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He felt every second passing like a stone added to a pail. It grew steadily heavier in his grip, harder to hold.

But there was no rebuff yet, just a maelstrom behind her eyes. Flushed cheeks. Wild blond hair strewn around her face. Full lips, parted in indecision. It was the longest he had seen her survive a silence.

She was, to him, a walking contradiction. Crafter and Artisan. Soft and strong. Vulnerable, yet difficult to read. Wickedly smart and painfully beautiful. A headache to any man trying to divulge all the secrets she was made of.

He was a selfish creature, he knew. Was it not enough to try and persuade her to his side of the fight? Did he truly need to keep her, when what she wanted was escape?

No, not escape. Freedom. It was a long time she’d spent in hiding. In Kenton Hill she was finally unfurling, he could see it. She had come alive here. If it was freedom she sought, he could offer her that. Maybe it would be enough for her to stay.

He hadn’t meant to ask it of her yet. There’d been a plan in mind. A more extended period in which to draw her in. Perhaps he’d fumbled things now.

But he didn’t think so. Difficult as she might be to understand, he wasn’t misreading her when she admired the hills and laughed at his brothers and marveled at Kenton’s machinations. She no longer resembled a tightly wound spring. She went quiet when she looked at him, and that was how he knew.

In truth, he had never considered a wife.

No one had ever enticed the idea for him.

His devotion was spent on his family, his town, his people.

He’d imagined his life would dwindle on that way, him expending himself on their behalf.

On and on the fighting would go. Deals and tunnels and problems, and he would die eventually, somewhere amid all the noise with no great love to leave behind.

Just the pub, the stacks, the mills, the mines.

Kenton and the rest of the world churning on without him.

There was no room for a wife in all that.

But if he could find his father and end this war, perhaps room could be made.

No more blood or interminable problems to solve.

No need to worry that someone he loved might be tangled up in the mess.

Lately, he really thought it might be possible.

He held on to more hope than he’d admit to Nina, who still hadn’t answered the fucking question.

He imagined her in his bed each night, lying with her head on his chest, all those curls splayed over his skin.

Then he imagined her in someone else’s bed, and felt every muscle in his body seize. Blood pooled in his mouth.

Yes. He’d have to make room for a wife. He’d find a way.

Suddenly, Nina’s eyes glazed, tears threatening the rims, and Patrick stood.

“Wait,” she said, holding a hand toward him, staving him off. “I—there’s something I need to tell you first.”

She moved her legs to the edge of the bed and stood, beginning to pace. She pulled her blouse at the throat and said “It’s too hot in here” despite the frost on the window, the dying fire in the hearth. Her cheeks had turned ruddy and splotched.

Patrick closed the gate on the fire to snuff it, went to open the window.

She didn’t speak, only breathed heavily. Isaiah watched her from the rug with a tilted head.

“Just tell me,” Patrick said. He was nearing insanity. Lord, but being near her was a descent into madness.

“My mother fled Scurry when I was a girl,” she began, wiping her palms over her hips nervously.

Patrick’s chest tightened. “I’m sorry.”

“But she was a good mother,” she said, eyes flashing defensively. “Before… before she left.” Nina seemed to hover on the edge of some-thing.

Patrick waited, uncertain what to do.

“She was a beautiful artist, and she taught me to draw and paint. She would steal coins out of my father’s pockets while he slept to buy supplies.

She used to insist that I was made for bigger places and I knew she meant the Artisan school.

She filled my head with dreams of going there when I came of age.

And then she left, and I never understood why. ”

She didn’t go on. Didn’t seem able to. She swallowed and shut her eyes. “She’s been taken prisoner by the House,” she said then. “As a way to punish me, I suppose.”

Patrick exhaled, his chest a cage his heart sought to break out of. He felt awash in that old hatred again—for the House and Tanner and every peer who’d come before him. “Tanner is a monster,” he said, his loathing plain and hot to the touch.

He wondered why she’d never mentioned her mother before, or if she’d just decided, this day, that she trusted him enough.

Nina picked at her fingernails; her eyes flitted to the ceiling as though searching for something—resolve, perhaps. “I’m telling you, because you have something that can free her, as well as your own father.”

Patrick frowned. “Of course I’ll—”

“I’m not talking about tunnels,” she said, impatient now. “Patrick, I’m talking about the Alchemist. Domelius Becker.”

Patrick stilled. He saw the direction of her thoughts without her needing to speak them. “Nina—”

“He can be traded, Patrick. There is nothing more important to the House of Lords than idium. Give them their Alchemist, and Tanner will give you every last prisoner, our parents included.”

But already, Patrick shook his head. She didn’t understand war games. How to transact with politicians. “I can’t do that, Scurry girl.”

She visibly deflated at the words. “Please,” she said, desperate. “You can . You’re just choosing not to.”

“There’s another way to get them out.”

She let loose a sound of frustration. “Is idium more important to you than their lives , Patrick?”

“Nina—”

“Answer the question,” she insisted. She didn’t yell or scream, but her voice shook, quaked. “Is idium more important than your father? Than my mother?”

He wished he could tell her something different. “Idium… is everything,” he told her. “It’s the key to this war, Nina. To progress. I wish it weren’t so, believe me.”

Her eyes welled, and she nodded, turned her body away from him.

Surely she understood. She wanted the same thing as him, after all: true freedom. She knew what he knew, didn’t she? There was no other way to win than to utilize the Artisans’ very weapons against them.

Patrick stepped toward her, eyes on the sweeping curve of her neck and shoulders. “I’ll get them both out, Nina. I swear it.” And he wasn’t one to make promises he couldn’t keep.

“You’re confident you can do it?” she whispered, and when she turned her face to him there were tears spilling onto her lashes. “And come back?”

He had to come back. There was no other choice. For Colson & Sons and the Miners Union and Nina. There would be life after the fighting stopped. There was room for more. “If your mother is alive and willing,” he said, “then I’ll bring her back.”

Her hands shook. She brushed the tears away from under her eyes. Then she nodded and squared her shoulders, shaking off the maelstrom. “Then I’ll stay here.”

“With me,” Patrick added, stepping closer. “To be clear.”

She peered up at him, and he was moments away from abandoning honor. “Say it.”

“I’ll stay with you.”

“Because I won’t be able to leave you alone if you’re close by,” he said, reaching her at last, tracing the underside of her jaw.

She shivered. Heat crept up her neck from beneath her shirt.

“When it’s all finished, Nina, I’ll come knockin’ on your door. Do you understand?”

She swallowed. Nodded. He wondered if she was aware that she was rocking onto her toes, stretching upward.

“I’ll keep everyone safe. And when it’s done, you’ll be with me.

” He kept his lips a hairsbreadth from hers, watching her eyes close and her breaths shorten.

He needed to be sure it was the same for her, this need.

This incessant fucking desire. He thought he might come undone, right there, to see her so wanting. “Is this what you want?”

“Yes,” she said on an exhale, her hands slithering into his collar.

It was all the assurance he needed. He closed that last inch, and his mouth finally, blissfully, descended upon hers again.

It wasn’t like their other kisses, hesitant and whisper soft. This was unrestrained, crushing. He pressed his tongue to the seam of her lips, and they parted on a gasp. Gold bloomed behind his eyelids. She tasted like victory. The sum of all he’d ever craved.

How many moments had he imagined her in his hands? A hundred? A thousand? Could she feel the core of him rearing, clawing her into its recess?

What will I do , he thought, if she claws her way out?