But Thorne shook his head, adamant. “No, believe me. She deserves a better life than this.”
Kai leaned forward to better get a view of his home spreading out before them. “My point exactly.”
Thirteen
“When did you learn to embroider?” Jacin said, picking through the basket that hung on Winter’s elbow.
She preened. “A few weeks ago.”
Jacin lifted a hand towel from the collection and eyed the precise stitches that depicted a cluster of stars and planets around the towel’s border. “Were you getting any sleep?”
“Not very much, no.” She riffled through the basket and handed him a baby blanket embroidered with a school of fish swimming around the border. “This one’s my favorite. It took four whole days.”
He grunted. “I take it the visions were bad that week.”
“Horrible,” she said lightly. “But now I have all of these gifts.” She took the blanket back from him and tucked it among the rest of the colorful fabrics. “You know keeping busy helps. It’s when I’m idle the monsters come.”
Jacin glanced at her from the corner of his eye. He had been her guard for weeks now, but rarely did they get to talk so casually or walk side by side like this—it was expected that guards keep a respectful distance from their charges. But today Winter had dragged him along to AR-2, one of the domes adjacent to the central sector. It was mostly high-end shops set among residential neighborhoods, but this early in the day all of the shops were still closed and the streets empty and peaceful. There was no one to care about propriety.
“And all these gifts are for the shopkeepers?”
“Shopkeepers, clerks, household servants.” Her eyes glimmered. “The overlooked machine of Artemisia.”
The lower classes, then. The people who dealt with the trash and cooked the food and ensured all the needs of Luna’s aristocracy were met. They were rewarded with lives much more enviable than the laborers in the outer sectors. Full stomachs, at the least. The only downfall was that they had to live in Artemisia, surrounded by the politics and mind games of the city. A good servant was treated like a prized pet—spoiled and fawned over when they were wanted, beaten and discarded when they’d overstayed their usefulness.
Jacin had always thought that, given a choice, he’d rather take his luck to the mines or factories.
“You’ve been visiting them a lot?” he asked.
“Not as much as I’d like to. But one of the milliner’s assistants had a baby and I’ve been meaning to make her something. Do you think she’ll like it?”
“It’ll be the nicest thing the kid has.”
Winter gave a joyful skip as she walked. “My mother was a great seamstress, you know. She was becoming quite popular among the dress shops when—well. Anyway, she embroidered my baby blanket. Levana tried to throw it out, but Papa was able to stash it away. It’s one of my most prized possessions.” She fluttered her lashes and Jacin felt his lips twitch at her, rather against his will.
“I knew she was a seamstress,” he said, “but how come I’ve never seen this special blanket of yours?”
“I was embarrassed to tell you about it.”
He laughed, but when Winter didn’t join him, the sound fizzled away. “Really?”
Winter shrugged, grinning her impish grin. “It’s silly, isn’t it? Holding on to a baby blanket, of all things?” She took in a deep breath. “But it’s also my namesake. She embroidered a scene from Earth’s winter, with snow and leafless trees and a pair of little red mittens. Those are like gloves, but with all the fingers joined together.”
Jacin shook his head. “Embarrassed to show me. That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Fine. I’ll show you, if you want to see it.”
“Of course I want to see it.” He was surprised how much her confession stung. He and Winter had shared everything since they were kids. It had never occurred to him she might harbor something like this, especially something so important as a gift from her mother, who had died in childbirth. But his mood brightened when he remembered—“Did I tell you I saw snow when I was on Earth?”
Winter stopped walking, her eyes going wide. “Real snow?”
“We had to hide the spaceship in Siberia, on this enormous tundra.”
She was staring at him like she would tackle him if he didn’t offer up more details.
Smirking, Jacin hooked his thumbs over his belt and rocked back on his heels. “That was all.”
Winter smacked him in the chest. “That is not all. What was it like?”
He shrugged. “White. Blinding. And really cold.”
“Did it glisten like diamonds?”
“Sometimes. When the sun hit it right.”
“What did it smell like?”
He cringed. “I don’t know, Win—Princess. Sort of like ice, I guess. I didn’t spend much time outside. Mostly we were stuck on the ship.”
Her gaze flickered with the almost slip of her name, something like disappointment that gave Jacin a shot of guilt.
So he smacked her back lightly on the shoulder. “Your parents did well. You’re named after something beautiful. It’s fitting.”
“Winter,” she whispered. Her expression turned speculative, the lights from a dress shop highlighting the specks of gray in her eyes.
Jacin tried not to be awkward when he looked away. There were times when she stood so close that he was amazed at his own ability to keep his hands to himself.
Moving the basket to her other arm, Winter started walking again. “Not everyone thinks I’m beautiful.”
He scoffed. “Whoever told you that, they were lying. Or jealous. Probably both.”
“You don’t think I’m beautiful.”
He snorted—somewhat uncontrollably—and laughed harder when she glared at him.
“That’s funny?”
Schooling his expression, he mimicked her glare. “Keep saying things like that and people will start to think you’ve gone crazy.”
She opened her mouth to refute. Hesitated. Nearly ran into a wall before Jacin scooped her back into the center of the narrow alley.
“You’ve never once called me beautiful,” she said after his hand had fallen back to his side.
“In case you haven’t noticed, you have an entire country of people singing your praises. Did you know they write poetry about you in the outer sectors? I had to listen to this drunk sing a whole ballad a few months back, all about your goddess-like perfection. I’m pretty sure the galaxy doesn’t need my input on the matter.”
She ducked her head, hiding her face behind a cascade of hair. Which was just as well. Jacin’s cheeks had gone warm, which made him both self-conscious and irritated.
“Your input is the only input that matters,” she whispered.
He stiffened, cutting a glance to her that she didn’t return. It occurred to him that he may have led them into a topic he had no intentions of exploring further. Fantasies, sure. Wishes, all the time. But reality? No—this was taboo. This would end in nothing good.
She was a princess. Her stepmother was a tyrant who would marry Winter off to someone who was politically beneficial for her own desires.
Jacin was the opposite of politically beneficial.
But here they were, and there she was looking all pretty and rejected, and why had he opened his big, stupid mouth?
Jacin sighed, exasperated. With her. With himself. With this whole situation. “Come on, Princess. You know how I feel about you. Everyone knows how I feel about you.”
Winter stopped again, but he kept walking, shaking his finger over his shoulder. “I’m not saying these things and looking at you at the same time, so keep up.”
She scurried after him. “How do you feel about me?”
“No. That’s it. That’s all I’m saying. I am your guard. I am here to protect you and keep you out of trouble, and that’s it. We are not swapping words that will result in a whole lot of awkward nights standing outside your bedroom door, got it?”