Page 173

“Domelius Becker,” I yielded. “The Alchemist.”

He dropped my chin abruptly, and the next breath he drew seemed to rattle. He turned his back to me. Took several paces into the moonlight and dug that coin from his coat. “You’ll find Scottie and Otto in Hoaklin, tracking the whereabouts of your fellow Charmer,” he said. “Despite what Otto told Polly, and what Polly told you.”

Bile rose. “You… you knew? But how—”

“No,” he said. “It ain’t your turn to ask the questions, Nina.” He turned to look at me, that coin appearing and turning over his knuckles. “What plans did you have for the Alchemist?”

He knew, I could hear it in his voice. But it seemed he needed me to admit it aloud, and I realized that while he seemed furious and hurt, perhaps he hadn’t guessed the full depth of my treason. Perhaps he was looking for a way to excuse this transgression, for a way to save us.

“I was going to barter his whereabouts to the House of Lords.” Tears slipped over my lips.

“For your mother,” Patrick finished.

“Yes. And your father.”

He paced in frustration from side to side, scrubbed his face with both hands. “I told you that wouldn’t work,” he said. “And you went behind my back anyway.”

“I tried to ask you,” I said. My voice broke. “To reason with you.”

“AndIasked for your trust,” Patrick said, and he pinned me with a glare like steel. “I promised to free your mother another way.”

“With a tunnel and a group of armed men?” I breathed. “And the risk of more deaths, including your own? Leveraging the Alchemist would negateallof that, Patrick!”

He closed his eyes. “It can’t be done, Nina. Itoldyou it couldn’t.”

“How can you say that?” My voice was pleading. “We could get back our families! And finally engage in a fair fight with the House. Does the need to control idium truly outweigh that?”

Patrick watched me, eyes boring in. “Nina, idium iseverything,” he said. “It is the key to this war. The House is useless without it.”

“And you would forsake those you love for it?”

“Domelius Becker cannot be traded, Nina.”

“Why not?” I demanded.

“Because he’sdead.”

I stilled. In the sky above, stars seemed to blink out of existence.

And Patrick watched me with unstifled torment. “You think I wouldn’t have made that fuckin’ trade myself if we had him?” he asked. “I’d do it a thousand times over, a million times if it could save my father. Your mother.”

I stumbled back.

“You’re two years too late, Nina.” He looked to the sky. “I put a bullet in Domelius Becker the second he stepped foot in the brink, and I’ve regretted it every day since.”

CHAPTER 59PATRICK

Pieces of Nina’s hair had become unclasped.

She’d forgotten gloves. A scarf. One boot remained untied. Her cheeks mottled in the cold, her knuckles reddened and cracked. She looked exactly as frayed as she sounded, and Patrick inwardly berated himself for not seeing it sooner—her enduring love for her mother, her desperation to save her.

Patrick wondered if Nina felt the quiet tremor in the earth. If she was aware of dust hovering inches above the ground at her feet. Or was she lost in that suspended state of disbelief?

She sagged, descended to her knees in the dirt. “He can’t be dead,” she insisted. “It isn’t possible.”

He wished he had told her sooner, even if it extinguished the last of her unreasonable hopes. Had he not trusted her, or had he done it to protect her, as he’d always told himself?

“Union fighters captured him in Belavere City,” Patrick began, lowering himself to see her face, to ensure she heard him. “He was hiding in the basement of a lord. Our men brought him back here, and I killed him, just as my father had ordered me to.” Patrick gritted his teeth, flexed his hands with the memory of it. “We buried his body in the hills. It was only afterward that I got word my father had been captured.” He swallowed bitterly.“Believe me, Nina. There is no one here who wishes it were otherwise more than I.”