“It’s just… I’ve never seen you look happy before.” In an instant her smile vanishes. “Oh. I’m sorry.”
“I guess I haven’t had many reasons to feel happy since coming to the palace,” she replies after a pause. Then she nods at the food. “You should eat, or there won’t be time for sweets.”
It’s my turn to raise my eyebrows. “You brought sweets?”
She digs out another leaf-wrapped package from her robes. “I thought you’d like them. I know your province is renowned for having the best in the kingdom.”
I unpeel the leaf to find four small diamonds of green-and-white coconut kuih. The last time I’d eaten these was at breakfast with Baba and Tien the morning I was taken.
For a while, I’m too choked to speak.
“Thank you,” I say eventually.
“It’s nothing.”
“Wren. You’ve snuck here in the middle of the night against Madam Himura’s orders—let alone the King’s—to bring me food you’ve stolen, and you think it’s nothing?”
She smiles again, that brilliant sunburst of a smile that illuminates her whole face and seems to warm the darkness, even just for a moment. “Well, when you put it like that…”
She laughs, but I don’t join her. “Why do you do it?” I ask.
Her forehead pinches. “Do what?”
“Put on a mask in front of the other girls.” As Wren goes to interject, I carry on, “Don’t you want to get to know us?”
“Of course I do.”
“Then why do you distance yourself so much?”
She falters. Glancing away, her long lashes hide her dark eyes. “Before I came here, I promised myself that I wouldn’t make friends. I thought it’d be easier to shut myself off from everyone. To go through this alone.”
“So why are you helping me?”
“Because you tried. Because you were brave.” Wren leans in, voice fierce even in a whisper. “Our lives here are defined by others, every decision made for us, every turn of fate pushed by the hands of others. But you stood up and said no. Even though you knew what it could cost you. You have integrity, Lei. You have fight. I respect that.”
I drop my gaze to my lap. “It’s not like anything came of it. The King… he’ll call for me again one day. And this time I won’t be able to refuse.”
She shakes her head. “Don’t devalue what you did.” Then, stiffly, she reaches for my hand.
There’s a moment of awkwardness. I almost pull away—more from surprise than anything. But then we relax and our fingers twine together. The race of Wren’s pulse against mine sends a jolt of something electric down my bloodstream.
“You fought against the Demon King, Lei. There aren’t many people in the kingdom who can say that, let alone a Paper Girl.”
When she lets go, my skin sears where she touched me.
We talk in whispers while I eat. For the first time, there are no walls up between us. No masks. Honesty comes easily after her hand in mine, our closeness in the dark, hushed room. I tell Wren about my past, and in turn she tells me about hers. Life as an only child in the Hannos’ palace in Ang-Khen. Years of structure, routine, expectations. When she reveals how she was promised to the King by her father before she was even born, it makes me think of Blue.
“Did you want it?” I ask. “To become a Paper Girl?”
She hesitates, lips clamped. “Want doesn’t come into it. My life has always been about duty. Always, and only.”
“And your future?”
She answers matter-of-factly. “The King.”
I can’t imagine what it was like to grow up knowing that. To have never tasted freedom, never felt its golden, sun-bright wind beneath her wings.
“What would you have done?” I press. “If you hadn’t been chosen as a Paper Girl.”
At once, her expression turns rigid.
“I—I haven’t really thought about it.”
“You must have some ideas. Things you like to do, hobbies—”
“I don’t have any hobbies.”
She says it so seriously that I almost laugh, catching myself just in time. “What do you mean? Everyone has hobbies, Wren. All right, so I spent most of my time in the shop. But there were still things I liked to do when I got a chance. Playing with Bao, cooking with Tien…”
“Well,” she says after a beat, “I didn’t have any chances.”
Her face is shadowed in the darkness, and I scan for answers among its strong lines and feline angles, the charcoal pools in the hollows of her cheeks. Not for the first time, I wonder what word was hidden in Wren’s Birth-blessing pendant. At nineteen, she’s already opened it. I try to picture her reaction when the gold shell parted. Whether she discovered something new inside, or whether the character just confirmed what she’d already known all along, some fate or truth she’d always felt, like an ache in her bones. The way she told me her life has always been about duty, and her future about the King, worries me that it wasn’t what she’d hoped for. But asking about someone’s Birth-blessing word is taboo, so I bite back my curiosity.
Before she leaves, Wren tucks the now-empty leaves back inside her robe so Madam Himura won’t be suspicious.
“We can be honest with each other now, right?” I say as she helps me to my feet. At her nod, I wet my lips and go on, “I saw you leaving Paper House. A few nights ago. You went into the woods.”
“You followed me?”
The hardness in her voice makes me flinch.
“No! I—I saw from the veranda. I don’t know where you went—”
“Good!” she snaps.
My arms stiffen at my sides. “I’m only asking because it’s dangerous, Wren. If you were caught—”
“I know what’ll happen.”
“Well, you should be more careful.”
“I always am.”
I blink, freezing in place. “So it’s happened more than once?”
She looks away, a muscle pulsing in her neck.
“And you’re going to do it again,” I say dully.
Her silence is my answer.
My next question comes out quiet, barely more than a whisper. “Are you meeting with someone?”
“Of course not,” she replies, eyes flicking back to meet mine.
“Then what, Wren? What could possibly be worth you risking Madam Himura finding out?”
Wren’s face is touched gently on one side by the light from the corridor. Her features are set hard, but she closes her eyes for a brief second, taking a long breath, and the lantern glow across her right eyelid trembles, so soft looking I long to brush my thumb across it.
Finally she sighs, her shoulders curling forward. “I can’t tell you, Lei. I’m sorry. Please just pretend you never saw me. Can you do that?” When I don’t answer, she steps closer and adds, her voice gentler now, husky and low, “Have you never had a secret you needed to keep?”
Yes, I want to say. These feelings for you.
Instead, I look away.
Wren reaches out, her fingers grazing mine. “You’re making this so hard for me,” she says. “Do you know that?” And without waiting for an answer, she glides the door open and disappears into the corridor.