“Partly the peace accords, yes. With or without the treaty, Vaida would not cross me.”
My dress caught on a thorn from a different patch of flowers. “She’s afraid of you.”
“She is not the only person capable of playing this game,” he said, with a hint of aristocratic disdain. “I’ve known Vaida since we were children. Our minds are much the same.”
“Well. That’s terrifying.” I adjusted my legs into a more comfortable sitting position. The slit bared my thigh, and I gave up trying to fix it. “Are we departing at twilight the day after tomorrow?”
It took Arin a second too long to respond. He seemed to be noticing my dress for the first time. His gaze trailed over me, a leisurely perusal that made my mouth dry. Arin’s attention was usually as efficient as him—he didn’t linger, and he certainly never perused. “Nizahl’s colors suit you.”
Something dangerous pulsed in the pit of my stomach. I couldn’t help but mimic him, studying the change in his attire I’d noted earlier. The laces of his shirt stopped at his collarbones. It felt wrong to see the length of his throat so exposed. His hair had come loose sometime between leaving Vaida and entering the garden, falling like a silver cloud around his jaw. Arin of Nizahl was maddeningly elegant. I wanted to cut him open and compare our bones to understand why his gave him grace and mine gave me back pain.
I busied myself with the flowers. I’d spent too long inhaling tunnel dust—it had addled my head.
“Twilight. Yes,” Arin answered belatedly. “Our route to Orban is longer than the others.”
The others weren’t traveling through the Meridian Pass.
The Meridian Pass was a narrow, flat canyon wedged between two reddish crags. Though it stretched a mere three miles, many riders met their doom there, crushed by falling boulders or chased by the vagrants and fugitives camped by the entrance.
The Pass was also the site of a massacre. Ten Jasadi families fleeing capture in Omal found themselves trapped inside the Meridian Pass by Omal guards on one side, Nizahl soldiers on the other. They had met a grisly end.
Most of the Champions leaving the Banquet would take the route merchants used to travel between Lukub and Orban. Arin did not want to chance the Urabi or Mufsids whisking me away in the crush of carriages, so we would be the lone contingent going through the Meridian Pass.
I was about to ask Arin whether we’d be riding in the same carriage again when an orange cat strolled over the hand I’d pressed against the ground. I recoiled, crushing three flowers in my haste. Stray cats were a common sight in Lukub, I’d heard. It seemed even the Ivory Palace could not keep them out. A kitten swatted at my dress, swishing its gray tail in a pile of ruby petals. A presumptious older cat plopped itself onto Arin’s lap, glaring down at me from his knee. Idly scratching its ears, Arin said, “Allow the attendants to help you. The guards search anyone who enters your room, so the servants are secure. It reflects poorly on Vaida’s service for your attendants to wander around.”
We resumed our walk once the cats scurried away. “Do you allow your attendants to help you bathe and disrobe?” I challenged. I flushed as soon as I finished, already regretting the question. I couldn’t imagine Arin permitting anyone to push his coat off his shoulders or undo the tight straps from his uniform. Would he level his steady gaze on them while their trembling fingers disrobed him? Or stare at the far wall in blank indifference, unyielding in body and manner?
I turned a fierce scowl inward. The Sultana’s nonsense about lovers had clearly scrambled my senses. Arin was attractive—it was as obvious and indisputable as the sun. But I had spent nearly twenty-one years capable of acknowledging attractiveness without being attracted myself. I had never wanted anyone, never yearned for the physical relationships Marek chased.
I finally empathized with the girls in the keep. Especially Gana. The fanciful ward used to dress in Raya’s finest gowns every week, sing warbling ballads while dabbing fragrances on her wrists and behind her ear.
“There is power in conquering the unconquerable,” Gana had said one year, after rejecting yet another fellow’s advances. The keep had gone to Zeila’s for celebratory tea and ahwa after a successful market. Zeila laid reed rugs on the floor, and we sat on beaded cushions, a wooden table wobbling at our feet.
I’d been a few cushions down with Sefa and Marek, sipping my bitter ahwa from a chipped cup. Gana’s conversation with Daleel had reached my ears. “Men don’t see women, dear Daleel. They see power. Which one of us has more of it, and how easily they can drain it out of her.”