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I could only hesitate, lips agape, and after a moment he smirked.

I shifted my eyes away and cleared my throat, cheeks flaming.

There was little to be gained from lying. In any case, I did not seem to have a mind to do anything but nod. I was fitting pieces together, locking keys into nooks.

“Nina Clarke,” he said. Another pull on the cigarette, his stare held, and it was inescapable. I feared I would become entranced by it. “Do you know who I am?”

I did. Only it was not a title that came to mind, but a twelve-year-old boy with dirty hair and a double-looped belt.Don’t be, I thought.Please be anyone else.

“I’m Patrick Colson,” he said, and the memories collapsed and unfolded before me, recreating a man better dressed and fully grown. A man I both knew and didn’t.

He stood. Watched me carefully. “Welcome to Kenton Hill.”

I looked around as though the walls might fall away to reveal the town, but there was only him.

He was tall. Tall enough that his hair scraped the dirt ceiling. His eyebrows were thicker, darker, his chin more pronounced. Dark lashes framed those eyes, and I was as startled by them as I had been in a courtyard thirteen years ago. I’d realized him handsome as a boy, but as a man, he was shocking.

There were things missing now, however. A sense of ease, that glint of mischief. In their place was an expression that remained unsettlingly dark.

It wasn’t clear if the recognition was reciprocated. He only stared. Was he lingering over the parts of my face he remembered, the way I was?

My heart stuttered.

“She don’t say much,” Scottie offered, wiping his forehead on his sleeve.

“Hmm,” Patrick mused darkly. “Perhaps you knocked the sense from her.” At that, his eyes turned on Scottie, cold and reproachful. “I told you to use a light hand.”

Scottie, far burlier than any man I’d seen, looked chided. “Aye,” he said. “Nerves got the better of me. Apologies, miss.” He slapped me gently on the back.

I raised my eyebrows at him.

“I should offer my apologies, too,” Patrick said, and I found myself disarmed once more when his gaze fell over me. “I ordered these men tobring you to me. The cautionary measures,” he gestured to the sack, the rope in Scottie’s hands, “were needed. At least until we get to know one another.”

I almost laughed. I stood with my shirt plastered to my skin and unbuttoned to near indecency. My legs shook in an effort to keep me standing. I was covered in mud. There was a lump swelling at the back of my head, and these men were offering their regrets now?

My teeth gritted with the cold. “I know enough.” Exhaustion made me brave. Careless. If Patrick Colson didn’t recognize me, then it would be more prudent to leave it that way.

He nodded, discarded his cigarette. “And what do you know?” His voice seemed to swarm in my chest. “That we’re animals and criminals who go around blowin’ everything to holy hell, I’d bet.”

That was the most common rhetoric on the Miners Union, though it wasn’t mine. To me, all of them were animals. Artisans and Crafters alike.

I lifted my chin. “I know the skinny one hasn’t any hair on his balls.” I said it with perfect Belavere inflection. “I know the round one doesn’t love his wife. I know thatyouare lonely and angry, or so say your men here.” I waited a beat, enough time for the beginnings of a grin to slip briefly onto Patrick Colson’s lips. “I know that you’re not stupid enough to capture a Charmer without realizing the hazard you’ve brought to your town. So why don’t you tell me what it is you want, Mr. Colson, and what you’ll give me in return as payment for not burying us alive?”

Silence. Just that small smile on Patrick Colson’s lips.

Scottie and Otto shifted about uncomfortably, as though considering for the first time that I might be a threat to them. “Ah, she’s all bluster, Patty,” Scottie said warily. “This one’s scared of the tunnels, ain’t you, miss? Barely kept herself together—”

“Do you know what all the little Artisan boys and girls are taught to do in that school, Scottie?” Patrick asked casually.

The man hesitated. “They—”

“They’re taught to paint and write poems and sing very prettily,” Patrickwas pulling a new cigarette between his lips. “And they’re taught how to put on a character, to act.” The sound of struck flint, a burst of orange. His face was illuminated, then doused in shadow again. He played with the lighter haphazardly but stared at me. “She ain’t afraid of the tunnels, lads.”

Scottie was momentarily struck dumb, or at least dumber. His gaze swiveled toward me with fresh appraisal. “But she were whimperin’,” he said weakly.

“She wereactin’,” Patrick corrected. He eyed me blankly. “In the hopes you’d think she weren’t the earth Charmer.”

Patrick watched me, waiting for me to deny it, perhaps, but I shrugged indifferently. He wasn’t exactly correct, it was true I’d hoped to fool them, but it hadn’t been difficult to fake fear so far beneath the surface. If those tunnels had collapsed, I wouldn’t have been able to charm a damn thing, though I had no intention of telling Patrick that.