And there was Jovis in front of me, the feel of his mouth still lingering on my lips. He hadn’t asked me to kiss him. It wasn’t something that was done – Emperors kissing their Captains of the Imperial Guard. He’d looked briefly about the room after we’d broken apart, his face the picture of consternation. Hadn’t he kissed me back? Or had he kissed me simply because of my station? Who tells an Emperor “no”? And he was half-Poyer. The people accepted him as a folk hero, but what sort of pressures would he face if I dragged him into a relationship? Would the people accept him as Emperor’s consort? I’d put him in a difficult position.

He frowned and opened his mouth.

“I’m sorry,” I said, before he could tell me that what I’d done was wrong. “I shouldn’t have done that. I’m the Emperor and you’re the Captain of the Imperial Guard.”

His mouth closed, his expression guarded.

Had I still said the wrong thing? “And you’re half-Poyer. People can be cruel.”

He took another step back, widening the distance between us. “Yes,” he said, leaning over to pick up his staff. “A mistake, clearly.”

I’d wanted to ask – could he possibly ever see past our differences? But his words trampled my feelings, folding in the walls of my heart. I wished to go back to the moment he’d said my name. To do everything differently.

He straightened his jacket as though that could make up for the tear in the front of it and the shirt beneath, the blood staining the fabric. “You said we had to return to the palace?”

I gathered myself. There were bigger things at stake than my hurt feelings. “Yes. Now.”

He didn’t ask me to explain as we made our way back to the palace. He fell in behind me, a familiar presence at my back. Why had he been in a den of Ioph Carn? I’d known he’d once worked for them, but I’d assumed he’d broken off all ties with them. He’d said they’d tried to trap him. What did that even mean?

But I had other things to worry about at the moment.

Though it was the dead of night, the palace was awake when we arrived. Guards marched the walls; the gates were partly open to allow people to enter and exit. I knew whatever assassin they searched for, they would not find.