Tsvetan didn't sit right away. He crossed to the sideboard first, poured two glasses of something dark from a crystal decanter, and set one down in front of the chair he clearly meant for me — like this was a chat between equals and not an ambush he'd been readying since he found me flat against his wall.
I sat because standing wasn't buying me anything. The journal pressed against my ribs the whole way down, and I had half a second of panic wondering if he'd already felt its outline through my jacket, out in the hall. If he had, he gave nothing away.
"How long?" he asked, settling into the chair across from me, unhurried, like he had all night. Knowing him, he probably did.
"How long what?"
"Don't." His voice didn't rise. It didn't need to. "The border. The girl. How long."
Something in my chest went very still. I thought about lying — about swearing I'd just gone out for air, gotten turned around near the line, anything — but Tsvetan had a way of looking at you that made lying feel like something you'd already been caught doing. "A while," I said instead. "Does it matter?"
"It matters a great deal, given the timing." He turned his glass slowly by the stem, watching the liquid catch the lamplight instead of me. "You understand what's about to happen to that border."
"I understand you just told your brother you engineered a war." My hands were fists in my lap before I'd decided to make them. "So forgive me if I'm not in the mood for a lecture on timing, cousin."
That got the smallest flicker out of him — not quite a smile, not quite anything. "I didn't engineer a war, Maeve. I engineered an excuse. There's a difference, and it's an important one, though I don't expect you to appreciate it tonight."
"And what happens to her? To the West, once your excuse turns into pikes on the border road?"
"Whatever happens to the West happens to the West." He set the glass down and finally looked straight at me, and there wasn't any warmth in it, just that patient, unbothered attention I hated more than I'd ever hated Ruslan's shouting. "What happens to you is the part you should be worried about. A North noble with a West attachment, on the eve of a war I orchestrated — do you understand how that reads to the council? To the family?"
I understood exactly how it read. I understood it the way you understand a blade is sharp right after it's already cut you. "So what — you're going to have me watched? Locked in the east wing until this blows over?"
"I'm going to have you useful." He said it simply, like that settled the matter. "You'll take a post with the border command once the lines are drawn. Officially, liaison duty — reporting troop movement, keeping the council informed of North interests along the line. Unofficially, it keeps you exactly where I can see you, and it keeps anyone else from asking why a Voronin girl keeps finding reasons to walk the border fog at midnight."
The border. Her side of it, close enough to smell the smoke if the fighting reached that far. My stomach dropped even as some small, stupid, hopeful part of me reached for it like a gift. "You're putting me on the line."
"I'm putting you exactly where you already wanted to be, cousin. I'd think you'd be thanking me." The ghost of something almost fond crossed his face, gone as fast as it came. "Do be careful what you do with that proximity. The West won't distinguish between the noble who started their war and the noble who happens to share her name, if it comes to that."
I didn't answer. My fingers found the edge of the journal through my jacket without meaning to, the stitching Raelin had put in with a stolen needle and no light to see by. He'd handed me exactly what I wanted and made it into a leash in the same breath, and the worst part was I couldn't even argue the leash wouldn't hold.
"Go," Tsvetan said, standing, done with me as suddenly as he'd started. "Report to the border command by week's end." I stopped in the doorway, not turning around. "And Maeve — whatever this girl means to you, the West is about to stop being a place you visit. Plan accordingly."
I didn't sleep. I sat on the edge of my bed until the sky went from black to that thin gray before dawn, the journal open on my knees, blank pages waiting for whatever I decided to put in them first. Somewhere past the mansion walls, past the fog, past a border that was about to grow teeth, Raelin was probably still asleep, still safe, still mine in whatever way you could call it, for maybe a few more hours.
I picked up the pen.
Week's end. Border command. I don't know what side of this you'll be standing on when I get there. I don't think it matters. Find me anyway.7Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrgM12bWFg7
and then Add to home screen.