"Will you sit down and rest?" Nemia was watching me reproachfully. "You've been pacing for ages."
"It helps me think." I wasn't made for sitting still — or for being injured, if it made people coddle me so much.
"Maybe you need a break from thinking."
Maybe she was right. With a sigh, I leaned against a tree Nemia had strictly forbidden me from climbing the moment she saw me eying it when we came out. It was the closest to resting I could give her while I was so wound up.
The Protector's garden was bitterly cold. Our breath froze in the air and snow crunched beneath my feet as I settled myself. A trail of trampled slush marked the path I'd been pacing. It wasn't pleasant, exactly, but it was a refreshing change from the stuffy rooms of the Protector's Hall, where every fireplace roared and every wall was insulated with tapestries.
I thought it had been nice of the Protector, when she passed me on the stairs up to my room, to stop and offer us any winter clothing we may need if we wished to go outside. The clothing we'd packed in anticipation of crossing the mountains was bulky and utilitarian, and she insisted a servant find us more suitable gear. It was especially kind since I doubted the Protector often casually strolled around her guest quarters, which meant she had specifically come by to see if we had made any progress and offer us the use of her gardens.
Looking around the walkways — it was hard to even think of this as a garden, with the flower plots that would only bloom in the Protectorate's summer all heaped with snow — it was strange to think that it was only autumn in Solangia, where it was almost never this cold.
Nemia had cleared a spot on a stone bench to sit while I churned the snowy paths to mud, and she made an almost picturesque image in her elegant borrowed coat. An outdoor version of that decorative Emorian coat, it was long, dark blue and high-collared, startling against the stark garden of snow and stone. Strands of glossy black hair escaped her cap when the wind came and put a tinge of pink into her pale face.
I stifled a laugh, watching her gather a handful of snow and bring it to her mouth. "Taste good?"
"S'cold," she mumbled into it.
"I am shocked." I moved to sit next to her. "You better share with me."
"Find your own," she laughed, turning to keep her handful of snow out of my reach. I tried to strain around her for a moment, then gave up, leaving my arm draped over her.
The warmth of her laughter faded out of me. "I'm so... restless." It wasn't a strong enough word, but for the moment I was comfortable, resting against her, and didn't want to say how jittery and impatient I felt.
"I know."
"Why is Iso like this? Why do I keep feeling like he's a bad ambassador on purpose, when I know he wants Englescroft to succeed? Why did he do such a bad job if he's as clever as everyone warned me he is?"
"Morie..."
"He has to have a larger game in play, but I have no idea what."
"Maybe you should..."
I sat up, feeling the need to pace again. "You agree Iso might have Jaden, but if he took Jaden to have leverage over me, why didn't he say so when he captured me? I mean, he didn't say anything about me having royal blood. We don't know for sure that he knows. He can't know. If he did know, if he did want to put me on the throne and control me, why hasn't he started putting that into motion?"
She shrugged helplessly.
"I have no idea where Jaden could be. Am I wrong for trying to figure it out? Should I be focusing on the Phoenix? The Protector is impatient for us to finalize the plan so we can get started. That's something I actually have a clue about, and we can't afford to lose her support. But I can't think about that when Jaden's out there somewhere."
She was silent.
"Nemia?"
"I don't have any answers."
I looked down, embarrassed, at the snow pulp I'd made with my tapping feet. Of course she didn't know any more than I did, but she had still been my listener for the past hour. She was always there to support me quietly when things were bad. I couldn't expect her to do any more than that. "I'm sorry. You were trying to say something before."
She hesitated. "Maybe now's not the time."
"It is," I said firmly. "You let me monologue, now it's your turn to talk."
"I guess what I wanted was for both of us to talk. About, about how..." She dusted snow from her gloves, carefully not looking at me. "About how you kissed me yesterday."
"Oh." I probably should have expected that. I felt even more foolish realizing I had all but forgotten I had done that, and like an even worse person for not realizing she wouldn't be able to forget it. "Yeah, yeah. What did you, uh, I don't know—"
She took pity on my fumbling and stepped in. "I know you were just overwhelmed and excited by realizing Jaden might be alive. But I've seen you excited plenty of times before. It never made you kiss me."
No, it hadn't. But I had wanted to before, more than once. "I didn't mean to upset you."
"I know you didn't. And I'm not upset. Well—" She smiled crookedly. "I may be by the end of this conversation, but I'm not upset yet."
"Because of Irina? I know I wasn't really thinking when I did it, but I also didn't think you were hung up on her like that, and I wouldn't have done it if—"
"I'm not hung up on her. At least not the way you mean. I'm still confused about her, but I don't... I never felt about her the way I feel about you."
Warmth flushing my skin drove the cold away for a moment.
"She hurt me, but it wasn't heartbreak. Just regular betrayal. I don't want to talk about her right now."
"Then we won't." I squeezed her hand. Our gloves were too many layers between us. I missed the feeling of her bare hands buried in my hair when I kissed her. I could barely feel the flakes that hit my face as a faint flurry began, everything melting against my skin. She looked so lonely and confused and I wanted to kiss her again.
"I wanted to ask what it meant, if it wasn't just the moment catching you up."
"It wasn't the moment," I said quickly. "I mean, it was more than that." I looked down at our clasped hands. "I didn't think I'd been subtle."
"No, subtlety is not your style," Nemia agreed. "You've been different since we escaped the castle. Touching me more, looking at me different sometimes."
Knowing she'd noticed made me feel strange, a little tingly and a little scared, like balancing on a rooftop after a break from heights. I knew I could handle this, but I wasn't confident, and I wasn't quite as steady as I usually was. "I guess we should have talked about this before."
We looked at each other with self-deprecating grins, both of us a little shaky.
"Yeah. We always had a silent understanding, didn't we, instead of getting on the same page." Nemia fumbled with her loose strands of hair, fingers clumsy in her gloves. "We were good friends. Best friends."
"We're still best friends."
She smiled. "We knew it could be more than that, but we never said it out loud."
"Not in the right words, anyway." We had grown into these unacknowledged feelings slowly, slid into them gracelessly and without any idea of what to do with them. There were the looks we gave each other in dark, lonely places and then put away, never doing anything; there were the times we talked about who we liked while never meeting each other's eyes at all. Enough tension between us that we knew it was there, but never acknowledged.
"What changed?" Nemia asked softly.
I had an answer, but it felt rather silly. "I guess there was less pressure."
"What do you mean?" Snowflakes looked like stars in her black hair, I noticed. We had drifted closer on the bench, shifting slightly until the space between us squeezed smaller and smaller.
I shrugged, barely, because there wasn't much room. If I met her eyes it would be impossible to ignore how close we were, so I kept my eyes trained down, talking quietly. "We never had many other friends at the castle, did we? It was us, Cara, Nick and Sam. When you aren't close to many people, it's like... like you aren't willing to give even one friend up, even if it's because you love them and want to be together a different way."
I dared to glance up into her eyes — our faces were close, her long lashes and soft eyes so near. "But then I started leaving the castle for more than Jaden's lessons. I met the rebels in the capital — and at the same time I got closer to Luca and Caer, and then Magali. There were more people I'd call my friends than ever before. And then, going to Maenar... I know my brothers now. I have Wes and Lucien and Evvie and Liz and Therese. I think even Joshua is my friend now." I could hear the bewilderment in my voice. "I mean, isn't it strange? After all those years of people avoiding us."
"Yeah," she said softly. "I like Liz and Evvie and Therese a lot. I miss the others from back home, they'll always be my family, but still. It means a lot that they accepted me."
If I got any lighter I was going to float off with the snowflakes that drifted past us. I loved that coming to Maenar had been good for her too. I loved that she understood. "We're not a quarter of each other's worlds anymore."
She smiled. "I guess not. It's funny how that didn't make us any less important to each other, just different."
"Yeah," I said slowly. It was the perfect way of saying it. Best friends, in a new way. "We can be different people to each other, now that we don't have to be one of the few friends we both have."
Her smile turned teasing. "You want to be different to me, Morane?"
I leaned forward, slowly, letting our foreheads touch, then brushing my lips over her temples, down to her cheek. "Yes," I whispered. Her skin was warm. Her eyelashes brushed against my face. Every little touch between us made my stomach tumble.
Every space between us closed as she wrapped her arms over my shoulders and kissed me. Long, slow, warm in the middle of the flurry.
It was very unfortunate that the atmosphere of the quiet, softly falling snow was shattered when I pulled back — cupping her face and thinking dizzily that if anything was going to distract me from getting those plans the Protector desperately wanted into her hands it would be this — by the sudden suspicion that had oozed into my mind while my guard was down and my thoughts were very much elsewhere.
"Nemia... you're really smart."
"I guess it was too much to expect to hear that I'm a good kisser."
I grinned at her. "You know I only ever deliver compliments that are wildly inappropriate to the situation."
"Of course, I forgot," she shot back, her mouth quirking up. "According to Moranese tradition, I should have responded to a kiss by telling you you're good at fighting."
Her unthinking words barely stung at the remembrance that I wasn't the Assassin anymore. I pulled her up with me. "Will you help me with something?"
"I know better than to agree without hearing exactly how many laws you're going to ask me to break."
"Didn't I just say you're smart?" Even though my heart was thumping with my new suspicions about Iso, there was a certain skip in it that was entirely due to the brilliantly happy way she looked at me as I led her back to the Protector's Hall.