“What about them? Please just answer me, Faye, why are you here?”
“I don’t know,” Faye said again, and made a low, hissing noise. She still hadn’t blinked. “The shipments he was giving me, they weren’t apples, they—”
“He?” She meant Kinok. “What happened, Faye?”
“I tried to make it right,” Faye was saying, tears streaking her face. “I tried, I wanted to tell, but he found out first and . . .”
“Ayla!” Crier said, her voice echoing off the walls. “You can converse with your friend later. We will miss the rest of the tour. Come.”
Ayla backed away from the door, but couldn’t take her eyes off Faye. Her pulse caught in her throat. What was it Malwin had said? Track the sun apples. Faye had to be talking about the crates of sun apples the sovereign sent out as gifts for the Red Hands, the nobles, the major merchants and traders, anyone in his good graces. Had Kinok taken over those shipments—and then delegated to Faye? Why?
“Ayla. Handmaiden. Come.”
“It’s all my fault,” Faye whispered, and slammed the door.
13
The queen’s tour had exhausted Crier, as if she’d been dragging a weight, a shadow, alongside her through the day. And ever since passing the room full of finery that Crier had specially requested for Faye after learning of Ayla’s concern for her, Ayla seemed to have darkened, gone cold. Crier didn’t understand it—she should have been . . . happy? Relieved? She felt once again completely perplexed by the way a human could swerve so far from their expected response.
And then, on a break between the tour and dinner, Ayla had slipped away, without looking Crier in the eyes. What had happened?
Now Crier was in her room, waiting for dinner. She looked up from her book when she heard a soft knock on the door. She was confused—it couldn’t be Ayla, who always rapped on the door with her knuckles like she was trying to start a fight. She was even more confused when she opened the door to find Kinok waiting on the other side.
“Lady Crier,” he said smoothly. “I am here to collect you for dinner.”
Why couldn’t Ayla do it? Crier wanted to ask, but instead she just inclined her head. She could use this alone time with Kinok, however short it was, to probe for more answers about Reyka.
And of course, the questions she couldn’t ask without revealing that she’d tried to spy on him: Why was the phrase Yora’s heart written everywhere in his notes? Who was the secret woman mentioned in his entries on Thomas Wren?
She wrapped herself in a thin shawl and let him take her arm. They walked slowly through the hallways, passing scullery maids and errand boys. Crier waited until they reached a relatively empty stretch of hallway. Then, before she could lose her nerve, she said, “On the night of the bonding, you said we were in this together. You said you’d keep my—my secret. Yet the moment you stood before the council, you spoke of Flaws and passion. How could you?”
“I only said that to provoke you.”
“You—!” She clamped her mouth shut when a housemaid turned the corner, waiting until the maid was out of sight. “How dare you? To say something like that in front of the council, just to—to—I can’t believe you.” She couldn’t remember ever being so disgusted with someone before, where only weeks ago she’d truly believed him to be not much more than a philosopher, a thinker, a historian of their Kind. “And everything you said about Thomas Wren on the night of the binding—the beauty of his work, that each of us is a little different . . . I suppose that was, what, another provocation? Just you playing with my head?”
He huffed a laugh. “Not entirely.”
“Then what did it mean? What does any of it mean?” He was such a tangle of studies and experiments and theories, and she suddenly realized she had no idea how they all connected. What did his interest in Wren have to do with ARM, or his past as a Watcher? And what did it all have to do with—“Yora’s heart,” she blurted out. She stopped walking, turning suddenly to face him. “What is Yora’s heart?”
His eyes flared for a quick second. She didn’t even care that she may have just admitted to snooping through his study—she wanted answers, and she was so tired of not getting them,