trousers and a shirt with a ruffled collar—and wet, freshly combed hair. His boots were the high-polished ones he always wore in the House, and he carried his brown coat over one arm. He looked very handsome. Judah expected she would feel very drunk later.
But meanwhile, she could feel his indecision, the way seeing her twisted his stomach. Then he disappeared back into the bedroom. She heard the clipped sound of his hard leather soles cross the floor and the creak of the wardrobe hinges; then the clipped footsteps came back into the parlor and stopped in front of her. She flipped over three cards.
Something fell to the floor with a thick double thud. She lifted her head the barest fraction, to see a pair of boots, the leather smooth and new, the buckles dull steel. Too small for him. Just right for her.
“Elly’s right,” he said. “I’m being a child.”
She didn’t speak, but she picked up her cards so he could sit down, and felt something ease in him.
He took the empty seat and she caught a faint hint of cologne. “I shouldn’t have let this happen.”
Then she did look at him. His eyes were on her, frank and direct and relieved. She wondered if he meant Darid, or everything that came after. “How could you have stopped it?”
“I don’t know. The House Guard does what the Seneschal says. Even the ones I’m friendly with—sometimes I get this sense from them that it’s nothing personal, they like me okay, but they’d still love to take my head off if they had the chance. Today on the field they were all over me.” He sounded and felt exhausted. “I could have tried to stop it. I didn’t.”
The caning, then. Something the magus had said came to Judah’s mind. “Were you angry because of the beating, or because I kept a secret from you?”
“Both, probably.”
“You keep secrets from me.” She shuffled the cards, reshuffled them, tapped them into a nice, tidy deck. “You didn’t tell me about Amie, or that Elban wanted you to kill Theron. At least, not until I dragged it out of you.”
“That’s different.”
“Why?”
“It just is.”
She bridged the cards. They came together with a swift, deadly-fast flutter. “You said that to Elly, too. What’s the difference? Why are your rules different from everybody else’s?”
“Because I’m not everybody else,” he said curtly.
She became aware that she was angry. It was a slow anger, all in her head where he couldn’t feel it. Its roots ran deep into the most fundamental parts of her: she was left-handed, she was blood-haired, she was angry. There was none of the surging heat she normally felt. She could sit, coolly, and consider her words. “Darid wasn’t the only secret I’ve kept from you,” she said.
Gavin frowned. “Don’t say his name.”
She could feel the small, shameful pain it caused him. “Why not?”
“I just don’t want to hear it.” He shook his head with disgust. “None of this would have happened if not for him. Elban was gone. We were happy.”
“You weren’t bothered when you thought it was Firo.”
“Because Firo made sense,” he said. Snapped, almost. “Courtiers talk and wheedle and convince. How a stableman could convince you to—”
She made another bridge. This one broke. “There was no convincing.” He didn’t respond, but she could see that he didn’t believe her, which only fueled her anger. “I’m not a stupid little sheep to be herded this way and that. I have my own mind.”
“I never said you didn’t.” He took a deep breath, trying to regain control. “When Elban said that eventually I’d see things his way and lock you up, it’s not true. This—” he gestured to the door, and presumably to the guards beyond “—was a weakness. A temper tantrum. It won’t happen again, I promise.” He reached out and touched her shoulder. “It wasn’t about me. It was about you. When you’re here, in this room—I know exactly where you are, Jude. I know you’re safe.”
She did not remind him that he had agreed to lock her up the night Elban had burned her. Instead she said, “When I’m safe, you’re safe.”
He winced, then scowled. “Maybe. Gods, I don’t know. It makes my head hurt, this thing between us. Part of me hates it. The rest of me can’t imagine how other people don’t all kill themselves from sheer loneliness.” He took her hand, and suddenly she was inside him: a dozen small hurts from the training field, the still-tender skin of