"Yes," she said, opening her eyes again. "Two."

He waited patiently. Wounded in the face by her hand and in other places by words she had not bothered softening, and somehow still waiting as though she were the one setting terms in a negotiation he had already lost.

She folded her arms, more to keep her hands occupied than for emphasis. "First, never do this again. Never lie to me like that. Never insult my intelligence because you’re frightened of what I’ll notice. If you don’t want to say something, then say that. If you can’t say it, say that. But never do this again."

The words came cleanly now, stripped of tears, stripped of heat, and left with the colder precision she trusted more.

Arik took them without interruption.

Then he nodded once. "All right."

Natalie narrowed her eyes. "That was too quick."

"You were correct."

"I know I was correct."

"I know."

She almost snapped at him for the phrase but stopped herself. There were only so many times one could be outraged in a single evening before it became repetitive, and she refused to become repetitive on her own coming-of-age night.

"Good," she said. "Then that is condition one."

Arik inclined his head slightly, as though accepting a formal term in court rather than a warning issued on a winter balcony while half the nobility milled inside inventing romances through glass.

"And the second?" he asked.

Natalie held his gaze.

Not quite his eyes. She was not ready for that yet. But his face. The line of it. The strain he had not managed to hide entirely. The faint mark on his cheek where she had hit him. The remnants of control clung too tightly to something that, for one brief period of the conversation, sounded dangerously close to breaking.

When she spoke, her voice changed.

"The moment you are ready to tell," she said, "I’m here for you."

That landed harder than anger had.

She saw it at once.

Arik did not move. But something in him seemed to go very still in a different way, as though the sentence had reached a place in him that fury could strike but not enter. For one suspended second, the prince disappeared entirely. Only a man standing on a balcony under winter wards, looking at her as if she had handed him something he did not know how to take without dropping it.

Natalie hated that she noticed.

Hated it even more that she understood.

Because she had not said it lightly. She did not make promises lightly, not to him, not to anyone. And whatever was wrong here, whatever impossible thing sat buried beneath his silence and those damned golden eyes, she knew enough now to know this was not a game he was playing for pleasure.

Arik’s throat moved once.

When he finally answered, his voice was quieter than before. "Natalie..."

"No," she said, and the word came gentler this time only because exhaustion had worn her edges thin. "Don’t ruin it. I am still angry with you. I am still insulted. I may remain both for a while. But that is the second condition."

He looked at her for another long moment.

Then, very carefully, as if agreement itself required precision, he said, "All right."

She searched his face again, suspicious on principle. "You’re taking these terms very easily for a man who caused all this."

"I don’t think ’easily’ is the word."

"No?"

"No."

That, at least, sounded true.

Natalie let out a breath she had not realized she was holding. The night beyond the balcony remained silver and still. The ether lamps in the garden below burned cleanly behind their protective veils. Inside, the ballroom glowed on in offenseingly warm light, music rising and falling with all the confidence of a world that had not nearly split apart two steps outside its own spectacle.

She became aware, suddenly and unpleasantly, of how tired she was.

Not physically. Not even emotionally in the simple sense. Tired in the way one becomes after holding too many contradictory things at once: rage and concern, humiliation and understanding, old trust and new fracture, the instinct to hit him again and the urge to make sure he was not as close to breaking as he had sounded.

Annoying.

Deeply annoying.

She pressed two fingers briefly to her temple. "You make things difficult."

Arik’s mouth moved by a fraction. "I’ve been told that before."

"Yes, well. Tonight I’m saying it with experience."

He gave the smallest nod, accepting the accusation as if it were due interest on a debt he had already accrued beyond reason.

The footsteps in the corridor sharpened again.

Closer now.

Almost at the threshold.

Natalie straightened at once. Reflex. Breeding. Survival. All the same thing in halls like these.

Arik saw it and straightened too, though not quite as fast. For a beat longer than necessary, the air between them held the remains of what had just passed - too much honesty, too little truth, terms set where there should have been none, and the strange quiet after impact when nothing was fixed but the shape of the damage had at least been named.

Natalie looked once at his cheek again. "You still deserved that."

"Yes."

"And if you break condition one, I’ll do it harder."

"That seems fair."

She stared.

Arik’s expression shifted by the faintest degree. "Sorry. Bad choice of words."

"Much."

He almost smiled then but thought better of it. Smart.

From the corridor came Noah’s voice, still out of sight but unmistakably approaching. "If they’ve escaped to another balcony, I’m charging both of them with treason."

Natalie closed her eyes for half a second. "Of course."

Arik’s gaze flicked toward the arch. "You may want to look slightly less murderous."

"I am doing my best."

"That is concerning."

She gave him a look cold enough to preserve meat. "Remember condition one and stop speaking."

Wise for once, he did.

Natalie smoothed one hand once down the line of her skirt, lifted her chin, and gathered the remains of Natalie Frasner around herself like armor. Not untouched. Not unshaken. But presentable. Dangerous. Entirely capable of surviving three boys walking onto a balcony at the worst possible moment.

Then the corridor entrance filled, and the evening claimed them again.