The Midnight Lie (The Midnight Lie #1)(89)

But most startling were his mutilations. The scar tissue was old, a lighter shade than the rest of his skin. I couldn’t help staring. His mouth curled into a hard smile.

“Nirrim.” Sid’s grip on her glass slackened, her expression relieved yet still apprehensive.

The man spoke to her in a cool, amused, slightly mocking tone.

“Yes.” Sid frowned at him. “She is.”

“What is going on?” I said. “What did he say? Who is he?”

“A family friend.”

“Why is he here?”

“His ship docked in your city’s harbor today.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Hesitantly, she said, “I know.”

I cut a glance at him. “Is he … safe?”

“Me?” he said in my tongue, his accent heavy. He laughed. “No.”

I flinched in surprise. I had assumed he didn’t know my language. I was growing angry at Sid for her silence. I said, “You are making me feel as though I know nothing.”

In a slow, droll tone with the edge of command, the man spoke to Sid in the language they shared. She snapped at him. He shrugged.

Sid glanced at me but wouldn’t hold my gaze. “Earlier, he asked if you were my lover. Now he says I owe you my honesty. Nirrim, there is something I need to explain.”

“Swiftly, Princess,” the man said to her in Herrath.

“Princess?” I echoed, sounding exactly like the stupid ithya bird Raven had claimed I was. “Princess?”

Sid closed her eyes, her brow furrowed in frustration and anger, and said something to the man that sounded like a terrible plea, a grieved accusation. Finally she told him, “Just go. Leave me, please.”

I was flooded with relief, which made me realize how afraid I had been that sending him away was something she wasn’t able to do, and that he was here to take her away.

“You have had your fun.” He said the words to Sid, but they were meant for me to understand. “Now it’s time to come home.” With a scant glance at me, he left.

“What did he mean, princess?” I asked. “Was he teasing you? Was that a joke?”

Miserably, she shook her head.

“Who are you?”

“His name is Roshar,” she said. “He is a prince of Dacra, the eastern land, and I have known him all my life.”

“I didn’t ask about him!”

She set the glass of green liqueur down on a small table with slow precision, like it was an act of utmost importance, her last act. “I know,” she said. “I’m sorry. This is difficult to explain. Roshar—my parents—no one knew where I was for a long time, but he found out I was on this island after I made the prison officials contact his ambassador here to secure our release. He has always understood me in ways my parents don’t, and I hoped he would keep what he knew to himself. Even if he chose not to, I accepted the risk because it didn’t matter so much that he could track me down here. I planned to be gone long before he received word from his ambassador and his ship was able to arrive. But”—she twisted her fingers together—“I stayed.”

“You’re not a princess. You said you were the Herrani queen’s spy.”

“I was her spy.” Quietly, she added, “I still am. I am also her daughter.”

My throat was tight. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“In some ways, I did.”

I thought of the sigil on her dagger that matched the one on the queen’s card, the symbol of the Herrani family, and how she hadn’t fully answered when I asked whether she stole it, which made me assume that she had. I remembered how when the blue-haired man at the party had suggested she was cousin to the Herrani king, she had denied it … which wasn’t a lie, if she was the king’s daughter. I remembered how she had described the queen, and how she had described her mother. Both women had seemed similar: intimidating, and alike in the power they had over Sid. Yet there had been no reason for me to guess that they were the same person.

“I was truthful about why I left home,” she said. “I hated being a princess. I don’t even like the title. Princess Sidarine.” She cringed in disgust. “So … dainty. And so heavy. I don’t think you can know what a burden it is, how hopeful my parents are that I will marry into Roshar’s family, how my mother seeks to make me into herself. My father says nothing, and just lets it happen.”

“You’re right,” I said coldly. “I don’t know what it’s like to be a princess. I don’t know what it’s like to have parents.”

“Please let me explain.”

“You tricked me.”

She roughed up her hair, nervously, then jammed her hands into her pockets. “I had to,” she said. “I didn’t want city officials getting wind of the Herrani monarchy’s interest in this island.”

“I wouldn’t have told anyone,” I said, insulted.

“I believe you, but I didn’t at first. Even after I trusted you, I didn’t want to tell you because I didn’t want you to look at me differently. I didn’t want you to look at me like you are looking at me now. It was already hard enough, wondering what you thought. If I could … attract you. If I could make you want me.”