Page 64

Alex had remembered and brought her straight to it. The realization warmed her more deeply than the fire. “Alex, you’re—”

“You still haven’t told me where you were tonight.”

Alex stood behind her, the friendliness stripped from his voice, leaving only the sharpness as he removed the coat from her shoulders. Still shivering and not ready to part with its warmth, Rune almost seized it, then realized he was peeling it away to look at her arm.

Her silk glove had blood seeping through it.

Oh no.

Was that the real reason he’d draped the coat over her?

Did Noah and Bart notice?

More gentle than his tone, Alex turned her toward him and started tugging the glove off her fingers, one by one. The thin silver ring on his smallest finger glinted in the firelight. “How did this happen?”

“Laila shot me,” she said, watching the silk slide down her arm to reveal the makeshift bandage, which was good and soiled. “Or shotatme. I was lucky; she mostly missed.”

Alex went quiet. It was so rare for him to get angry. But she could feel the anger in him now, coiled tight like a spring.

“And why was Laila shooting at you?”

“I was at the old Seldom mine, looking for Seraphine. Your brother set me up.”

Alex’s gaze narrowed behind his lion mask. “What do you mean, he set you up?”

Taking the ruined glove, Rune threw it onto the fire, destroying the evidence. She slid off the second one and burned it too. Hopefully Verity had worn gloves tonight that she could borrow. Otherwise, she’d need Alex to escort her home with his coat over her shoulders—andthatwould certainly make people talk.

Boys who let girls wear their coats home were making their intentions known.

But if they’re busy talking about Alex and me,thought Rune,they won’t be wondering about when I arrived.

Rune told him everything that had happened in the mine, leaving out the part beforehand, where she went alone to Gideon’s tenement building, stripped down to her underwear, and let him take her measurements. That was irrelevant information, she decided.

As she filled him in, Alex crouched down and lifted the hem of her dress, reaching for the knife he knew she kept strapped to her thigh. They’d been in this situation so many times, working like cogs in a clock that had run smoothly for years, that Alex knew exactly where the knife was sheathed.

“Gideon intentionally misled me,” she said as Alex drew the knife from under her dress and used its sharp edge to cut a long strip off her cotton shift. “If he didn’t suspect me before, he does now.”

If he noticed blood on the blade, he didn’t remark on it.

When he rose to face her, Alex handed her the makeshift bandage to hold while he untied the bloody one from around her arm.

While he focused on his task, Rune studied him. Alex’s golden mask ended at the tip of his nose, cutting across his cheeks and revealing lips that were pressed tight at the sight of the gash in Rune’s pale skin. The wound wasn’t deep, but it was still bleeding freely.

“I asked you to end this thing with Gideon,” he said, throwing the soiled bandage into the flames, then wrapping the fresh cotton strip around the wound.

“Hecontactedme,” she said, defensive. “Hewanted to meet.”

Alex’s elegant fingers secured the bandage and tucked the ends underneath. “And you had no choice but to obey?”

“He’s my best chance of finding Seraphine.”

Alex breathed in deep. As if Rune were a child testing his patience.

“I need an alibi,” she said, changing the subject. “Can we say I came to this party with you tonight?”

Her wound freshly bandaged, she turned her focus to the map over the mantel. From here, it looked like a series of circles within circles.

Before Alex could answer her, she moved to Octavia Creed’s massive desk in the center of the room, piled high with records. Grabbing the heavy desk chair, Rune dragged it back to the fireplace, climbed onto it, and pulled out the tracing paper and pen from inside her bodice. She set both down on the mantel.