Chapter 9
HARK
Dinner had made him want to claw his own eyes out.
Arla had swept in like a storm and winked at the prince.
Then she had started on Orson about his lack of prowess with a blade, despite him being the only person rumoured to rival her skill at Castle Grey.
And then, to top it off, as Elrod had scolded Arabelle for wearing red – as if it were an offence to the gods – Arla had smiled sweetly and told the queen how much she liked the colour.
He’d thought Elrod would kill the girl where she sat.
As it happened, Arla had decided to keep her mouth shut for the rest of the evening, though she would have to try considerably harder for Hark not to notice the way she hung on every word spoken as if they contained centuries’ worth of secrets.
Perhaps they did, but he failed to see how asking about Kastonia’s trading routes with the continent would reveal anything.
Then again, he never had been able to predict the mind of Arla Reinhart.
She had disappeared quickly after that, a train of midnight-blue silk following in her wake that had all but fucking possessed him for some reason he had no desire to untangle. Not tonight, anyway.
But perhaps it was why he had lingered after the rest of the palace had gone to bed. Perhaps it was why he was waiting down the corridor from her room because sleep had been but a distant tease.
She slipped so silently out of her door he’d have missed it if he weren’t used to the unique way in which her body moved.
Arla wasn’t dressed in her fighting leathers or the stunning dress she had worn earlier.
Instead, she looked as if she had been dragged from sleep.
Her hair tumbled across her shoulders and down her spine, and she wore a robe that was the colour of rich wine.
Her bare feet padded slowly along the hallway – slow, gentle.
As if she had all the time in the world.
She hadn’t come to spy tonight. She’d come to wander.
He’d heard from the maids at Castle Grey that she did the same there, too, when her dreams forced her from the depths of sleep.
He couldn’t stop himself following her – couldn’t stop watching her – as she trailed her fingers across balustrades and stone walls and around the golden frames of portraits of long-forgotten kings.
What Hark hadn’t accounted for was that they weren’t the only two people awake in Larkire Palace.
Prince Reuben looked as fresh as ever – as though sleep didn’t have the privilege of roughening his appearance. Hark had known him long enough to know he, too, wandered at night – mostly to make sure his father hadn’t been entirely too wicked to the queen.
Hark pressed himself closer into the alcove from which he’d been watching Arla. The girl didn’t react as Reuben approached her. Either she’d known he was there longer than Hark had, or she simply didn’t care about being snuck up on.
‘Enjoyed fighting with my father so much that you must argue with his ancestors, too?’ the prince said as he reached Arla’s side. She’d been looking up at the portraits for a while.
Arla laughed. It was one of those delicate laughs with which she rarely graced anyone. ‘I think Orson felt the worst of my tongue tonight.’
The prince laughed, too. ‘Indeed. I bet he’s plotting a thousand ways to kill you in your sleep.’
‘He’d have to best me first, and we both know he can’t.’
Hark’s skin prickled with something he couldn’t place. He hated how friendly they were. They had met each other only two days ago and already developed an ease of manner which rendered them comfortable being half-dressed together in the corridor in the middle of the night.
‘You can’t sleep, either?’
Arla sighed, twisting strands of golden hair around her fingers. ‘It’s not often I do – sleep well, I mean.’
‘Nightmares?’
‘Sometimes,’ she mused, beginning to stroll along the corridor. Reuben lingered at her side like a pet dog. ‘Other times I find myself unable to stop thinking. Of what-ifs, and of the most terrifying scenarios that I know in the light of day have no possibility of ever coming true. But—’
‘But in the dark it’s different,’ Reuben finished.
Goosebumps peppered Hark’s body. It felt too much like he was eavesdropping on a private, intimate, conversation.
Yet he still couldn’t stop his feet from following them.
‘You’re awake, too, Prince Reuben. Tell me what keeps you out of bed.’
Arla’s voice was soft. Too soft. Too vulnerable. Hark found himself wanting the hardness back. The readiness to kill at a moment’s notice.
Reuben huffed a laugh that held no amusement. ‘My mother, mainly. She struggles here – has done for as long as I remember. It’s wrong of me to spy but—’
‘But you want to make sure she’s safe,’ Arla interrupted. ‘I get that. Losing my parents tore me in half. I was lost at first, without them.’
Fucking gods!
He wanted to kill her.
For all her talk that needled and goaded about how much she loathed Kastonia and its people for what they had done to her parents, and here she was revealing her deepest feelings with its prince, of all people!
He should stay and listen to all of it. Should stay and follow them through the corridors and hallways of Larkire all night, listening to them share their feelings and downright flirt with one another.
But the thought of it made him want to vomit.
And besides, he had better plans, involving an old friend with silver hair whom he was supposed to have met in his rooms twenty minutes ago.
Damn Arla Reinhart and the prince.