"What the fuck was that?" I ask, tripping to keep up with Roze as he practically flees from the courtyard.

"That was me winning your fight, O'otani."

"No," I correct. "That was you using my fight to vent some deep-seated angst. That was melodramatically airing your dirty laundry in public." By now I'm practically running just to match his long strides. "You've already shown your hand to half of the fucking court, so why don't you just skip the preamble and tell me what happened back there?"

Roze looks over, measures me up, and sighs. "Fine." He pauses for a second, gathering his thoughts. "What happened... is that I overestimated my self-control."

"I've met you twice, Ambroz, and both times you had a knife in your hand and violence in your eyes. Where the hell does self-control come into the equation?"

When we step inside the mica-streaked palace walls, Roze finally slows down. Our strides are matched well enough to give me a perfect view of him rolling his eyes so hard I can barely see the bicolored irises beneath his thick, dark lashes. A small movement dripping with disdain. Or maybe it's irony?

He shakes his hair out of his face, some of the ends stiff with dried blood. "Just to be clear, I wasn't really trying to kill you, O'otani."

"Oh, I see," I say with enough sarcasm to drown him. "You just thought that the proper way to greet a queen is a knife to the jugular. Honest mistake. Maybe I should be glad you didn't choose a gun to the temple instead?"

He snorts. "Look, I just wanted you to think I was trying to kill you. It's different."

"And why the hell would you want that?"

"Because fear makes people honest," he replies. "Lays their cards on the table, and you were keeping yours far too close to your chest. I wanted to know if you were loyal to something beyond ambition; like you said, you're the queen. What you stand for matters. We're building something here, something absolutely worth building, and I don't want variables I cannot account for entering into the equation and fucking things up."

"From where I'm standing, Roze, it really looks like you're that variable. But even if you aren't, I know you're a liar."

"I swear on my life," he says, offence and sincerity keeping company in his strange eyes

"'I was going to kill you, O'otani,'" I repeat, trying to adopt his gravelly baritone. "'I would have killed you if you hadn't opened your damned mouth and laughed instead of screamed.'"

Roze grimaces slightly. "You've got a good memory."
"You were absolutely trying to kill me," I tell him authoritatively. "And at the end of that fight, Sholu was trying to kill you. I want to know why."

"Which one? Why I wanted you dead or why Sholu wanted me dead?"

"Both."

Roze puts his hand on my elbow, steering me into a corridor that's swathed in shadow despite the brilliant sun shining outside.

"What is it with you and hallways?" I ask flippantly.

"What is it with you and always fucking talking?" He grunts back, then flashes a half smile that makes the sheer freckles peppering his high cheekbones dance.

"Answer the damn questions, Ambroz," I say, letting every bit of my exasperation leak into my voice. Hoping he doesn't hear the fondness lying beneath it.

"Now you sound like my mother, calling me by my full name to scold me," he mutters, his shadowed eyes and furrowed brows belying a widening smile.

"If I was your mother," I tell him with a sincerity on par with his own earnest insistence that he wasn't trying to hurt me, "I'd have drowned you as an infant."

"That's why," he says simply.

"Why what?"

"Why I put a knife to your throat," he explains. "I thought you were your mother's daughter. Someone who smiles to your face, then stabs you in the back when you turn to walk away." I flinch and something in his eyes softens. He pauses, then starts again.

"Kyoro came to me two weeks before the founder's feast and offered me an absurd sum of money to kill Sholu Verlaina when he was done killing her half-sister and nephew. She knew there was bad blood between us, even if she didn't know why, and I suppose she thought any norayasti would kill if you dangled large enough diamonds in front of their face. When she told me you were in on all of it, I believed her. I'd seen you walk into that red tent and I'd heard you keep your silence."

"I wasn't," I say, hating how fragile my voice suddenly sounds. "She never told me any of it."

"I know that now," Roze says gently. "If you married Sholu to save Shira's life, you didn't go along with a plot to end it the month before. But I didn't know that last night, and I wasn't willing to have a woman who betrayed both the dimaraste and Verlaina in power. I wasn't sure if you were playing him, manipulating his affections, or if you were both playing all of us, but I didn't care to find out. I am not going to let Sholu or anyone else destroy the first chance this country has had at democracy in a fucking millenia, and you were a variable-"

"That could not be accounted for," I finish, doing my best impression of his rich, resonant voice.

"I do not sound like that."

"Yes, you do," I insist, still in the same voice.

"I should've slit your throat when I had the chance," Roze sighs forlornly. "Would've stopped that racket from escaping your unholy throat."

"What was your plan, anyways?" I ask, leaning back against the cool stone wall behind me, absentmindedly tracing patterns onto the smooth surface with my fingertips. "Just leave me there until they found me in a pool of my own blood? Drag me out some back staircase and dump me in the river?"

"I was considering my options."

"Like?"

"Like framing Jana Semiroth. Making it look like the Chalnori noraya took you out," Roze says breezily. "He's been butting heads with Sholu for ages."

I blink up at him, stunned. "What would that accomplish beyond starting a war between the vasayaste and the Chalnori? What happened to using their trade routes to distribute food?"

Roze snorts. "They're fools to think they can partner with the noraya in a mutually beneficial way. You can't negotiate with wolves. Take it from someone who grew up as a wolf pup. The noraya and the vasayaste are like parasite and host. Whatever we gained using those supply routes, we'd lose by having a norayasti king on our council, close enough to watch and listen and exploit whatever damned weaknesses he finds," Roze grimaces. "Framing Jana Semiroth for your murder would destabilize the largest remaining gang in Shikkah, which is absolutely a threat to our emerging democracy, and give the vasayaste a reason not to jump into bed with them. As for starting a war, well, I'm not sure that conflict is avoidable. Maybe it's best to set the terms of the battle, and to begin now, when our power is at its peak."

"You said you were considering your options. What was the second?"

"Blaming your untimely death on the Yukkaiti, Matachai. She's pissed that Sholu is, what was it? Oh, yes. 'Sleeping with the enemy,'" Roze says, adopting a harsh Yukkaiti accent to quote her before laughing darkly. "It would get Sholu to abandon them as allies and expel them from our country. And I think anyone with half a brain would be glad to see the Shao Asha go."

I stare at him for a moment, and then I'm laughing so hard I almost bang my head on the wall at my back. "Has anyone ever told you you're a fucking lunatic?" I ask, eyebrows arching, eyes watering. I use the cool stone to steady myself, wiping my face with my sleeve.

"I tell myself every morning in the mirror."

"I tell myself that I'm going to kill Sholu Verlaina," I admit.

Roze looks over at me, suddenly solemn, and murmurs "but killing is wrong, O'otani. What would Zsavina say?"

And just like that, I'm laughing again. "She'd grant him immortality and send him right back so she didn't have to deal with him. He'd reappear with all the pomp and pageantry of a resurrected saint. Shikkah would venerate him, maybe mint his face on some lesser currency to commemorate the miracle."

"Halle-fucking-luiah." Roze holds his hands out like he's beseeching the heavens. His face is so stupidly sincere that my laughter becomes a rather unflattering snort.

"Blasphemy, my lord?"

"I wouldn't dream of anything less. Just like you wouldn't dream of me."

"I might," I admit. "At least, I'd dream of you punching his supremely punchable face. Seeing you Knock him out cold was the best wedding present I could've asked for. Your sheer ability to piss him off is deeply endearing." I pause. "But really, tell me what happened back there. You two obviously have history. You were quarreling like lovers."

"We were madly in love with each other, once upon a time," he confesses. "Young and brash and certain we were invincible. It ended badly, and I suppose my heart still lashes out at the man who broke it."

"That is such bullshit."

"And now you mock my pain."

"And you strain my credulity."

"To be clear," Roze tells me in a sober tone, "if there was ever anything between that man and I, it would be purely physical. And I'd be on top. And really fucking drunk."

"I will tell him you said that if you don't tell me why he wanted to wring your neck back there. I swear it."

"Fine," he sighs. "But it's a long story, and I've got an appointment in an hour, so you'll have to come with me while I get ready."

"You sure you don't want to just go like that?"

He chuckles to himself as we leave the alcove and head up a steep flight of stairs. "Too risky. No shirt on and blood in my hair makes me look irresistibly roguish; they'd be so smitten with me, they'd never let me leave. Keep me chained to the bed as a pleasure slave."

I just stare at him. "You sure your mother didn't drown you? Even just a little bit? Because brain damage would explain a lot."

He pushes a heavy door open, revealing an ornate bedroom. Many of the vasayaste council members who aren't native Arzsans are staying in the palace for a few days. The room is so lived in it loo

\[ks like he's been here for weeks, maybe months. Clothes are strewn about the floor like casualties, towels hang on doorknobs to dry, blankets are twisted into knots and pillows fall haphazardly off the bed, stripped of their cases. Two watches next to the bed keep time, one a minute faster than the other.

"Wolves, huh?"

He snorts. "Well, I didn't know I was having company, now did I?"

"You are the company. This is my home, Roze, not yours."

"Then I suppose I don't have to tell you to make yourself comfortable."

"Looks like you already have," I say, raising my eyebrows at the bedroom that looks like a storm tore through it. He ignores me, walking towards the open door of the bathroom, which is in a similar state of disarray. Bottles tipped over on the counter, leaking liquid, wet clothes on the floor. I'm almost surprised that the shower curtain hasn't been torn down.

The sun streaming in through a glass skylight shows the beginnings of bruises forming along his arms, angry looking red and purple welts. By now, I think, Sholu's twice-punched eye must be the color of an overripe plum. Roze moves a pair of boots out of the sink and looks himself over in the glass, splashing his face with water. I don't ask about the boots.

"Like I told you," he says, picking up a bar of soap and working it into a rich lather. He massages the white foam into the stubble along his jawline, flinging bubbles onto the mirror in the process. "I was raised by wolves." He's methodical with the razor, such a strange contrast to his earlier carelessness. "My mother was a lady of the court. Things soured rather suddenly, so she ran, and Liro took her in. She stayed because she fell in love with his brother Merik. They had a son and a daughter that hovered between two worlds. The violence of the gang, the starched dance of high society. Neither of them were ever able to find a comfortable balance."

"Luzca," I say softly. "Luzca was your mother."

He nods. "Luzca Adara Korahaim, Amsol's closest confidant. I grew up with stories of the dimaraste. Maybe that's why I could never hate your family like the others did," he says, pausing for a moment. "Maybe it was because I knew that the children who grew up on Liro's streets were no worse off than Sorzsa's highborn daughters." I flinch, and he backs away from the subject. I'm grateful.

"My sister wasn't ever really mine," he says softly, dragging the sharp blade of the razor across the delicate, slightly sunburned skin of his throat. "Or my mother's. She was Verlaina's from the start. Those two, they weren't just in love. That word does nothing to convey the depth of their entanglement. They were bound up in each other like old roots, drinking from the same groundwater, growing from the same dark soil. We all knew they'd marry, and they did."

"So Sholu was your brother in law," I finish. "Your family."

"He was not my family," Roze says bitterly, wiping the soap from his face with a plush towel before dropping it, too, on the floor. "He was the quicksand I constantly fought against, trying to keep my sister from going under. He was ambitious and reckless and he couldn't resist chasing power, and she couldn't resist following him off every fucking cliff he jumped from. I did everything I could to catch them, goddess help me, but it wasn't nearly enough." Roze's back is still to me, but I can see his face in the glass. There are lines around his eyes that didn't seem to be there a moment ago, a weariness that strikes me as very familiar. But then it's gone, and he's undoing the button of his trousers like it's the most natural thing in the world.

"What are you doing?" I hiss, blushing scarlet. "Are you fucking crazy?"

"I've been told I'm a lunatic, by you of all people, so maybe," he says, flashing an easy smile. "What am I doing? I'm taking a shower. Don't know about you, but I'm used to taking my clothes off beforehand."

"I'm standing right here. You didn't think to close the fucking door?"

"Well, I assumed you'd turn around. You're the one who insisted on hearing this story. I told you I had to get ready for an appointment, and I figured you knew that meant hot water and soap, and, yes, nudity, given I'm covered in dirt and blood."

I sputter something unintelligible and he smirks. "Well turn around, then. The pants are coming off. Wouldn't want to scandalize you, now would I?" He grins. "Unless, of course, you want to stay and see-"

I turn around as quickly as I possibly can and practically run from the bathroom, shutting the door firmly behind me. I tell Roze he can finish the story when he's fully clothed; he just laughs. Growing up, I was always the one who shocked everyone, often unintentionally. Too loud, too brash, too impulsive, too free. Among the vasayaste, it seems like I'm just as prudish as my aunt Jinn. The thought makes me wrinkle my nose in distaste.

When Roze emerges from the steaming bathroom, he's not fully clothed. Of course he isn't. A large white towel wraps around his hips. He picks up a few pieces of crumpled clothing from the floor and hangs them in the steam to smooth out the wrinkles. When he flops down unceremoniously on the bed, wet towel and all, I can't help the small smile pulling at the corner of my lips. Last night, this man was an assassin, sharp as a blade and silent as the grave. This morning he was a norayasti prize fighter who knocked the deme out cold. But now? Now he just seems like a boy with too much energy and too little care.

"Liro died unexpectedly," Roze says, picking up the story without any preamble. "The jostling for control began before his body was even cold. He had an heir, but in the noraya, there's no strict line of succession. You don't know the moment a child is born what role they'll play or what power they'll have. You don't know until they're standing in front of you, making you know. Liro's son Oren took control, but factions split off, each vying for the same dark crown. The Chalnori and Asrakali norayas came running as soon as they smelled blood, of course."

"Wolves?" I summarize.

Roze smirks. "Exactly. Mangy fucking wolves."

"Sounds like some of my great aunts."

His smirk becomes a smile. It fades the second he begins talking again, weighed down by memory. "The noraya was never safe, but it did have an established rhythm, like a tide. And the waves only ever got so high. But then Liro died, and we were drowning. Those nearest to him suddenly had a target on their backs, and beyond his son, Lizzi and I were his closest blood relations. Oren's friends worried we'd mount a challenge and his enemies wanted to use us to divide his support. Sholu was ambitious; he saw the chaos as a chance to climb. All I saw was a powder keg waiting for a match, and I didn't want to be there when it ignited. I told them we had to leave, but Sholu wouldn't consider it. If he left, he'd be out of the game."

"But it wasn't a fucking game," Roze mutters as he pulls the slightly less wrinkled clothes from their hangers. "It was unstable, and brutal, and people were dying. So, I found a way out. That was always my job. Fix the messes, mitigate the damage."

"You might want to turn around, by the way," he tells me as he pulls his shirt over his head. "I'll be removing the towel to put on my pants. Avert your eyes or don't say I didn't warn you." I turn away, of course.

"My maternal uncle was building ships. There was a little cottage by the wharf, and a job if Sholu wanted it. Not glamorous work, but at least it was honest. I thought by then even he'd be sick of the infighting, ready to jump ship, but he only held on tighter. I convinced Lizzi to come with my mother and I, for the baby's sake, but she went back two weeks later. She didn't know how to function without him. And I just- I got desperate," Roze tells me as he pulls a brush roughly through his messy curls. "I thought about killing Sholu, once or twice, breaking that hold he had on her. Instead I begged him. Got down on my fucking knees and begged him to give it up because it was going to get his wife and child killed. He laughed at me. He was so fucking certain of himself, so comfortable amidst the chaos and violence that repulsed me. He lived for it, not for them."

"How long after that was Kanza's coup?" I ask.

"Three weeks and two days," he says softly, looking away from me as he tightens his belt. "It was night and from far away, the blood just looked like shadows. I wanted to believe that he was carrying her home because she was too tired to walk, but then he got closer and he just- just looked at me, and I knew." Roze's voice cracks with emotion, his eyes still carefully averted, as if that could hide the fact that he feels something.

"I'm sorry," I say, surprised to find I genuinely mean it.

"Me too," he murmurs, pulling on a loose jacket. "Sholu was destroyed. I remember him with dark circles that were practically black holes, sitting at our table and just staring at the wall for hours. Then some spirit would come over him and he'd throw his glass so hard it shattered. We went through a lot of plates that month. Even more glasses," Roze sighs. "I hated him, but I also felt sorry for him. He was like his own shadow. I know it wasn't his fault, not really, but we both wanted someone to blame."

I flinch, imagining the scarlet edge of a tent ruffled by a warm breeze. Grey eyes, sealed lips. Everything I should've said but didn't. Every bit of me believing it was what was best for him, even if he'd never see it that way. "I understand. He didn't kill her, but if he had made different decisions, she would still be alive."

Roze nods. "And then one day he was gone. I liked to imagine he'd left it all behind, made a new life somewhere quiet. But he hadn't," he sighs, bending over to lace up his sandals. "Of course he hadn't. Sholu wasn't starting over; he was starting a war. Kanza razed the noraya halfway to the ground, destroyed the old leadership and infrastructure because he saw them as a threat. That made it weak enough for him to control, but it also cleared the way for Sholu to take power. More than that, it created a common enemy."

"Somitu abandoned Kanza the second Liro was dead. The Asrakali and Chalnori norayas stopped honoring the old treaties because Kanza was too weak to enforce them and began encroaching on our territory. We needed something to believe in, and Sholu, well, Sholu's always had a way with words. With people, really. They loved him almost as much as they hated Kanza. Within the year, he held the entire Noraya in his hands."

"And now, Shikkah," I add dispassionately.

Roze nods, doing up the buttons of his silk cuffs absentmindedly. Straightening his shirt, running his fingers through his wild hair. "So that's it. That's why I wanted to kill you, and why Sholu wanted to kill me, if only for a moment."

"Why did you tell me all of that?"

He shrugs. "You asked."

As he steps towards the door, about to leave me alone in his room, I block him. "You're lying again."

"You wound me," he murmurs, trying to step around me. I move with him.

"I will if you don't tell me why you just spilled that entire sordid story like it was some ancient epic instead of an account of your own tragedy."

"Maybe my tragedy is epic," he suggests.

"Maybe you're full of shit."

"This is true," he admits with a sly grin. When I fix my gaze on him, he sighs. "Fine. I told you because you asked it of me, and it was something in my power to give."

"And you're just that beneficent? Or is it guilt over the attempted murder again?"

It was only nearly attempted murder," Roze corrects gently. "And no. Not guilt. Empathy, O'otani, though it may have been a long time since you encountered such a thing. You're a prisoner who has to convince the world every day that your shackles are a choice. You're surrounded by lies, and I wanted to hand you something true. He's taken your life, so I'll give you his secrets. Even if they're also my secrets."

For a breath, I'm speechless. "You have a surprising amount of honor for a man who tried to cut my throat in the dark."

He rolls his eyes aggressively. "Only nearly attempted murder, remember?"

I blink, the whisper of an idea that's been flitting about my mind finally coalescing into a solid realization. "It all has to do with honor, doesn't it? You said you weren't willing to have a woman who betrayed both the dimaraste and Verlaina in power. But it was more than that, wasn't it? More than protecting this new government from a poisioned queen. You reproached Sholu and I for letting whole families bleed out to further our ambitions. That knife wasn't just pragmatism, or prevention; it was judgement."

"And does he not deserve to be judged, for using the same tactics as Kanza Arishai? For claiming the ends justify the means just to justify his own power?" Roze's voice rises, anger flaming to life in his wild eyes. One, a forest on fire, the other wood waiting to be burned. "They put bullets in the back of half-drunken civilians on a feast night courtesy of a woman trying to have her half-sister and nephew murdered. It wasn't a conflict, it was en execution."

I stare at him for a long moment, silent as the grave. "I wonder," I say, more statement than question, "who that misguided devil Roze Marithan actually is. I thought him a norayasti hothead, then one of Sholu's worshippers, but it seems he's neither. Is he a zealot? An idealist? Hopelessly naïve? Or is he just a good man in a bad place?"

He leans forward, smiles a smile full of teeth. "You tell me."

"I find I cannot."

"And I find I cannot walk away from you without asking to see you again."

I color. "Why don't you just sneak up behind me again? Press a knife to my throat?"

I meant it to sound flippant, but he just nods. "Alright, then. You could obviously use the practice."

"Excuse me?" I ask, eyebrows drawn up, half offended and half amused. By then, he's already gone.