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I stop in my tracks. “Evanae’s grace, what are you talking about?”

Lara doesn’t seem to be able to leave her hair and picks the braid to fidget with the ends. “Valdus doesn’t do these things. He doesn’t use his binding, except on his own arms. He doesn’t dance. If it isn’t a next step in achieving this next dawn we all fight for, he isn’t interested. But since you’ve come to The Broken Sands, things seem to have changed.”

“There are a lot of things in this desert he might do. Why do you insist his attention is something other than a next step in his plan when I’m just another tool he’ll use to break the dependence? What is it to you if he’s changed?” As I keep firing questions, Lara frowns, her freckled smile slipping from her face. “What do you want from me? What do you hope to gain here?”

“I…I just thought you would like to have someone to talk to.”

“Who else will hear everything I tell you?”

“No one,” Lara says, her voice quivering. Her eyes glassy, she shakes her head. “Why can’t you see I was just trying to make you feel welcome in a place where you must feel lost?”

She sniffles, and my anger fades, but not before Lara has disappeared through a swinging door.

“By Evanae,” I curse myself, hitting an old desk with the palm of my hand.

I’ve thought of myself as better than my sisters, but I’m just another monster the palace breeds.

23

The sun burns on my neck, but I ignore it, and start on another row of trenches where we’ll plant the seeds once every other task is done. A shout comes from above, and we lift our gazes to the metal carcass of what once was a dome. Two men are hoisting one glass panel after another to replace the ones claimed by the desert. A knot has come undone, and the glass panel the color of the setting sun balances precariously over our heads. A young man catches the sharp edge with a thick glove, and I’m not the only one letting out a relieved sigh.

“Careful up there,” Numair cries.

I ignore the men dashing across the garden and return to the shallow trench I’ve been digging. If a panel falls down and kills me, at least I won’t feel as out of place as I do now.

Kyle stops next to me. He moved nimbly behind the bar in The King’s Refuge, but now he leans heavily on his cane. I ignore him, too. I’m in no mood to talk. Not after I’ve broken the last shard of trust Valdus had for me and pushed Lara away when she only wanted to be my friend.

Kyle shakes a flask before my eyes in case I still haven’t noticed him. “You are no use to anyone dead.”

I grab it, if only to make him go away. The water is cool on my tongue, and I hate to admit it, but I actually needed it.

“Now that we’ve established that you can hear me, how about you tell me why you’re sulking here by yourself?”

I pick up the shovel again, but Kyle pulls it from my hands.

“I’m not her.” He motions in the vague direction of where Lara is helping men cut the few glass panels still missing from the dome. “I won’t play this game.”

I snatch the tool back from his hands and lean on it. “Or what? What are you going to do?”

“Pester you with my presence.”

I snort, but put the shovel down and follow Kyle to a stack of metal crates with seeds everyone has been gathering for a week. He observes Damen teaching rebels more resistant knots before they tie another parcel of glass to the pulley while he waits for me to talk, but I can’t tell him about my fight with Lara. Not when it involves Valdus.

I rub my brow and settle for a half-truth. “I just don’t feel like I fit in.”

“How could you? You are a princess who had spent her life in the palace, and we are just ordinary folk who know nothing about life in the desert.”

“You make it sound stupid.”

“You seem like a smart girl, so I’ll level with you,” Kyle says. “We all have some things that hold us back. Do you think it was easy for Lara when she joined? Her father is a captain in your father’s employ. She has to lie to him every single day.”

“Why did she join? A daughter of a captain must have had a comfortable life.”

Kyle rolls the heel of his boot deeper into the ground with a click of a mechanical joint in his knee. “We all have our reasons for why we’ve joined. Some are more personal than others. I would think a daughter of the emperor would understand that better than most.” When he finally looks at me, his smile has returned. “Who knows, maybe she needs a friend as much as you do?”

“Kyle, a hand here?” Numair cries as he struggles to hold a glass panel upright.

Kyle limps away without another word, and I know there’s no point in avoiding the inevitable. As I make my way across the future garden, Lara stashes away the last of the complex tools they’ve used for cutting glass. She doesn’t even wait for me to utter a word, but crosses her arms over her chest.