Kiem didn’t feel shock. That was the worst part. He felt surreal, headachy, as if his muscles weren’t under his control, but not shocked. He gestured the replay command by mistake. It started to play again; he jabbed it to stop, and then to start, and then to stop again a second later when he couldn’t bear it. His wrist-screen shut off.

All of a sudden, he couldn’t stand still anymore. He paced to a viewport and back to the corridor wall. It felt like there were stinging insects moving under his skin, crawling inside his rib cage and pooling in his chest. This made no sense.

He raised his wristband, spun through to Bel’s contact, and then violently canceled the action. He couldn’t call anyone. This made no sense.

Jainan had loved Taam. Yes, he had dropped a hint or two that their marriage wasn’t perfect, but no marriage was, and the only times Jainan had spoken sharply to Kiem were when Kiem had sounded like he was disrespecting Taam’s memory. Would you do that for someone who had acted like that? Jainan hadn’t fought back in the vid. He could take out a charging bear with a tree branch, but he’d done nothing. His partner was an Imperial Prince.

Kiem compulsively started and stopped another sliver of the vid. The two figures hung frozen at the far end of the corridor, inexorably headed to their room. Jainan had loved Taam.

No, he realized. Jainan had never said that.

It hadn’t been grief that made Jainan gaunt and drawn when Kiem first met him. He had looked the same in the vid: pinched and strained and entirely focused on Taam. Like— fuck—like he’d been entirely focused on Kiem the first few days after the wedding. Those odd pauses. The messages linked to Taam’s account. The way Jainan had never said no.

If Kiem had known him as he did now, he would have noticed that. If he’d had the intelligence of a block of wood, he would have noticed it. He was the most unobservant, most world-shatteringly useless—

His wristband chimed with a reminder. His arm jerked as if it had burned him.

Tiny lettering projected itself over his wrist, reminding him he and Jainan were nearly late for the Advisory Council dinner. He stared at it for a long time.

The stinging feeling under his skin made it a punishment to hold still.

He shoved his hands in his pockets and turned around. He needed to talk to Jainan.

CHAPTER 23

Jainan dressed for dinner and set off a few minutes early, hoping to catch Kiem beforehand; he must be told immediately about Jainan’s conversation with the Auditor and should also know about the refinery. Through the open doors of the station’s banqueting hall, Jainan could see there was already a crowd of people at dinner, none of whom he knew. He slipped into one of the empty, elegantly decorated anterooms off the corridor and checked the messages on his wristband while he waited. Nothing from the Emperor’s office yet.