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“Hey, Trouble,” he said, leaning his head back against the dial.
With that, the terror from the past weeks slipped away as if they had never happened. He was alive. He was home. He was still Jacin.
She pulled herself onto the dais. “Do you have any idea how worried I’ve been?” she said, crossing to him. “I didn’t know if you were dead or being held hostage, or if you’d been eaten by one of the queen’s soldiers. It’s been driving me mad not knowing.”
He quirked an eyebrow at her.
She scowled. “Don’t comment on that.”
“I wouldn’t dare.” He rolled his shoulders as much as he could against his bindings. His wounds gapped and puckered with that slight movement, and his face contorted in pain, but it was brief.
Pretending she hadn’t noticed, Winter sat cross-legged in front of him, inspecting the wounds. Wanting to touch him. Terrified to touch him. That much, at least, had not changed. “Does it hurt very much?”
“Better than being at the bottom of the lake.” His smile turned wry, lips chapped from the harsh Earthen sun. “They’ll move me to a suspension tank tomorrow night. Half a day and I’ll be good as new.” He squinted. “That’s assuming you’re not here to bring me food. I’d like to keep my tongue where it is, thank you.”
“No food. Just a friendly face.”
“Friendly.” His gaze raked over her, his relaxed grin still in place. “That’s an understatement.”
She dipped her head, turning away just enough to hide the three scars that trailed down her right cheek. For years, Winter had assumed that when people stared at her, it was because the scars disgusted them. A rare disfigurement in their world of perfection. But then a maid had told her they weren’t disgusted, they were in awe. She said the scars made Winter interesting to look at and somehow, odd as it was, even more beautiful. Beautiful. It was a word that Winter had heard tossed around all her life. A beautiful child, a beautiful girl, a beautiful young lady, so beautiful, too beautiful … and the stares that came with the word never ceased to make her want to don a veil like her stepmother’s and hide from the whispers.
Jacin was the only person who could make her feel beautiful without it seeming like a bad thing. She couldn’t recall him ever using the word, or making any such deliberate compliment. It was always hidden behind careless jokes that made her heart pound so fast.
“Don’t tease,” she said, flustered at the way he looked at her, at the way he always looked at her.
“Wasn’t teasing,” he said, all nonchalance.
In response, Winter reached out and punched him lightly on the shoulder—where there weren’t any wounds.
He flinched, and she gasped—ready to apologize—but his eyes stayed warm. “That’s not a fair fight, Princess.”
She reeled back the apology. “It’s about time I had the advantage.”
He looked past her, into the streets. “Where’s your guard?”
“I left him behind. Searching for a monster in my closet.”
With that, the sunshine smile was gone, hardened into exasperation. “Princess, you can’t go out alone. If something happened to you—”
“Who’s going to hurt me here, in the city? Everyone knows who I am.”
“It just takes one idiot, too used to getting what he wants and too drunk to control himself.”
Flushing, she clenched her jaw.
Jacin looked immediately regretful. “Princess—”
“I’ll run all the way back to the palace. I’ll be fine.”
He sighed, and she listed her head, wishing she’d brought some sort of medicinal salve for his cuts. Levana hadn’t said anything about medicine, and the sight of him tied up and vulnerable—and shirtless, even if it was a bloodied shirtless—was making her fingers twitch in odd ways.
“I just wanted to be alone with you,” she said, focusing on his face. “We never get to be alone anymore.”
“It’s not proper for seventeen-year-old princesses to be alone with young men who have questionable intentions.”
She laughed. “And what about young men who she’s been best friends with since she was barely old enough to walk?”
He shook his head. “Those are the worst.”
She snorted—an actual snort of laughter that served to brighten Jacin’s smile again.
But the humor was bittersweet. The truth was, Jacin only touched her when he was helping her through a particularly awful hallucination. Otherwise, he hadn’t deliberately touched her in years. Not since she was fourteen and he was sixteen and she’d tried to teach him the Eclipse Waltz with somewhat embarrassing results.
These days, she would have auctioned off the Milky Way to make his intentions a little less honorable.
Her smile started to fizzle, and then his did, too. “I’ve missed you,” she said.
His gaze dropped away and he shifted in an attempt to get more comfortable against the dial. Locking his jaw so she wouldn’t see how much every tiny movement pained him. “How’s your head?” he asked, once her words had cloaked them both.
“The visions come and go,” she said, “but they don’t seem to be getting worse.”
“Have you had one today?”
She picked at a small, natural flaw in the linen of her pants, thinking back. “No, not since the trials yesterday. I turned into a girl of icicles, and Aimery lost his head. Literally.”
“Wouldn’t mind so much if that last one came true.”
She shushed him.
“I mean it. I don’t like how he looks at you these days.”
Winter glanced over her shoulder, but the courtyards surrounding the dais were empty. Only the distant bustle of music and laughter reminded her that they were in a metropolis at all.
“You’re back on Luna now,” she said. “You have to be careful what you say.”
“You’re giving me advice on how to be covert?”
“Jacin—”
“There are three cameras on this square. Two on the lampposts behind you, one embedded in the oak tree behind the sundial. None of them have audio. Unless she’s hiring lip-readers now?”
Winter scowled. “How can you know that for sure?”
“Surveillance was one of Sybil’s specialties.”
Winter crossed her arms. “She could have killed you yesterday. You need to be careful.”
“I know, Princess. I have no interest in returning to that throne room as anything other than a loyal guard.”
A burst of lights overhead caught Winter’s eye and she glanced up. Through the dome, the flames of a dozen spaceships were already fading as they launched themselves from Luna’s ports and streaked across the star-scattered sky. Heading toward Earth.
“Soldiers,” said Jacin, following her gaze. She couldn’t tell if he’d meant it as a statement or a question. “How’s the war effort?”
“No one tells me anything. But Her Majesty seems pleased with our victories so far … though still furious about the missing emperor, and the canceled wedding.”
“Not canceled. Just delayed.”
“Try telling her that.”
He grunted.
Winter leaned forward on her elbows, cupping her chin. “Did the cyborg really have a device like you talked about at the trial? One that can keep people from being manipulated?”
A light sparked in his eyes, as if she’d reminded him of something important, but when he tried to lean toward her, his binds held him back. He grimaced and cursed beneath his breath.
Winter scooted closer to him, making up the distance herself.
“That’s not all,” he said. “Supposedly, this device can keep Lunars from using their gift in the first place.”
“Yes, you mentioned that in the throne room.”
His gaze burrowed into her. “And it will protect their minds. She said it keeps them from…”
Going crazy.
He didn’t have to say it out loud, not when his eyes had so much hope and so much sympathy and when he was looking at her like he’d finally solved the world’s greatest problem. His meaning hung between them.
A device like that could heal her.