Katsa crouched with him before the pool. “That’s the first truly idiotic thing you’ve ever said to me.”

His mouth tightened. He picked up one of the rocks they used to bash through the ice. He lifted the rock above his head and drove it, hard, into the frozen surface of the pool; and finally she was rewarded with a low rumble of something that almost passed for a laugh. “Your brand of comfort bears some similarity to your tactical offense.”

“You’ve lost something,” she said, “and you’ve every right to feel sorrow for what you’ve lost. They’re not the same, sight and your Grace. Your Grace shows you the form of things, but it doesn’t show you beauty. You’ve lost beauty.”

His mouth tightened again, and he looked away from her. When he looked back she thought he might be about to cry. But he spoke tearlessly, stonily. “I won’t go back to Lienid. I won’t go to my castle, if I’m not able to see it. It’s hard enough to be with you. It’s why I didn’t tell you the truth. I wanted you to go away, because it hurts to be with you when I can’t see you.”

She tilted her head back and considered his stormy expression. “This is very good,” she said. “This is some excellent self-pity.”

And then the rumble of his laughter again, and a kind of helpless heartache in his face that caused her to reach for him, take him into her arms, and kiss his neck, his snow-covered shoulder, his finger not wearing its ring, and every place that she could find. He touched her face gently. He touched her lips and kissed her. He rested his forehead against hers.

“I would never hold you here,” he said. “But if you can bear this—if you can bear me behaving like this—I don’t really want you to leave.”

“I’ll not go,” Katsa said, “for a long time. I’ll not go until you want me to; or until you’re ready to go yourself.”

HE HAD QUITE a talent for playing a part. Katsa saw this now, because she saw the transformation now, whenever they were alone and he stopped pretending. To his brother and his cousin he presented strength, steadiness, health. His shoulders were straight, his stride even. When he couldn’t hide his unhappiness, he played it as moodiness. When he couldn’t find the energy to direct his eyes to their faces and pretend to see them, he played it as inattention. He was strong, cheerful—strangely distracted, perhaps, but healing well from grave injury. It was an impressive act—and for the most part, it seemed to satisfy them. Enough, at least, that they never had reason to suspect the truth of his Grace, which was ultimately all he was trying to hide.

When he and Katsa were alone, hunting, collecting water, or sitting together in the cabin, the disguise quietly fell from him. Weariness pulled at his face, his body, his voice. He put his hand out occasionally, to a tree or a rock, to steady himself. His eyes focused, or pretended to focus, on nothing, ever. And Katsa began to understand that while some of his sorry state was attributable to plain unhappiness, an even larger part of it stemmed from his Grace itself. For he was still growing into it; and now that he no longer had vision to anchor his perception of the world, he was constantly overwhelmed.