The sentimentality of that makes me blush again, and I try to scowl it away.
I fail. The music plays on.
“Good name,” Harper says.
“Yes,” I agree.
I say nothing else. She doesn’t pry. The wind settles, and the dancers move closer to the flames. Prince Rhen has moved away to speak with a man across the clearing, his guards shifting almost invisibly to track his movements.
Harper takes another slice of apple from the basket. “Rhen said you offered to spar with him the last time you were here. That was very kind.”
“I didn’t mean it as a kindness.”
“I know you didn’t. I think that’s why it meant so much.”
I glance over.
She shrugs a little. “He hasn’t picked up a sword since he lost his eye. But … well, since you and Jake left, I’ve caught him in the courtyard a few times. Going through the footwork. Early in the morning. You know.”
I study her. She takes another apple slice, pressing it into the cheese.
“I don’t think he’d ask you,” she says carefully, her voice very low. “But if you offered again, I don’t think he’d turn it down.”
I nod. “I will.”
Then Rhen is back, and we sit and listen to the music for a while. Harper’s lady-in-waiting, a kind woman named Freya, joins us, her daughters twirling to the music. Her son, a boy who must be eight or nine by now, is lingering close to some of the fighters, probably hoping to be drawn into their midst. Soon, Harper and Freya are spinning with the girls, leaving me on the log with Rhen.
I’ve been waiting for him to confront me about whatever Grey’s letters said, but the prince hasn’t said a word. Tension has been building in my gut as guilt and worry grow to fill the space. The music and lighthearted atmosphere should be soothing, but it’s not.
Especially when Rhen says, “Do you care to walk?”
It’s not an order, but it might as well be, so I rise from the log. “As you like.”
He heads away from the bonfire until we’ve walked beyond the light, and the shadows grow long between us. I wait for him to talk, but he says nothing, and the music fades as we meander among the rows of carefully built tents.
Finally, I can’t take his silence any longer. “Forgive me,” I say. “But aren’t you going to say anything about Grey’s report?”
He glances at me. “I was waiting for you to tell me. He simply wrote ‘Tycho will tell you all you need to know.’ ”
Grey could have fired an arrow over the mountains to strike the ground at my feet and I’d be less shocked. I turn these words over and over in my head, and that pool of anxious tension moves north to grip my chest.
He didn’t writeanything.
No wonder Rhen and Harper have been so casually amiable. No wonder they defended me from Lord Alek.
I think of the way I carefully wrapped up any papers to keep them safe—and there was nothing truly confidential to protect. “So he didn’t trust me to deliver the message securely.”
Rhen peers at me in the darkness. “Or he trusted that you’d do exactly as he said.”
That tightness in my chest doesn’t ease. I’m glad we’ve moved away from the flickering torches, because I have no idea what expression is on my face. I feel like I’m breathing through quicksand. “I don’t think so.”
“Prove him wrong then.”
Rhen says these words so simply that I blink and look at him. “What?”
He lifts one shoulder in a shrug. “If you think he wrotenothingbecause you’d betray him somehow, prove him wrong. Tell me all I should know.”
Is this a test? This feels like a test.
