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Smiling something ugly, I look over my shoulders at him. “Think Daxeel will like it?”

“The absolute opposite,” he says, but his pearly grin is a light in my darkness. “I doubt he will actually see you beneath those layers—is thatmetal?”

The smile stays slapped onto my face. “It’s for the petticoat. Makes it nice and big, especially at the back.”

“As much as I admire your acts of rebellion,” Eamon starts and fingers through the buttery ribbons, “I have to know, why did you bring this with you?”

It’s a bauble thing. He wouldn’t understand. He’s male, he’s hybrid. Father gifted it to me, and it became a treasure. So I brought it. Even if I only ever meant for it to rot away in a trunk.

“The better question—” I sigh and chance a pout at Eamon. His face falls instantly. “—is will you help me into this thing? I can’t do it alone.”

The look he gives me is tired, and I know this is the last thing he wants to do. But he is my Eamon and I am his Nari, so he does just as I ask. He fastens me into this smothering gown, sews me in at the waist, then secures the restraint of it all with ribbons down my back, threaded through the corset.

I’m just about ready to collapse from constriction alone, then maybe die of suffocation, when he starts pinning the hat to the quick updo I twisted my hair into.

This all takes a while. Too long. And so I have no doubt that Daxeel is waiting for my arrival—impatiently—at his terraced home in Kithe.

But that’s not what occupies my thoughts when a garrison errand boy comes to collect the last of my trunks and take them down to the courtyard. There, a carriage awaits us—and in all the hours that have passed since I ran out of the offices, in all the time it took me to get dressed, not once did the door to my bedchamber rattle with a knock.

Father didn’t visit.

Pandora didn’t come.

And I leave Comlar without farewells, but with an ache in my chest that echoes old wounds in lessons before Daxeel.

This is not the first that I have seen the terraced home in Kithe, but it takes on a new vision now. Maybe it’s because last time I was here, I was drowned in too much drink, then rushing out in all my shame.

This time, I wear little shame beneath the armour of my defiance. The heel of my ghastly beaded yellow slipper clops on the carriage step like a steed’s hoof.

Eamon yanks out the bell skirt of my dress. The bone-poufed edges catch on the carriage door—he tugs and squeezes and pulls before it pops free and I stumble out.

His hands catch me by the corseted waist. He sets me down.

I loosen a sagged breath and look up at the place of my slavery—my fresh prison.

There is nothing overly grand about the terraced house. It carries the same humble wealth as every other home on this white-stone street that curves around the hill in a crescent.

But it’s the face of the home that tugs my mouth, a string pulled, into an almost smile.

Crushed stardust and midnight.

That’s what I thought when I first looked up at its deep blue façade, a textured glitter that flickers under the wispy white hues of the street lanterns.

Hemlock reaches up seven levels with black paned windows that stretch from floor to ceiling; the roof is bordered by a black metal fence, not unlike the arrow-headed one that separates the front garden from me.

Eamon moves for the gate.

As he pushes it open, I eye the polished golden plate with ‘HEMLOCK HOUSE’ engraved into it. Vines have grown around the fence, but not a single leaf grazes those letters, as thoughthey have been cut back into place so many times now that they have since learned to stay clear of the plaque on the gate.

Eamon pauses.

Hand gripped onto the black metal arrowhead, he looks back at me—and waits.

Behind me, the grunts and shoves and thuds of servants wresting my luggage of the carriage roof is the only sound on the soft street, until—

“Come now, Nari.” Eamon’s voice is gentle.

I swallow, thick.