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“They’ll be along,” Patrick answered before I could ask. He put his hands in his pockets and walked on. “Come.”

“And what if I were to attack you while it’s just the two of us? Don’t men like you need lackeys?”

He chuckled dully. Lit another cigarette. Released the smoke into the sky.

“You wouldn’t hurt me, Nina Harrow,” he said. “We know too much about each other. Don’t we?”

CHAPTER 16PATRICK

Nina’s eyes flared, likely ignited by the instinct to run.

She still had that coiled look, her body tensed to spring. Years on the run had left marks everywhere on her. “You don’t look so different,” Patrick lied. “Wetter, perhaps. Should’ve cut your hair. Ain’t it the thing to do in hidin’?”

The flares went out. Her expression flattened, exactly as it had when she was twelve and she’d thought him an imbecile.

Her eyes flitted to the west.

“You won’t have much luck out that way,” he told her. “These hills aren’t safe. Trigger mines everywhere. You ever seen a mine blow a person apart?” He hollowed his cheeks to mimic detonation. “Not a pleasin’ sight.”

The shattered stare Nina gave him indicated she’d seen quite a few mines. Only war gave a person that look. “You buried mines around your own town?” She sounded disgusted.

“It’s wartime, darlin’. Never know what’s comin’ round those bends.” Patrick pointed to the place where the train tracks bent into the hills and disappeared. From this height, at this distance, all of Kenton Hill was just visible, fading into the encumbering night.

Small. Unassuming. Weak. That was likely how the town looked to her, how it looked to anyone from the outside.

Patrick turned to Nina once more. “Shall we?”

“When did you figure out I was the earth Charmer?” She didn’t move an inch, didn’t avoid his stare the way others did. Her glare burrowed deep and clung on, and Patrick was glad. It gave him permission to stare back.

So he stared for as long as he liked.

A smatter of remaining freckles. No yellow left in her ringlets. Her hair was limp and wet but still tightly curled, the color of spun gold. Her hands were clenched, her legs now long and distractingly feminine. All of her now shaped and carved into the valleys of a woman.

But some things she’d brought with her; the same discerning eyes, hazel-flecked and heavily shadowed in lashes. Her lips were fuller, but pressed into a familiar line when she scowled. She still spoke like bullets were loaded on her tongue, even if she’d learned to speak like a proper swank.

Patrick decided to tell her the truth. “I knew the day of our siphoning.”

And it was true. The second word got out that an earth Charmer had been siphoned, he’d been sure it was her. “No one spoke of anythin’ else on the train home—a Crafter girl turned into an Artisan?” He whistled. “As you and I both know, that almost never happens. And an earth Charmer, no less.”

She exhaled and looked back to the township below. “And what did people say when you told them?” she asked. “I bet you sung like a canary, didn’t you?”

There seemed little point in arguing. If she wanted to think of him in such a way, Patrick would let her. He buried his hands in his pockets. “Not many people take the word of a twelve-year-old seriously,” he said.

Nina scoffed, eyes wide. “You know, for the first few days in that school, I couldn’t eat. Couldn’t sleep. I was terrified someone would figure me out, someone would talk. But I never worried it would be you.”

Lord, those hazel eyes sank deep into a man’s skin.

“I had complete faith in you.” Her arms loosened a little, her shoulders fell. “Naïve of me, wasn’t it?”

It wasn’t, but Patrick nodded anyway. “It was clever, changin’ your name.”

“It wasn’t my doing,” she said bluntly, though Patrick had figured this much on his own. It wasn’t a ruse a twelve-year-old alone could uphold.

There were endless things Patrick and Nina hadn’t considered in that courtyard, many of which he had since come to know. He didn’t question her further. He was all too aware of the tightening springs in her legs, the grit on her cheeks.

“You look a fuckin’ sight,” he said casually, then began down the hill without her, if only to drag his eyes away. “Come on. I got a place for you to wash yourself. There’s even a bed.”

“No dungeon?”