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“Enjoy your evening?” said a voice, and I jumped.

There was movement in the shadows. A figure sitting on the end of my bed. It lifted something to its mouth, and I heard the glug of liquid, the subsequent exhale.

“Theo?” I asked, stomach turning. “What are you doing in my room?”

“Waiting,” he said. Then he stood, and the light slinking in from the street threw him into relief. He saluted me with an amber bottle. “Having a drink.”

The words were elongated and slurred. A warning bolted across my skin. “I’m tired,” I told him carefully. “Perhaps we can talk in the morning.”

“What are you doing, Clarke?” he asked. “Pardon, that’s not your name, is it? Not anymore.”

I eyed the door handle. “Theo, you shouldn’t—”

“He’s a dangerous man.” He stalked forward, and in the dark, he seemed taller, more daunting. “You haven’t been here long enough to see that, but I have.”

“Theo. I don’t know what you’re talk—”

“I watched you,” he said, stepping closer, into another prism of light thrown through the window. “I watched you dance with him.” His face had changed. Liquor had dragged out the circles beneath his eyes and twisted his lips, turning him cruel. “I watched youkisshim.”

Fear slid down my throat and into my belly, dousing the fire and leaving only ice. I swallowed. “It isn’t what you think.”

“What do I think?”

“I knew Patrickbefore, Theo. Before all of this. When we were young.”

He nodded at the ceiling. “Ah. A romance rekindled, then.”

“No—”

“And what will happen to this…romancewhen he finds out why you’re really here, Nina?” he asked. “When Patrick finds out who sent you?”

My fingers clenched. “Theo, please… someone might hear—”

“Or worse,” Theo continued, “what will happen toyou, when Tanner learns you’ve been seduced by the man you were sent to bury?”

CHAPTER 35NINAONE MONTH PRIOR

It took them seven years to catch me.

In the watery lanes of Delfield, an entire contingent of infantrymen in their navy blue uniforms chased me all the way to the ramparts. At the spearhead was a man who struck me so hard with his baton, I did not wake for an entire day.

When next I opened my eyes, I was in the National Artisan House, albeit not a part I recognized.

A nurse hovered near the door, and the second I roused, she disappeared through it like a startled cat.

There was an open cupboard of medical supplies, a spongy cot mattress beneath me, a tall, stained window, a persistent pounding against my skull. My head felt two sizes too big, a burden on my neck. When I rolled it to the side, I caught my reflection in a tin cup waiting on a side table. It showed a girl with a pair of blackened eyes, her head swathed in white bandage.

Get up, I thought.Go. Get out of here.

I only managed the titanic effort of swinging my legs over the side of the cot, of sitting upright, before the door was thrashed open.

Tanner walked in, and only then did nausea find me, cresting andbreaking in great rolling waves. I leaned over the side of the bed and vomited.

“I’ll have the nurse return shortly to clean that up,” the lord said, pins gleaming on his lapels, buttons polished. I thought he looked thinner, older. “Hello, Nina Clarke.”

I said nothing. It had always been best to say nothing.

He tilted his head, perused me from head to toe. “Good God. You are revolting, aren’t you? Those who lie with dogs come away with fleas, I suppose. You’ve been sorely missed, my dear.”