“Maybe he was. I mean, you have to be explicit.”

Jainan’s expression shuttered completely, and he put the water down.

“No—I—oh, shit, sorry. I didn’t mean—” The door chime rang again. Kiem only just stopped himself throwing up his hands in frustration. There should be some kind of law against him opening his stupid mouth. “Well, it wasn’t as if we were doing anything important. Come in!” he added, raising a hand to gesture the door open.

It was the head steward with two attendants. He bowed punctiliously. “Your Highness, the contract is prepared for signing in the West Solarium. Are you and Count Jainan ready?”

Kiem felt mutinous. “Are we?” he said, casting a glance at Jainan, who was probably about as unwilling as he was. But Jainan was already standing, which shamed Kiem into pushing himself to his feet. He offered Jainan his arm.

The moment he’d done it, he froze and wished he could take it back. He hadn’t meant to put Jainan on the spot. But before he could turn the movement into anything else, Jainan was moving over to him and slipping a hand through the crook of his arm. His touch rested lightly and securely. Was he forcing

himself? Kiem couldn’t tell. The skin beneath Kiem’s uniform jacket felt hotter than it should.

“Your Highness,” the steward said again.

“We should go,” Jainan said, quietly enough to reach only Kiem’s ears. He was looking ahead.

Kiem forced his eyes away from Jainan. “Yes, right,” he said. “Look at us, punctual from the start. Oh, hey, Hren.”

The chief press officer nodded at him. “Memorized your press statement yet?”

“I thought I’d just improvise,” Kiem said cheerfully, to make Hren twitch.

But Hren only glared at him, and for some reason Jainan’s grip shifted on his arm. “I mean, yes,” Kiem said. “Know it back to front.” He stopped trying to make conversation.

The walk up to the solarium was enveloped in a silence that felt almost funereal. Kiem would usually have tried joking with the attendants, but it would be rude to start talking to anyone who wasn’t Jainan. But whenever he thought of something to say to Jainan, he remembered that Jainan was being walked into a forced marriage with the only person in the palace who could possibly be tactless enough to call his late partner an axe murderer, and Kiem bit his tongue.

He experimented silently with several phrases but couldn’t find one that might fix things. At the top of the sweeping marble stairs, just before the last corner, he gave up and muttered, “Sorry.”

“For what?” Jainan said. The door slid open, and Kiem lost the chance to reply in the flash of lenses.

He squinted through the first couple before automatically raising his free hand. “Hi, good morning—” There was a barely noticeable increase of pressure on his arm. Jainan had stopped. Surprised, Kiem tried to pause as well, but now Jainan was moving again, and Kiem wondered if he’d imagined it.