IN TRUE KATSA FASHION, she hadn't moved from the spot Raffin had left her in. She sat rigid on her bed, her hands hugging her arms. Her eyes flickered up to him before she commanded herself at once to look away, determined to remain calm and not look at him and not think any thoughts for him to steal.

She looked like a frightened animal caught in a trap, too exhausted to keep struggling. She was frozen in fear and her eyes were wide despite the even breaths she took. The way she looked at him… It was the way he'd dreaded to be looked at all his life.

As Po swallowed the grief that'd bubbled up in his throat, Katsa couldn't bear it any longer. She stood and retreated deeper in her rooms to the window in her dining room, her footsteps small and soft. She steeled her gaze on the scene through the window.

Reluctantly, Po dared a few steps past the entrance, and when he sensed Katsa notice it, he stopped, for it was far enough. "Forgive me, Katsa." His voice echoed across the rooms when he spoke. "I beg you to forgive me."

She waved her hair front over her shoulders and attempted to hide herself under it. Her answer was stated clearly in her mind. She did not forgive him. Her thoughts disappeared from Po's mind, then returned with a final affirmation: she did not forgive him.

She may not forgive him, but she could still understand him, and hear him, and be honest with him. Po took another step closer. "How… how did you know?" he asked. "If you would tell me?"

She rested her forehead on the glass pane. Like he has to ask. "And why don't you use your Grace to find the answer to that?"

Po considered her words. "I could, possibly, if you were thinking about it specifically," he admitted. "But you're not, and I can't wander around inside you and retrieve any information I want… any more than I can stop my Grace from showing me things I don't want." This was something she could relate to, something she could understand.

She didn't answer.

Her reaction sickened him. He was nothing more than another bully in the Middluns taking advantage of her… but that description was anything but right. He would show her. The time to be truthful was now.

"Katsa," he began, "all I know right now is that you're angry, furious, from the top of your head to your toes; and that I've hurt you, and that you don't forgive me… or trust me," Po added. He shrugged his shoulders. "That's all I know at this moment. And my Grace only confirms what I see with my own eyes."

She accepted his explanation, sighing sharply. Her words were hushed when she spoke into the windowpane. "Giddon told me he didn't trust you. And when he told me, he used the same words you'd used before, the same words exactly. And—" she waved her hand in the air, thinking back to some of the times they'd grappled "—there were other hints. But Giddon's words made it clear."

Katsa gripped her arms tighter as she lowered her head, aware that Po had come closer. Still, she maintained her gaze firmly out the window. She wouldn't give him the pleasure of seeing those beautiful eyes, sparkling with the monsoon of emotions within her.

She brought a sound defense. Po leaned against her dining room table, hands in his pockets. "I haven't been very careful with you… careful to hide it," he clarified. "I'd go so far as to say I've been careless at times." And that was the kind way to put it. Po swallowed, looking down at his boots. "It's because I've wanted you to know."

This did not absolve him in her mind. She knew he had taken her thoughts without telling her, and she knew that he had wanted to tell her, and those actions did not begin to absolve him.

"I couldn't tell you, Katsa, not possibly—"

Her energy heightened as fast as a pin drop. "Stop it! Stop that!" she demanded. "Stop responding to my thoughts!"

To think that things had gone so well with Raffin. Where Raffin was calm and collected, Katsa was anxious and unassured. "I won't hide it from you, Katsa!" he insisted. Couldn't she see that this was the real him, where he was happier and unrestrained from his secret? Couldn't she see that he was careless not because he'd slipped up, but because he'd trusted her and loved her enough to let her know? He couldn't keep up his charade anymore. He couldn't be Prince Greening with her. "I won't hide it from you anymore."

His words were so tempting that she almost broke her promise to herself not to look at him. She turned away, turned back to the window, for the window did not make her feel what she felt when she looked at Po.

"I'm not going to hide it from you anymore, Katsa," Po repeated. He wanted to turn that chair around and see her face rather than standing there alone while he told his biggest secret to a Katsa who refused to even look at him. "Please. Let me explain it. It's not as bad as you think."

Frustration gathered in her stomach. "It's easy for you to say," she returned. "You're not the one whose thoughts are not your own."

"Almost all of your thoughts are your own." Did she think that he was that kind of mind reader? "My Grace only shows me how you stand in relation to me. Where you are nearby physically, and what you're doing; and any thoughts or feelings or instincts you have regarding me." Po ran a hand through his hair. "I-I suppose it's meant to be a kind of self-preservation," he finished lamely. "Anyway, it's why I can fight you. I sense the movement of your body without seeing it. And more to the point, I feel the energy of your intentions toward me. I know every move you intend to make against me, before you make it."

She almost couldn't breathe at that extraordinary statement. She wondered vaguely if this was how it felt to her victims to be kicked in the chest.

Uneasily, Po continued on. Katsa was beginning to hear him. "I know when someone wants to hurt me, and how. I know if a person looks on me kindly, or if he trusts me. I know if a person doesn't like me. I know when someone intends to deceive me."

"As you've deceived me," she summarized, "about being a mind reader."

"Yes, that's true," Po affirmed. "But all you've told me about your struggles with Randa, Katsa, I needed to hear from your mouth. All you've told me about Raffin, or Giddon." She needed to hear an example, but what kind? Which one would she, no doubt, remember? He thought back to the first time they'd fought. "When I met you in Murgon's courtyard, do you remember? When I met you, I didn't know why you were there. I couldn't look into your mind and know you were in the process of rescuing my grandfather from Murgon's dungeons. I wasn't even sure my grandfather was in the dungeons, for I hadn't gotten close enough to him to sense his physical presence yet. Nor had I spoken with Murgon; I'd learned nothing yet from Murgon's lies," he grumbled, then let out a breath. That was besides the point. "I didn't know you'd attacked every guard in the castle. All I knew for sure was that you didn't know who I was, and you didn't know whether to trust me, but you didn't want to kill me, because I was Lienid, and possibly because of something to do with some other Lienid, though I couldn't be certain who, or how they factored into it… And also that you… Well, I don't know how to explain it," he confessed, "but you felt trustworthy of me. That's all. That's all I knew. It was on the basis of that information that I decided to trust you."

"It must be convenient," she muttered bitterly, "to know if another person is trustworthy. We wouldn't be here now if I had that capability."

"I'm sorry. I can't tell you how sorry. I've hated not telling you. It's rankled me every day since we became friends."

Her frustration fizzled into something that felt vaguely like despair. "We are not friends," she whispered into the glass of the window.

"If you're not my friend, then I have no friends." It wasn't technically true, but Po needed to speak her language.

"Friends don't lie."

"Friends try to understand," he pointed out. Raffin was more than enough evidence of that. "How could I have become your friend without lying? How much have I risked to tell you and Raffin the truth? What would you have done differently, Katsa, if this were your Grace and your secret?"

She grounded her jaw, but Po was on a roll.

"You'd have hidden yourself in a hole and dared to burden no one with your grievous friendship?" That could only get someone so far before they cracked… Katsa seemed to know that well. But they were older now, and they knew better that this was no right way to live. No person deserved to grow up in such a way, ostracized from society because of something as simple and as natural as a Grace. "I will have friends, Katsa. I will have a life, even though I carry this burden."

Katsa did not reply when Po stopped for a moment. He gathered his thoughts and swallowed, because his voice sounded choked. And rightly so, for Po drew a hand up to his eyes to wipe away the tears that'd gathered.

"You would have me friendless, Katsa," he finished quietly. "You would have my Grace control every aspect of my life and shut me off from every happiness."

She didn't want to hear these words, words that called to her sympathy, to her understanding. She, who had hurt so many with her own Grace, and been reviled because of it. She, who still struggled to keep her Grace from mastering her, and who, like him, had never asked for the power it gave her.

"Yes," he agreed. "I didn't ask for this. I would turn it off for you, if I could." As he could for everyone else in the years he'd interacted with them… but now, if he could have chosen one person in all the world to turn it off for, he would have chosen Katsa, his dear best friend, who fought with him and laughed with him.

Rage went through her, then rage again, because she couldn't even feel sympathy without him knowing it. This was madness. She could not comprehend the madness of this situation. How did his mother relate to him? Or his grandfather? How could anyone?

Po held his tongue and let her work it out.

She took a breath and tried to consider it, little by little, piece by piece. "Your fighting," she said from her window. "You expect me to believe your fighting isn't Graced?"

"I'm an exceptional natural fighter," he replied. "All of my brothers are. The royal family is well-known in Lienid for hand fighting. But my Grace—it's an enormous advantage in a fight, to anticipate every move your opponent makes against you. Combine with that my immediate sense of your body, a sense that goes beyond sight—you can understand why no one has ever beaten me, save you."

She thought about that and found she couldn't believe it. "But you're too good. You must have a fighting Grace as well. You couldn't fight me so well if you didn't," she protested.

Po would have laughed if not for their situation. "Katsa, think about it. You're five times the fighter I am. When we fight, you're holding back." She took a breath to say something, but Po raised a hand. "Don't tell me you aren't, because I know you are, and I'm not holding back, not by a bit. And you can do anything you want to me, and I can't hurt you—"

"It hurts when you strike me—"

"It hurts you for only an instant," Po scoffed, "and besides, if I hit you it's only because you've let me, because you're too busy wrenching my arm out of its socket to care that I'm hitting you in the stomach." He almost didn't want to know the answer, but he had to ask out of sheer curiosity. "How long do you think it would take you to kill me, or break my bones, if you decided to?"

She mulled it over and came to the conclusion that he was right. If her purpose were to hurt him, to break his arm or his neck, she didn't think it would take her very long.

"When we fight, you go to great pains to win without hurting me. That you usually can is a mark of your phenomenal skill. I've never hurt you once, and believe me, I've tried."

"It's a front," she concluded. "The fighting is only a front."

Po nodded. "Yes." It was customary that the children of the Lienid king grow up hand fighting, but as a Graceling, Po was allowed to stray from that path. Still, he'd insisted on fighting, and Mama had soon found out about Po's Grace that night. "My mother seized on it the instant it became clear that I shared the skill of my brothers, and that my Grace magnified my skill."

In Katsa's mind appeared a picture of Po's silhouette in Murgon's courtyard. His golden jewelry shined in the night as he'd waved Katsa forward, unaware that Katsa would knock him out. "Why didn't you know I would strike you in Murgon's courtyard?"

"I did know, but only in the last instant," he answered honestly, "and I didn't react quickly enough. Until that first strike, I didn't realize your speed. I'd never encountered the like of it before."

Katsa lowered her head in thought. "Does your Grace make mistakes? Or are you always right?"

Po took a breath, though he couldn't hide his laugh. If she had to know his secret, she had to know it in its entirety, flaws and all. "It's not always exact. And it's always changing. I'm still growing into it." The cat, Rita, came to mind. "My sense of the physical is pretty reliable, as long as I'm not in an enormous crowd. I know where people are and what they're doing. But what they feel toward me—there's never been a time when I thought someone was lying and they weren't. Or a time when I thought someone intended to hit me and they didn't…" Katsa was proof enough of that. "But there are times when I'm not sure—when I have a sense of something but I'm not sure. Other people's feelings can be very… complicated, and difficult to understand." There certainly were times when he'd messed up with what his Grace told him. Some people were predictable, like Giddon, and some were unpredictable, like Katsa.

That last part was new for Katsa, that a person might be difficult to understand, even to a mind reader.

"I'm more sure of things now than I used to be," Po went on. "When I was a child I was rarely sure." During those times, the raging Lienid Sea had rescued him on more than one occasion from his overwhelming Grace. "These enormous waves of energy and feeling and thought were always crashing into me, and most of the time I was drowning in them." It was a miracle what Po, Mama, and Grandfather had managed to pull off despite its obstacles and setbacks. "For one thing, it's taken me a long time to learn to distinguish between thoughts that matter and thoughts that don't. Thoughts that are just thoughts, fleeting, and thoughts that carry some kind of relevant intent," he explained. He could forget about the fleeting thoughts and let them go their way without much effort. The thoughts that mattered, however, Po had struggled to familiarize himself with. A person's mind couldn't tell him when a thought mattered or not. That was up to him to decide. "I've gotten much better at that, but my Grace still gives me things I've no idea what to do with." He had fallen into the habit of ignoring it. He couldn't call it out, anyway, or the secret he kept would've been good for nothing.

It sounded ridiculous to her, thoroughly ridiculous. Alongside his Grace, her's seemed quite straightforward.

As she stared into her hands, Po verbalized what he'd felt since he first met Katsa, this ferocious and predictably unpredictable wildcat. "It's hard to get a handle on it sometimes, my Grace."

She turned sideways for a moment, curious. "Did you say that because I thought it?"

Po shook his head. "No. I said it because I thought it."

She turned back to the window. "I thought it, too," she said, "or something like it."

"Well." Po couldn't have disagreed. "I imagine it's a feeling you would understand."

She sighed again. There were things about this she could understand, though she didn't want to. "How close do you have to be to someone, physically, for your Grace to sense them?"

Po thought about how he had sensed Raffin earlier today in the castle gardens. He thought about how he had sensed Katsa running through the castle and into the city below. "It differs, and it's changed over time."

She didn't understand. "What do you mean?"

"If it's someone I know well, my range is broad. For strangers, I need to be closer." The better he knew someone, the further away he sensed them. "I knew when you neared the castle today; I knew when you burst into the courtyard and leaped out of your saddle, and I felt your anger strong and clear as you flew up to Raffin's rooms." She wasn't Mama or Grandfather to be felt on the other side of the castle. He wondered how to describe it in light terms. "My range for you is… broader than most," he finished.

Katsa saw him suddenly, in the reflection of the window. She saw the way he leaned back against the table, as she had pictured him before. She noted that his face, his shoulders, and his arms sagged. Everything about him sagged, and he was unhappy.

She was overcome with emotion when Po raised his eyes to hers in the window glass. She blinked the tears away, and when that didn't work, she wiped them with a hand. It was safer for her to ask about his Grace than about the feelings he shared with her. "Do you sense the presence of animals and plants? Rocks and dirt?"

His sense of the cat seemed like it had happened a year ago rather than an hour ago. As they'd talked, Katsa's anger had been replaced by a sort of empathetic concern, at the large-scale secret he had kept, and the countless lies it had been worth. Po had confessed to her everything now, certainly more than he'd told Raffin… And did the technicalities of his Grace matter if she did not forgive him? Did they matter if she wouldn't dare even look at him? Did they matter if Po had hurt her beyond belief, if she was determined never to see him again? Her wish could come true. It could come true sooner than she wanted it, too.

"I'm leaving tomorrow," he found himself saying instead.

"Do you know when an animal is near?" she continued.

The back of her head was resembling more and more a wall than the back of a person willing to listen to him. Po let out a breath, his voice hollower than he'd wanted. "Will you turn around, so I can see you while we speak?"

"Can you read my mind more easily when I'm facing you?"

"No." It made his heart heavier to know it was a problem that'd crossed her mind. "I'd just like to see you, Katsa. That's all."

She swallowed when she heard how soft and sorry his voice was. It began to make sense to her. She knew he was sorry about all of this, sorry for his Grace. His Grace that was not his fault and that would have driven her away had he told her of it at the beginning.

Still, she complied and turned to face him. Po saw the trust in those eyes, green as the Middluns grasses, and blue as the sky. As much as she wanted to retaliate against him, she could not punish him with the life that she lived. No person was worth what she had went through, especially not the best friend she had found in Po, who had taught her, laughed with her, and wrestled with her this summer.

"I didn't used to sense animals and plants or landscapes," Po answered. It would worry her now if he mentioned Rita, and she had enough on her plate to worry about as it was. "But lately that's been changing. Sometimes I'll get a fuzzy sense of something that isn't human. If something moves, I might sense it. It's erratic."

Katsa watched his face, unsure what he was getting at.

"I'm going to Sunder," he added.

She folded her arms across her chest and said nothing.

If there was still a chance at their relationship being restored, Po had to let her know about what he and Raffin had discussed. "When Murgon questioned me after your rescue, it became obvious to me the object you'd taken was my grandfather. It became just as obvious Murgon had been keeping him for someone else," Po recounted, "but I couldn't tell who, not without asking questions that would've given away what I knew."

Her thoughts disappeared, but she listened to him vaguely.

Raffin had been adamant about Monsea's kind reputation, but… "I'm beginning to think it's something to do with Monsea," Po admitted. "We've ruled out the Middluns, Wester, Nander, Estill, Sunder—and you'll remember, I've been to most of those courts. I know I was not lied to, except in Sunder. Lienid is not responsible, I'm sure of it."

A realization went through her that she'd lost her fury as they'd talked. She was sorry for everything that had changed now with Po. Sorry to see it all go.

Po wanted to come to her and kiss her forehead and raise her chin so that she look into his eyes. "Katsa," he murmured to jog her mind back to the present. "I need you to listen to me."

She blinked and worked her mind back to the words he had spoken. "But King Leck of Monsea is a kind man," she professed. "He would have no reason."

"He might, though I don't know what it is." Po shrugged his shoulders. Considering how the Council had reacted, and Raffin the other day… There was more to this than had been let on. "Something isn't right, Katsa. Some impressions I got from Murgon that I dismissed at the time, perhaps I dismissed them in error…" Sunder needed another visit, this time one where Po was asking the questions. For a Royal Continent king to be so deflective despite the great gold bribe… it wasn't right, and the only person Po and Raffin had no formal defense for was his aunt's husband. "And my father's sister, Queen Ashen, she wouldn't behave as you told me. She's so stoical, she is strong. She wouldn't have hysterics and lock herself and her child away from her husband. I swear to you, if you knew her…"

He sighed as he trailed off, kicking the floor. It didn't make sense. He'd known that from the start. "I've a feeling Monsea has something to do with it. I don't know if it's my Grace, or just instinct," he muttered. He had an inkling it was his instinct, but Raffin was right: it was worth exploring for more leads. "Anyway, I'm going back to Sunder, to see what I can learn of it. Grandfather's doing better, but for his own sake I want him to stay hidden until I get to the bottom of this."

That was it, then, she thought. He was going to Sunder, to get to the bottom of it. And it was good that he was going, for she didn't want him in her head… But neither did she want him to go. And he must know that, since she had thought it. And now, did he know that since she knew that he knew, since she had thought that, too? She shook her head at that perplexing thought. This was absurd, and it was impossible. Being with him was impossible… But still she didn't want him to go.

As much as Katsa didn't like him responding to her thoughts, Po couldn't let this one slide. "I hoped you would come with me," he replied.

She stared at him, openmouthed.

"We'd make a good team. I don't even know where I'm going for sure. But I hoped you would consider coming. If you're still my friend."

She couldn't think of what to say. "Doesn't your Grace tell you if I'm your friend?"

"Do you know, yourself?"

She tried to think, but there was nothing in her mind. She knew only that she was numb and sad and completely without any clarify of feeling. She asked herself why she felt this way, why she felt these strange emotions for this lying Graceling from Lienid. She tried to grasp for an answer to his question, and when she couldn't, disappointment washed over her.

"I can't know your feelings," Po said softly, "if you don't know them yourself."

Po didn't want to pour more salt in the wound to prove his point, but the timing served well. He sensed a steward approaching Katsa's rooms, his steps shaky and fast. The steward came on an important errand, for as soon as he rapped his knuckles on the door, he burst in, pale-faced.

Katsa's energy heightened like an oncoming storm at the sight.

The steward laid his eyes on Po, though no thoughts of his came. His attention was on Katsa, who he found deeper in her rooms. "The king orders you to come before him at once, My Lady," he squeaked. "He says that if you don't, he'll send his entire guard to fetch you."

Katsa attempted to swallow down her nerves. "Very well. Tell him I'll go to him immediately."

"Thank you, My Lady." The steward breathed a sigh of relief, then turned and scampered away.

She scowled after him like she was trying to burn holes into his back. "His entire guard," she repeated. "What does he think they could do to me? I should've told the steward to send them, just for the amusement of it." She looked around the room and relaxed somewhat when she caught sight of her knives. "I wonder if I should take a knife."

Like plenty of times before, Po did not expect that from Katsa, this ferocious and unpredictable wildcat. "What have you done? What's this about?"

"I've disobeyed him. He sent me to torture some poor, innocent lord, and I decided I wouldn't," she answered simply. This had been the least of her worries when she'd occupied her mind with Po and his lies. "Do you think I should take a knife?" she said once more.

Po followed her as she made her way to her weapons room. "To do what?" he pressed. "What do you think will happen at this meeting?"

"I don't know, I don't know." Po did not sense her thoughts, but her heart had begun to race. She threw herself into a chair and dropped her head down on the Council table. "Oh, Po, if he angers me, I fear I'll want to kill him. And what if he threatens me and gives me no choice?"

Their discussion of his lies could wait. For now, Katsa needed her laughing and generous and wise best friend back. Po slid into the chair next to her and sat sideways, facing her. He tilted her chin up so that he saw those eyes, vulnerable with fear, vulnerable with trust.

"Katsa, listen to me." His words were gentle yet firm. He was vaguely aware of how close together they sat, how Katsa did not edge away from him now. "You're the most powerful person I've ever met. You can do whatever you want, whatever you want in the world. No one can make you do anything, and your uncle can't touch you. The instant you walk into his presence, you have all the power. If you wish not to hurt him, Katsa, then you have only to choose not to."

"But what will I do?" she whispered.

Po gave her the same advice that Mama and Grandfather had told him so long ago, when he was tempted to tell his brothers of his Grace. "You'll figure it out. You only have to go in knowing what you won't do: you won't hurt him, you won't let him hurt you. You'll figure the rest out as you go along."

She sighed into the table. She didn't think much of his plan.

"It's the only possible plan, Katsa," Po replied, then added for good measure: "You have the power to do whatever you want."

She sat up and turned to him, frustrated. "You keep saying that, but it's not true," she protested. "I don't have the power to stop you from sensing my thoughts."

She had a point, but, then again, she wasn't called the Lady Killer for nothing. And now that he thought about it, the possibility didn't sound bad. She could have thrown him into a fire and it would hurt less than being rejected by his best friend. "You could kill me."

"I couldn't, for you would know I meant to kill you, and you'd escape me. You'd stay far away from me, always."

Po shook his head. He must have hid his feelings for her better than he'd thought, even though Raffin had said different. "Ah, but I wouldn't."

"You would, if I wished to kill you."

"I wouldn't," Po promised her.

She threw her hands into the air, not knowing what to do with that information. "Enough. Enough of this," she decided. Her energy heightened, and she stood up from the table, restless.

Po rose himself and followed suit. They would part ways soon enough, her to answer the king's call, and him to start packing his bags, for it did not matter what would follow after King Randa's meeting with Katsa. The aftermath would be the same: Katsa would stay in the Middluns with Raffin, Bann, Oll, and Giddon, and Po would be on his way to Sunder tomorrow.

Whatever happened between them, at least he was honest. At least he was honest with one of the few people in his life who knew his biggest and most dangerous secret. For all his kindness, he couldn't have said the same for the rest of the people in his life.