Kiem stared at him and at the coat between them. He didn’t move to take it.

His eyes went back to Jainan’s face, and that odd almost-anger furrowed his

forehead again. “This is the same bloody thing.”

“Excuse me?” Jainan said.

“Now it’s your fault I can’t survive without a coat?” Kiem said. “Am I the only one seeing something weird about this? Why didn’t you tell me about the clearance issue before? Why don’t I understand anything that’s going on?”

Jainan’s hands tightened around the fur bundle. He had brought it closer to his chest without realizing; he forced himself to hold it casually down by his side.

Kiem shoved his hands into his pockets again: a solid, unhappy shape against the landscape. “I get what you’re saying about the duty thing,” he said. “No, really. I’m shit at it and not exactly the pride of the family, but I get it. We’re born into this, and we have to do something to be worthy of it. But everything you do is about you needing to be unhappy.”

The cold ate into him like acid. You’re wrong, Jainan wanted to say, but he couldn’t say that to an Imperial Prince. He said distantly, “I apologize, Your Highness.” He saw Kiem flinch at the title and hated himself for using formality as a weapon, but did it anyway. “I would rather not talk about this. I request.”

These were underhanded measures. He was an underhanded person.

Kiem recoiled, his hunched, unhappy posture giving way like a loosened spring. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Oh hell, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry. I don’t have any right. Forgive me.”

He had every right. But Jainan stood there for a short eternity with his reply caught between his teeth, grateful for that small mercy even as he knew he shouldn’t take advantage of it.

Movement caught his eye: a pair of fur-wrapped figures climbing up from the other end of the bridge. Every sense of danger he had flared, like someone laying their finger on an exposed nerve—he and Kiem were confronting each other, both as tense as unhappy cats. It looked like a public argument.

“Jainan?” Kiem said.

The last of Jainan’s anger drained away into distant dread. “People.” He didn’t need to say anything else.

Kiem gave him a look of bafflement, then turned and realization dawned.

Jainan had already closed the gap, and he slipped his hand into the crook of Kiem’s elbow. The unwieldy bundle of coat sat incongruously under his other arm. He couldn’t speak in case they were overheard, but he tried to convey by the careful lightness of his touch that he knew he had crossed a line. He kept his expressionless gaze to the front as they passed the other walkers.

Kiem glanced over at the pair. “What do you think,” he asked under his breath, “can we sell it as performance art?”