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Patrick pulled me deeper into the flock of dancers, his fingers interlocking with mine. I had a mind to look back at Theo and say something, but a new song had begun, and Patrick turned and gathered me to him automatically, as though it were second nature.

I was immediately coalesced in warmth and the heady mixture of subtle cologne, fresh linen, washed skin.

I couldn’t tell if his pulse sprinted as violently as mine. Was he a drug for all the women he touched?

The music was light and fast, the couples whirled by around us, and yet Patrick seemed in no hurry to lead me into the current. We swayed very slowly against the tide.

Looking at him became difficult. “I thought you didn’t dance?”

“I don’t,” he said. “But evidently, you do.”

I tried to put on a frown, but I was a slave to my thundering blood. “Am I not permitted to dance with anyone else?”

He looked over my head, eyes surveying the crowd. “If you want to, you can dance with all of them. Lord knows every man in here is imaginin’ it.”

I scoffed. “You can’t know the thoughts of every—”

“Their eyes’ve been following you since you walked in. You’re gonna get them in trouble with their wives.”

I blushed fiercely. “They have not.”

“They have.”

I looked at the wall of his chest. My stomach knotted. “I can’t tell if you’re complimenting me,” I admitted. “Are you?”

“Just sayin’ how it is,” he said, as though he were describing the weather. “Are you a woman who needs to be complimented?” He ceased his surveillance to look down at me. I wished his eyes were any other color.

“ Every woman should be complimented. Especially by the men who cut in to dance with them.”

“Then, you have very pretty freckles.”

“You’re jealous,” I said boldly, though I could hardly believe it. “Why should you be jealous?”

“I can’t say, Nina. But there it is.”

“You can’t say?”

“No,” he said flatly. “I can’t. Can you say why your heart’s beating out of your chest?”

Mortification flooded me. Deep in my belly, there was a quickening as good as an admission.

Patrick nodded, and there was no arrogance to it, just a deep, inscrutable knowing. “So then, we both have things we can’t speak on.”

We swayed back and forth, his hand diligently pressed to the middle of my back, not daring to move a single inch lower, oblivious to the crowd around us.

“We all turn back into boys when it comes to girls,” he said again, though I wasn’t sure if he was speaking to me or to himself. “Perhaps we can let it just be that.”

We should let it just be that , I thought. And nothing more. “Do you intend to intercede every time another man looks my way?”

He grinned. He couldn’t seem to help it. “I intend to put the rest of these boys to shame and spoil you for anyone else.”

My breath stopped. Why should my breath stop? “Says the man who can’t dance.”

His grin turned devilish. “I said that I don’t dance, not that I can’t .” His chest swelled beneath my hand. “Hold on, Scurry girl.”

His hand flexed at my back and pulled me against him, so that my chest pressed into his.

I felt my nipples harden beneath the chiffon.

The muscle of his stomach flattened against my own, and he whirled us suddenly sideways.

We broke into the circle of couples, me laughing in shock, and the music, the cacophony, came swarming back in.

I hardly knew the steps to the dances, and it didn’t seem to matter.

Patrick was, by contrast, proficient in all.

He smiled wickedly, laughed as he caught and released me, spun me back into his arms, linked my elbow with his.

His neck was hot where my hand touched it.

When I mock curtsied at the end of a particularly quick song, his eyes sparked and he ran a hand over his face, as though it physically pained him.

The music slowed, became fluid and gentle, and I thought that might be the moment where he returned to his many duties, and me to my corner. But instead, he gingerly caught my waist in one hand and clasped the other around my palm, turning us both in an endless circle.

Silence ensued, and we stared at each other until I could hardly stand it.

I was the one to break first. I lowered my gaze. “You can dance,” I accused. “Where does a miner learn how to dance like that?”

He made a show of being offended. “You’ve got an awful memory. Didn’t I demonstrate my abilities in that courtyard for you?”

I remembered it then—Patrick whirling about in the dust, children giggling behind their hands. “You looked insane.”

“As I recall, you were claiming that Crafters didn’t like music or dancing.” He looked about us pointedly. “You can eat those words now, if you like.”

I rolled my eyes. Smiled.

For a while we simply turned in our own small, warm space until my head grew heavy and the music grew indistinct. After a time, I found my head had come to rest against his shoulder, though I didn’t remember putting it there. I felt restful, pleasingly drunk—on what, I could not say.

“You’re too beautiful to be real,” he said suddenly, softly. With my ear pressed to his chest, I could feel the words, too. “There’s your compliment.” His fingers traced a very careful line then, slowly up my spine and back down, and in their wake, they left a trail of fire.

And I thought, in that moment, of the same picture drawn over and over until every single line was precise, and yet I still hadn’t rendered a perfect replica of him. “I drew pictures of you,” I told him, giving him this one small piece of myself. “In school.”

He didn’t speak. Just pulled me round and round in a small orbit.

I swallowed. “I was scared to forget you.”

The sound of his heart beating made me think of caves under leagues of sea. “I never had a hope in the world of forgetting you, Scurry girl.”

And I wondered what had made me so unforgettable. Was it the secret we’d unraveled together, or was it the inner workings of fate?

How to stop a rising tide, the rapidly expanding cell of a storm?

If I’d known it then, in that barn, I might have reduced that night to the whims of wine and music.

I might not have tilted my face to his and seen firsthand the sureness burgeoning in all that blue.

He shook his head. “I’d hoped you were hideous.”

I smiled. “And I’d hoped you weren’t an arse.”

“Well,” he muttered, eyes lowering to my mouth. “We don’t always get what we want.” And then he kissed me.

Or perhaps I pressed my lips to his first. I was balanced on my toes after all, reaching, reaching, and then his mouth and mine touched, and it was whisper-soft and intoxicating. Unstoppable.

I blazed to life.

The song changed, became rapid and throbbing again, and the moment evaporated. Spell broken.

I descended back onto the soles of my feet, releasing his neck, but his arm remained wrapped around my back.

You’re a fool , I thought.

“I…” he stumbled, swearing beneath his breath. It was odd to see him falter. “I’m sorry,” he managed. I gathered he had little practice with apologies.

I tried not to sound breathless. “Are you?”

“Not even a bit,” he said. “Nevertheless, it was… impolite.”

“And everything you’ve done so far has been beyond reproach?”

“I hope not.” He grimaced. “Sounds dull.”

I tried not to smile. Truly, I did.

“Walk with me,” he said then, eyes still glinting. “You’ve tortured me enough.”

But he didn’t look like a tortured man. He looked and laughed exactly like the boy of twelve I remembered.

He took my hand and pulled me through the rivulets of people.

By the tapped barrels along the wall, I spied Tess Colson watching her son with a curious expression.

She marked his course with a smile far gentler than I thought her capable.

There were others who watched us leave—many in fact, but I paid them no mind.

The open lane brought fresh air. Children ran screaming, as was mandated by childhood.

I’d spent many nights just the same, bolting down the street in some game while the grown-ups drank in the warmth of the pub.

There were differences though, between my youth and the one tearing through Kenton Hill.

These boys and girls weren’t without shoes.

They wore knitted jumpers. Some squeezed bits of cooked pork in their hands, the juices slipping over their knuckles.

I’d stopped walking, and Patrick with me. He followed my line of sight to the children, then looked at me quizzically. “Thinking of stealin’ one?”

“I don’t think I was ever that free,” I said. It seemed to come from a vault I’d left unlocked. Even I was surprised to hear it aloud.

Patrick frowned. “You never played coppers and thieves?”

“I did. But I don’t think I looked like them.

” I could explain it no further. I just knew that my cheeks had never shone that brightly.

I’d never bellowed with such abandon. Always, always, I knew that the game’s end would come long before Fletcher Harrow emerged from whatever hole he was drinking in.

And when he did, it was a fickle bet he’d be able to make the walk home.

“No,” Patrick said. “Reckon I didn’t, either.”

There was a saying in Scurry, that the anger of the parent leaves traces in the blood.

Babies got their eyes from their mother and their bloodlust from their father.

Their mum’s bitterness, their grandfather’s right hook.

All of us born with hereditary rot in our bellies.

It seemed these children had been spared it.

But Patrick and I, we were sure carriers.

“They’ve never heard the whistles, Nina. That’s what it is.”

I thought he might be right. Sometimes I heard them in my nightmares. Whistles, canaries, and earth caving in.