Winter (The Lunar Chronicles 4)

There was a moment of shuffling as the new guard arranged himself against the corridor wall, the last line of defense should a spy or an assassin make an attack on the princess, and the first person responsible for whisking her away to safety should the security of Artemisia Palace ever be compromised.

She squeezed her eyes shut and fanned her fingers against the wall, as if she could feel his heartbeat through the stone.

Instead she felt something warm and sticky.

Gasping, she pulled away, finding her palm stained with blood.

Exasperated, she used the bloody hand to push her hair back, although it instantly tumbled forward again. “Not now,” she hissed to whatever demon thought this was an appropriate time to give her visions.

She closed her eyes again and counted backward from ten. When she opened them, the blood was gone and her hand was clean.

With a whistled breath, Winter adjusted her gown and opened the door wide enough to poke her head out. She turned to the statue of a guard outside her door, and her heart swelled.

“Oh—she said yes!” she squealed, whipping the door open the rest of the way. She trotted around to face Jacin.

If he’d heard her, he didn’t respond.

If he saw her, he showed no sign of it.

His expression was stone, his blue eyes focused on some point over her head.

Winter wilted, but it was from annoyance as much as disappointment. “Oh, please,” she said, standing toe-to-toe, chest-to-chest, which was not simple. Jacin’s flawless posture made her feel as if she were tilting backward, a breath away from falling over. “That’s not necessary, is it?”

Five complete, agonizing seconds passed in which she could have been staring at a mannequin, before Jacin took in a slow breath and let it out all at once. His gaze dropped to hers.

That was all. Just the breath. Just the eyes.

But it made him human again, and she beamed. “I’ve been waiting all day to show you something. Come here.”

Winter danced around him again, retreating back into her sitting parlor. She skipped to the desk on the other side of the room, where she’d draped her creation with a bedsheet. Taking hold of two corners, she turned back to the door.

And waited.

“Jacin?”

She waited some more.

Huffing, she released the sheet and stalked back toward the hall. Jacin hadn’t moved. Winter crossed her arms over her chest and leaned against her door frame, inspecting him. Seeing Jacin in his guard uniform was always bittersweet. On one hand, it was impossible not to notice how very handsome and authoritative he looked in it. On the other hand, the uniform marked him as the property of the queen. Still, he was particularly striking today, all freshly healed from his trial and smelling of soap.

She knew that he knew that she was standing there, staring at him. It was infuriating how he could do such a blasted good job of ignoring her.

Tapping a finger against the flesh of her elbow, she deadpanned, “Sir Jacin Clay, there is an assassin under my bed.”

His shoulders knotted. His jaw tensed. Three more seconds passed before he stepped away from the wall and marched into her chambers without looking her way. Past the covered surprise on the desk and straight through to her bedroom. Winter followed, shutting the door.

As soon as he reached the bed, Jacin knelt down and lifted the bed skirt.

“The assassin seems to have gotten away this time, Your Highness.” Standing, he turned back to face her. “Do let me know if he returns.”

He marched back toward the door, but she stepped in front of him and flashed a coquettish smile. “I certainly will,” she said, bouncing on her toes. “But as long as you’re here—”

“Princess.”

His tone was a warning, but she ignored him. Backing away into the parlor, she tore the sheet away, revealing a table-size model of their solar system, the planets suspended from silk strings. “Ta-da!”

Jacin didn’t come closer as she started fidgeting with the planets, but he also didn’t leave.

Winter nudged the painted spheres into a slow orbit, each one moving separate from the others. “I had the idea when the engagement was first announced,” she said, watching Earth complete a full circle around the sun before dragging to a stop. “It was going to be a wedding gift for Emperor Kaito, before … well. Anyway, it’s been a distraction while you were gone.” Lashes fluttering, she risked a nervous glance up at Jacin. He was staring at the model. “It helps, you know, to focus on something. To think about the details.”

It helped keep her thoughts in order, helped keep her sanity. She’d started having the hallucinations when she was thirteen, a little more than a year after she’d made the decision to never again use her glamour, to never again manipulate someone’s thoughts or emotions, to never again fool herself into believing such an unnatural use of power could be harmless. Jacin, not yet a guard, had spent many hours with her, distracting her with games and projects and puzzles. Idleness had been her enemy for years. It was in those moments when her mind was most focused on a task, no matter how trivial, that she felt safest.

Making the model without him hadn’t been as much fun, but she did enjoy the sensation of being in control of this tiny galaxy, when she was in control of so very little of her own life.

“What do you think?”

With a resigned sigh, Jacin stepped forward to examine the contraption that gave each planet its own orbital path. “How did you make it?”

“I commissioned Mr. Sanford in AR-5 to design and build the framework. But I did all the painting myself.” She was pleased to see Jacin’s impressed nod. “I hoped you might be able to help me with Saturn. It’s the last one to be painted, and I thought—I’ll take the rings, if you want to do the planet…” She trailed off. His expression had hardened again. Following his fingers, she saw him batting Luna around the Earth—the way Mr. Sanford had given Luna its own little orbit around the blue planet was nothing short of brilliant, in Winter’s opinion.

“I’m sorry, Highness,” said Jacin, standing upright again. “I’m on duty. I shouldn’t even be in here, and you know that.”

“I’m quite sure I don’t know that. It seems you can guard me even better from in here than out there. What if someone comes in through the windows?”

His lips quirked into a wry smile. No one was going to come in through the windows, they both knew, but he didn’t argue the point. Instead, he stepped closer and settled his hands on her shoulders. It was a rare, unexpected touch. Not quite the Eclipse Waltz, but her skin tingled all the same.

“I’m glad to be on your guard now,” he said. “I would do anything for you. If you did have an assassin under your bed, I would take that bullet without a second thought, without anyone having to manipulate me.”

She tried to interrupt him, but he talked over her.

“But when I’m on duty, that’s all I can be. Your guard. Not your friend. Levana already knows I’m too close to you, that I care about you more than I should—”

Her brow drew together, and again she tried to interject, thinking that statement deserved further explanation, but he kept talking.

“—and I am not going to give her anything else to hold over me. Or you. I’m not going to be another pawn in her game. Got it?”