Tes went rigid. It was like someone had driven a spike of ice straight through her, pinning her to the street. Her heart stuttered in her chest as the woman appeared, vanished, reappeared, flickering across the angled glass in pieces.
A sharp cheek.
A dark braid.
An emerald cloak.
The same one their father had given her oldest sister, Serival.
“For hunting,” he’d said, his mouth twitching in a tight-lipped way—the closest thing it ever managed to a smile. And she’d been too young, then, to understand the nature of her sister’s gift, or that it had nothing to do with animals.
“Kers la?” asked Lorn, but another voice was folding over it, low, and smooth, as it filled her ears, her head, her heart.
What’s wrong, little rabbit?
Tes recoiled, spun around, expecting her sister to be right there, expression triumphant as those cold fingers closed around her throat.
Caught you.
But Serival wasn’t there.
There was no sign of her, or the emerald cloak that had set Tes’s pulse racing, just the usual stalls, and Lorn’s face, splintering with worry. But Serival’s voice played on in her head.
Where have you run to, little rabbit?
Tes backed away, the sack under one arm.
How long can you hide?
She mumbled something to Lorn—an apology, or maybe a thanks, she hoped—she couldn’t hear the words over the sound of her pulse—then turned and darted through the nearest break in the tents, back into the safety of the crowded market.
Green flashed at the corner of her sight. The woman in the emerald cloak was standing feet away, her back turned as she ran her hand through bolts of cloth. Tes backed away, too fast, too hard, felt herself collide with someone—and something—felt the object slip, and fall, heard the man’s cry of dismay and the hard sound of wood hitting the stone street.
The woman in green heard it, too, and turned, and for the first time, Tes saw her face. All the air went rushing out of her lungs. It wasn’t Serival. Of course it wasn’t.
Her sister hadn’t found her.
Tes was still safe.
The owl fluttered in her coat pocket, and she knew he was trying to calm her.
“I’m all right,” she whispered to Vares and herself. “I’m all right.”
The man, meanwhile, was chirping in annoyance as he bent to fetch the box he’d dropped.
“Better not be broken,” he snapped, and Tes could see it wasn’t, but she still pulled a black-and-gold card from her pocket and shoved it at him.
“If it is,” she said, “take it to Haskin. He’ll fix it for free.”
And before the man could make more of a fuss, before anyone else could turn and notice the strange girl with the sack of scraps and the wide, frightened eyes, Tes turned and fled, back to the four walls and the cluttered shelves and the safety of her shop.
II
Rhy Maresh cast off his crown.
The heavy gold circlet landed on top of his clothes, which he had left piled on the floor nearby, along with his shoes and his cloak, a messy heap of finery at the edge of the baths.
That is what it looks like, thought Rhy, when the king sheds his skin.
One of the servants would have surely rushed forward, stripped the clothes right off his body, and hung them neatly on the wall—as if it were a sin for a king’s garments to touch the tiled floor, let alone be left to wrinkle there—but Rhy had banished both servants from the royal bath and the guards from the hall beyond, claiming that, as king, he wanted only to be left alone.
“But Your Majesty,” protested the servants.
“Mas res,” urged the guards.
“Master Emery warned us…” began both, and at that point, Rhy had scowled, hardening his gold eyes, and snapped that last time he checked, Master Emery had never been crowned king. He used his father’s tone when he said it—seven years and it still felt like a borrowed voice, an air put on instead of owned—and rose to his full height the way his mother did when she wanted to command a room, but part of him had still been surprised when the guards and servants both apologized. When they obeyed.
Rhy sighed, and lowered himself into the steaming water.
The bath was the size of a grotto, forged in tile and gold instead of damp rock. Light shimmered on every surface, making the room feel like the inside of a gemstone. He ran a hand through his black hair and sagged back against the sunken wall, savoring the heat. His shoulder still ached, a dull throb along his collarbone from whatever Kell had done the night before. Or rather, whatever had been done to him. It had been a fairly shallow cut, he could tell; not by the amount of blood—his phantom wounds shed none—but by the way the pain had skated over his collarbone, instead of ringing through it. Still, he wondered about the circumstance, as he always did, when his brother’s suffering became his own.