Page 142 of The Thief and the Traitor Bride

She also knew of the sweet spot in which he did give in to deep sleep, in which he would not be awoken. When she heard the shift in his breathing, Nore rose, silent on her socked feet, and slipped from the cabin.

Nore moved silently through the dark caverns of the ship. She tucked herself into a corner as she heard one of Tern’s patrols passing by, but he kept a tight crew: everyone was either working or sleeping, with very little room for other business in between.

Nore snuck down through the cargo hold, gripping the edges of crates and boxes to keep her balance as the ship rocked. Tern wouldn’t have extra crew to guard the prisoner, and she had a hunch that Cas was somewhere in the hold, where Tern locked either the most secretive of documents or living cargo.

“Cas?” she whispered. There was no response.

Nore reached the door and tried the handle; it was locked, of course, but she expected that. She rested her head against the wood, her palms pressed to the door, and said, “I hate you.”

There was a silence from the other side, long enough that Nore was certain she had guessed wrong. She sucked in a breath, feeling the tightness in her throat, the pressure on her chest, and swallowed down the sob that threatened to escape. She curled her hands into fists, pressing harder against the wood. “I hate you, Caspian. Do you have nothing to say to that?”

“Finch?”

“No,” she hissed. “Not Finch. Use my fucking name, Cas.” Nore sank down, sitting with her back against the door, her cheek pressed to the wood, her mouth next to the jamb as if that would help to carry her voice through the crack. “Tell me something that’s real,” she said.

There was a pause. A sound on the other side, as Caspian slid, too, and she knew with certainty that he was mirroring her posture on the other side.

“Your name,” he said quietly, switching to Idistran, “is Elinore Bethania Arlowe, then Elinore Gordon, then Nore Khari, if you had ever chosen to take it. Your mother called you Nora Beth, but everyone else has always known you as Nore. Your favorite color is deep green, and it’s the color you look most beautiful in—it brings out the gold in your red hair. It became my favorite color, too, on the day of our wedding when you wore it and declared yourself mine. You speak eight languages, but you always lie and say you speak five so you don’t come off as pretentious—and so you can conceal any, if need be. You are the middle bastard of the duchess of Arlowe’s youngest brother, though the family never claimed you; your mother bore you when she was barely more than a girl and never protested when the duchess stole you away to a shining new life.”

Nore drew a breath, looking down at her hands. Perhaps there were more similarities between her and Cas than she had previously known.

Caspian’s voice turned softer, wistful. “When you were thirteen, you fell in love for the first time with a boy who worked selling apples in the village square. You used to save up to buy apples from him, working up the courage to ask him his name. Even now, you remember the taste of them: sweet and tart, crisp; you always had the best apples in your village. Nothing in Nettlepool compares.”

Nore closed her eyes. There were tears rolling down her cheeks, tears she didn’t understand. He was right—of course he was. She remembered telling him the story herself, their fingers entwined as they lay in their big bed. She remembered his laugh when she confessed what happened: she’d given the apple boy the wrong name, and then ran away before she could think better of it, stealing one of the green apples. He didn’t call after her, and she shamefully ate it on the long walk home.

“Now,” Nore said, “tell me something real about you.”

Caspian took a breath. “I refuse to tell you anything that will put you in further danger.”

“Cas,” she said, the edge of tears in her voice. “Please.”

She sensed it, the moment of hesitation, the second in which the safety of secrecy crumbled.

“I love you,” he said. “I loved you all those years ago, in Nettlepool, when we were barely more than kids. I love you now—no less, just differently. I’ve loved you in person and from afar; I’ve loved you as much as I hated you. I had nothing to remember you by when I was banished, so I used to go to artisans, describing every detail of your face, in the hopes that someone could make a convincing picture—but no one could. I wrote to you far too often for my own good, every secret I’d been unable to tell you spilling out of me with all the poisonous anger of your betrayal. And of course, I knew that I had betrayed you just as deeply, and you didn’t even know why. So I told you, through all those years, until I was certain you knew every one of my thoughts and the reasoning behind it.”

Nore searched for words. “When you were a boy. Your family sent you to foster with a friend of your aunt’s… who set up the arrangement with the theater?”

There was a long pause. Nore already knew the answer.

“Celestine de Roullier,” Caspian said finally. “Then a lady. Now the duchess of Arlowe. But in the time I knew her, in the time I worked for her, I knew her only as Dove.”

The breath left her in one steady whoosh.

“The other night, when…” He trailed off, and Nore forced herself to breathe. Stronger, he continued, “The other night, when we were together, I thought that meant you had accepted it. That you’d understood. That of course you accepted my secrets, because you had guarded yours just as closely.”

“I never knew,” she whispered. She leaned her head back. “I just… You’re right. She told me you worked for Marous, and I never even suspected she would lie about it.”

Caspian laughed bitterly, and she could imagine the pain in his expression. “Have you ever thought about the kind of people the crown recruits, Nore? I had nowhere else to go. Celestine taught me the language. Celestine found me a place to stay. Celestine kept me employed. Gods, it was Celestine who kept me out of a war that killed my mother, my cousins, my friends. And I’m sure it would be the same for Sparrow or Tern or Grouse or Mags, if you’d actually gone digging. You think you have it worst? You, little Elinore Arlowe, with your caring, living mother and your connections? Your noble blood? Your training and your identity, which both allow you to move on and make something of yourself outside of the crown’s shadow? You, who have known naught but acceptance, but praise?”

She buried her face in her hands. “Cas—”

“No,” he said, the fury rising. “Celestine dangled my father’s family over my head for years. If I only did this thing or that, if I only stole one last thing, then I could go to Nadira and be free of her. I could’ve fled—but that would’ve meant leaving you, probably forever. Then, I didn’t understand how deeply entangled you were in all of this, or that she had ensnared you at all, but I wasn’t willing to lose the one thing I had on my own.”

She wanted, so badly, to see his face. “I did not know,” she said. “I swear it.”

“I see that now, but how was I to know, Nore? I had made every confession possible. How was I to know you were not just being aloof and untrusting? I knew from the start it would be no simple task to free you, when you didn’t even think yourself caged in the first place.”

But he was right. She always held her knowledge so close to her chest, never seeking to corroborate it. Even if she had known he’d worked for Celestine in the past, Nore couldn’t be certain if she would’ve done anything differently. If, hating him as she once did, she would’ve cared.