It’s my turn to laugh. “I don’t mean any offense, Søren, but I’ve never seen a room as messy as your cabin,” I tease.

Now he’s the one blushing.

“Besides,” I continue, turning my face up to take in the open sky, “I like it up here.”

When I glance back at him, he’s watching me with a peculiar expression that sets my stomach fluttering. “Do you need help?” I ask him.

He shakes his head. “That’s the beauty of Wås. She doesn’t need a crew, just me,” he says before tossing me a box of matches. Small as it is, it’s the most dangerous thing I’ve been trusted with under such little supervision. I can’t even use a steak knife when I eat alone in my rooms, though I don’t know who they think I’ll try to kill. Hoa? Or maybe they’re worried I’ll try to kill myself.

“Can you light that lantern?” he asks, nodding at the one set up on the blanket.

I tell him I can, though I’m not sure that’s the truth. I’ve seen other people light matches, but I’ve never done it myself. My first attempts are clumsy; I snap a couple of sticks before one finally sparks and frightens me so much I nearly drop it. I just manage to light the wick before it burns my fingers.

“Wås,” I echo when it’s lit. I stretch out next to the lantern and lie down on my back, staring up at the black velvet sky above, studded with thousands of diamonds. There’s a chill in the air, but it’s just enough to dull an otherwise warm evening. “You named your ship after the goddess of cats?”

“It’s a long story.”

“We still have about an hour and a half,” I remind him, propping myself up on my elbows and watching as he adjusts the angle of the sail to catch the wind. His white shirt ripples and lifts in the breeze to show the hard muscles of his stomach. I try not to stare, but he catches my look and smiles.

“Fair enough. Give me one minute.” He trims the sail once more and ensures we’re heading in the right direction, then goes down to the cabin to change.

While he’s gone, I lie down flat and stare up at the stars overhead. For the first time in a decade, I’m alone. I’m out of the palace, with the sky stretching out around me and fresh air in my lungs. It’s feeling I never want to forget.

A few minutes later, Søren comes back and sits next to me, closer than I think he would dare if we were anywhere else. I sit up and lean back on my hands. There’s still an inch between us, but even that space feels like the air in the second before lightning strikes.

“So. Wås,” I prompt.

His ears turn red. “My father gave it to me for my seventh birthday, but it was barely more than a hull then. It’s tradition for a boy to build his own first ship. It took four years before she was seaworthy, and another two before she was anything to be proud of. Now she’s the fastest ship in the harbor.”

“Impressive,” I say, smoothing my hand over the polished wooden deck at the edge of the blanket. “But what does that have to do with cats?”

His fingers pick at a pill in the wool. “The docks are overrun with them, as I’m sure you’ve seen. Of course, the more experienced sailors knew to scatter orange peels on their decks to keep the cats off the boats, but no one thought to tell me that. I suppose they thought it was funny to see an arrogant prinzling step onto his embarrassment of a ship only to find dozens of cats lying in wait. What was worse, the cats took a liking to me. A few of them would follow me around the dock like ducklings trailing after their mother. The men started to call me Wåskin.”

Child of Wås. Hardly the most ferocious of nicknames. I give a snort of laughter and try to hide it before I realize Søren is laughing as well. I don’t think I’ve heard him laugh before, but something’s changed in him since we left the palace. He’s softer, more open here.

I wish he weren’t, because it makes him easy to like.

He shakes his head and smiles. It’s the first time I’ve seen him really smile, unguarded, and it sends all thoughts of plots and murder out of my head completely for an instant. For an instant, I let myself wonder what this would be like if I were just a girl having a secret rendezvous with a boy she might like. It’s a dangerous path for my thoughts to walk, but if I’m going to get him to fall in love with me, he needs to believe I care about him, too. So I can let myself, just for tonight, believe it’s that simple.

“It was a well-earned nickname, I’ll admit,” he says, cheeks reddening. “And I’d taken a liking to the little beasts. They weren’t bothering anyone. The ship was just warm and smelled like fish.” He shrugs. He tries to keep the story light, but there’s a darkness in his eyes that won’t lift.

“Your father didn’t like his heir being associated with the goddess of cats,” I guess.

His mouth tightens. “He thought it was unbecoming for any Kalovaxian, let alone a prinz. He told me that either I could take care of it or he would. I was nine, but I already knew what that meant. And I tried, but orange peels wouldn’t work. They’d gotten so used to me, so attached, that there was nothing I could do to keep them away.”

“So he had them killed?” I guess.

Søren hesitates before shaking his head. “I did it,” he admits. “It seemed…nobler. They were my responsibility. And I made it as painless as I could. I poisoned the water I set out for them. No one called me Wåskin after that, at least not to my face.”

He’s staring straight ahead, blue eyes unfocused and expression back to its usual hard-edged frown.

It’s the sad story of a sheltered child. Dead pets aren’t so tragic when you’ve seen your mother slaughtered, when you’ve stabbed your own father in the back even as he sang you a lullaby. But still, Søren’s pain was real. So was his disillusionment. It was the moment he stopped being a child. Who am I to say that it wasn’t awful?

“I’m sorry,” I tell him.

He shakes his head and forces a smile. “My father didn’t get to be kaiser by being a kind man. You should know that better than anyone.”

“And here I thought he got to be the Kaiser because he was born into the right family.”

He gives me a sideways glance. “As a third son,” he says. “You haven’t heard the story?”

“Your mother told me about her wedding. Was that a part of it?” I ask, frowning. The Kaiserin had said he had killed his siblings, but for some reason I’d imagined them younger. I’ve seen the way second and third sons move through the world. They’re hungry for attention and affection from anyone around them, or else they try their hardest to sink into the background. The Kaiser does neither. He owns the ground he walks on, the air he breathes. I suppose I assumed he’d been born like that.