A lover? Maybe. Something tender, anyway. But tender like a bruise.

Her innocence was maddening. She should know. She should know what her steward had done. She should know it to be her fault whether she’d given the order or not–and whether she knew or not. Innocent? Her? Never.

He did not want her to know. He did not want her to see. But:

Look at me, he found himself thinking furiously at her. Look at me. She lifted her eyes, and did.

Will you come with me?"
"Ah, Kestrel, that's something you never need to ask.

She turned to look at him, and he was already looking at her. “I’m going to miss you when I wake up,” she whispered, because she realized that she must have fallen asleep under the sun. Arin was too real for her imagination. He was a dream.
“Don’t wake up,” he said.

Something tugged inside him. A flutter of unease.
Do you sing? Those had been her first words to him, the day she had bought him.
A band of nausea circled Arin’s throat, just as it had when she had asked him that question, in part for the same reason.
She’d had no trace of an accent. She had spoken in perfect, natural, mother-taught Herrani.

Arin. I've wanted to do this for a long time."
Her words silenced him, steadied him.
Antecipation lifted within her like the fragance of a garden under the rain. She sat at the piano, touching the keys. "Ready?"
He smiled. "Play.