The Winner's Crime(53)

“Why, you’re right, of course. This is much more cheerful! Here, let me help.”

Kestrel eyed her briefly, but Maris contented herself with painting in silence. After making her second kite look like a gaudy butterfly, Maris said, “Your friend has a delicious brother. Tell me all about him. Is he taken?”

Kestrel lifted her brush. Paint dribbled down her sleeve. “What?”

“Lord Ronan. Very lucky, isn’t it, that the conquering of Herran gave us so many more titled young men? All that new territory, so nicely portioned out by the emperor ten years ago, with lovely titles to go with it. Too bad the land is gone. But a lord is a lord forever. And he is such a lord! Just the other day, I saw Ronan fight in the city, and—”

“You didn’t. You can’t have.”

Maris’s eyes flashed. “He’s not yours to keep or give.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“We can’t all be empresses. I must marry. I am nearly twenty.” Maris’s voice dropped. “I don’t want to go to war.”

“I meant that you must have seen someone else in the city.” Kestrel tried to speak evenly, but she already didn’t believe her own words. “Ronan isn’t in the capital. He went with Jess and their parents to the south.”

“I assure you, he didn’t.”

“They went away.” Kestrel’s lips had gone numb. “For Jess’s health.”

Maris’s expression changed. Kestrel saw it shift from confusion to a curious understanding before it settled, finally, into a kindness that made Kestrel’s stomach clench. “Lady Kestrel,” said Maris, “you are mistaken. I have wondered why their family avoids the court, but Jess and Ronan attend many functions in the city. I have seen them several times. They’ve been in the capital ever since your engagement ball.”

*

Kestrel went to Jess’s townhome in the city. Jess’s footman took her card, embossed with her personal seal, and accepted her into the receiving room, which was lined with polished, crossed spears. There was no trace of dust. The house showed no signs of having been closed up for a family journey south.

“The lady is not at home,” the footman said.

“But the family’s in residence?” Kestrel pressed. “Is Jess usually here?”

The footman shifted, and was silent.

“Is her brother home?” Kestrel asked.

When the footman still said nothing, Kestrel said, “Do you know who I am?”

The footman confessed that Ronan kept odd hours. “He’s often not here. And his sister—”

“If she’s not here, then I’ll wait in the parlor until she returns,” Kestrel said, though this proposal risked seeing Ronan.

The footman fidgeted. “I wouldn’t recommend that, my lady. I believe that both brother and sister will be out for a great deal of time.”

“I’ll wait.”

And she did. She was determined to sleep on the parlor divan if she must.

The fire throbbed low. Her tea grew cold.

She remembered Jess frowning in her sleep. She remembered crushing the glass petal of Jess’s necklace against the marble mantel.

Was Jess’s silence—her absence, her lies—because of that broken gift? Maybe that was Kestrel’s offense. But she had told Jess, and Jess had forgiven her. Hadn’t she?

Or …

What had Ronan told Jess? Kestrel had thought his pride would keep him from ever telling his sister about his marriage proposal to Kestrel on Firstwinter night—and his rejection, and whom Kestrel had preferred over him.

Dread ate at her. When the clock struck the third hour, she shifted against a cushion. It released a trace of Jess’s perfume. A white flower from Herran. It bloomed behind Kestrel’s eyes.

The scent was fresh.

The parlor had a view of the road. Kestrel could see her own carriage, and her escort waiting inside it.

Kestrel fought the realization. She didn’t want to understand. But she did … she envisioned so clearly how Jess had been sitting on this very sofa when Kestrel’s carriage had pulled up. Jess had left word with a footman. Then she’d retreated to another part of the house. She was waiting there. She was waiting for Kestrel to leave.

The perfume watered Kestrel’s eyes.

“I’ll return another day,” she told the footman on her way out, but when she stepped into the carriage, Kestrel glanced up over her shoulder and caught a flutter of fabric in a high window of the town house. A curtain had been drawn aside. Someone was watching her.

The instant Kestrel looked at it, the curtain fell.

*

As Kestrel walked through the barbican, she overheard palace guards laughing.

“Where’s he disappeared to these days?” one of them said.

“The kennels,” answered another. “He’s been playing with puppies in the muck. The perfect place for our illustrious prince, if you ask me.”

Kestrel stopped. She returned, and approached the guards. They weren’t afraid, which meant they thought she shared their contempt.

She looked at the guard who had spoken last. Kestrel slapped his face. In the shocked silence that followed, Kestrel clenched her stinging hand and walked away.

*

Verex was holed up in one of the kennel’s pens, sitting on a nest of filthy straw and nursing a puppy with a rag sopped in milk. The puppy was peacefully floppy in Verex’s hands, its skin wrinkled and loose, eyes closed.