“No.” The smile slips off his face as he focuses on the page. “I’m reading over notes from previous consul meetings. I was doing this last night, too, but now I’m hoping I’ll have something we’ll find useful before you question Sommer, but thus far, nothing. I still haven’t been able to figure why Arella would have been speaking to the rebels with Laurel Pepperleaf, of all people. She has never aligned herself with Allisander’s sector.”
Oh, he’s working. Now I feel guilty.
But I think of what we faced in the woods last night, and I can’t quite force myself out of bed.
He flips another page. “I’d kill for access to the palace right now. I havemountainsof notes in my chambers. Or Idid. Who knows what anyone’s done with it since we’ve been gone.” He sighs.
That statement makes my thoughts trip and stall. He really does take notes everywhere he goes. It’s part of what makes him so good at his job. “Do you write down everything I say when I’m speaking to the consuls?”
He doesn’t look up. “If I’m present, I write down everything you say to anyone at all. Prince Corrick as well.”
That’s true. I remember how he was writing down an accounting of my conversation with Annabeth, making notes about what Saeth reported, too. I press my hands into the mattress and shift until I’m sitting against the headboard beside him. “Do you think there’s any chance Allisander and Arella could have found something compromising in your notes that would provide theproofthey claim to have?”
“That you’repoisoningthe people?” He closes his book and looks at me in surprise. “Of course not. What could it be? I’ve never heard you make anything close to such a claim.”
He’s right, of course. I frown.
Quint scoffs. “If anything, my notes would prove the very opposite. I haveyearsof records detailing your desire to protect the people of Kandala.”
I sigh. “Well, I can’t take the rebels to attack the palace and retrieve your records. We barely survived against four traitorous guards.”
“But you did. You killed the traitors—and returned with aninformed prisoner to interrogate.” He flips open the book again, returning to his reading. “Quite the victory, I’d say.”
I stare at him. It’s a complete mystery to me how he can make our failed mission sound like a success. It’s honestly a complete mystery how he can be reading at all. My world has been thrown off its axis, and he’s sitting here shirtless, running a finger down the page like we need to prepare for a consul meeting in an hour. But heis, and I’m transfixed again. His hair was gold in the firelight, but it’s so red this morning, and a bit of a wild mess. Freckles everywhere, too, splashed across the curves of muscle in his chest and arms. I want to count them all.
He clears his throat. “I’m hesitant to criticize the king—”
“Are you?” I say. “Are you trulyhesitant?”
“—but all this staring is rather distracting.”
“Youare rather distracting.” I snatch the book out of his hands.
Hedivesfor it, which completely takes me by surprise. I try to keep it out of reach, but he’s stronger than I expect and suddenly relentless. We grapple for it until Quint rolls me into the headboard and we send the side table rattling into the wall. He wins more by virtue of my shock than anything else. He ends up straddling my waist, the book trapped between his fingers.
I have to push the hair back from my face, and I’m breathless, glaring up at him sternly. “We were set upon by traitors last night! What if one of the guards stormed in here and thought you were fighting with the king?”
“So charming.” Quint leans down and kisses me on the forehead, then returns to sit against the headboard with his book. “If Benjamin Thorin or Adam Saeth are outside that door, do you genuinely believe there’s any chance they think we’ve beenfighting?”
Lord.I pinch the bridge of my nose. I really need to get out of this bed.
I still don’t move. I don’t want to face anything outside.
I consider what Quint said about the consuls, about his notes. As always, I wish we had a way into the palace. Regardless of what he said, the guardswerea failure. Sommer might have information, but he’s a traitor. It’s still a dead end in so many ways.
Quint has gone back to turning pages, so I shift to sit beside him again, reading alongside when he pauses. So many meetings, so many notes, for months and months and months. So many memories preserved in his handwriting. As Quint said last night, Corrick and I destroyed ourselves to hold Kandala together. Meanwhile, the consuls were plotting against us so carefully.
And just like our parents, we never saw it coming.
Eventually a question occurs to me. “Did you ever tell Corrick?” I say. “About your feelings?”
I’ve been quiet for a long time, and Quint is in the middle of a page of dry notes from a meeting where the consuls were bickering about shipping levies. His finger stops on a line, and he glances over. “My feelings?”
“For me,” I say softly.
He closes the book around his finger and regards me. “You’re asking if I ever told mydearest friendthat I imagined doing wicked things to his brother, the king? Yes, of course, Your Majesty, we talked about it all the time.”
I hit him with a pillow.
