, what harm is there in telling me all your secrets?”
“You’ve been dying to have them.”
“I have, genuinely. The fact you kept yourself hidden behind that door vexed me in terrible ways. I couldn’t understand it, or you.”
“That was rather the point.” I chuckled. “Was that why you wrote me all those poems and jokes?”
“Ah.” He laughed. “I look back now, from where we are, and it’s like a dream.”
I’d loved those notes. Every single one. I’d kept them in a box beneath my bed. They were probably gone now, buried among the rubble. I’d savored every little piece of paper—the way the paper smelled of amber and jasmine, later learning that was Lark’s scent. His silly jokes and lashing poems. Sometimes, I’d seen them swoosh under the door and almost invited him in. If I had, would it have changed anything?
“So was I?” he asked, not letting his question go. “Your first?”
I sighed and teased a few pebbles between my fingers and thumb. “Why does it matter?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted, looking away.
“Well, we didn’t technically do… the act.” Had I really just said that?
“No, you’re quite right, we did not have penetrative sex,” he teased. “Then I wasn’t your first? I wondered, was all. You were… different. Sex was different with you, is what I’m saying in a terribly-unlike-me way. It seems all of the fancy words have flown away. It must be the heat. I know it’s the lack of water. I’m quite delirious.”
I laughed softly. “How was I different?”
