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Winter had seized Kenton overnight.

It stuck to the windows at dawn, curled into Patrick’s collar as he dressed. Nina shivered in her sleep. Tonight, he’d ensure a fire was lit in the hearth.

It seemed to Patrick that she was uneasy in rest. Her body was curled into a spiral. Her eyelids were in flux. Whatever dreams played out beneath them carved creases in her forehead.

Contrarily, Patrick had rarely slept more peacefully.

It reminded him vaguely of a time he’d swigged a vial of bad bluff in his adolescence and felt battered by some invisible gauntlet.

It had knocked him unconscious into the next day, sleeping dreamlessly, but the waking was entirely different.

He’d felt pommeled, flayed then. Today, he awoke in a mind he hardly recognized.

He leaned over the bed and pressed the pad of his thumb to her furrow, smoothing out the lines.

As she came awake, he pressed his mouth to hers, felt her fingers thread into his hair in that way they had a tendency to do.

“We’ve stolen enough hours,” he murmured into her neck. “No more slothin’, Scurry girl.”

They were first to Margarite’s Modern Ladies, their breath pulsing out in clouds as they let themselves into the shop.

Scottie and Otto followed quickly after, Otto balancing a cigarette between his lips and newsprint in his hands. He read something that made Scottie laugh. They greeted Patrick and Nina with shiny cheeks and high spirits.

“Far too early for such good moods,” Patrick told them, despite the unlikely occurrence that he himself felt fifty pounds lighter than he could ever remember.

Scottie laughed, his great shoulders quivering. “Otto found an Artisan paper lyin’ about Dunnitch last night,” he said. “Got an interestin’ headline.”

“Dunnitch?” Nina queried. “You were in Dunnitch last night?”

“We had a trade arranged,” Patrick answered, holding his hand out for Otto’s paper. “Night is safest.”

“A trade for what?” she pressed.

Otto didn’t pause for even a beat. “Bit o’ this, bit o’ that,” he said. “Sugar, salt, meat. You get the idea.”

“And who handles these trades in Dunnitch?”

“Just some comrades of the Union,” Scottie said.

Patrick unfolded the paper and quickly found the headline:

Miners Union Negotiate for Safe Return of Domelius Becker.

Patrick shook his head, a huff of mirth leaving him.

“What is it?” asked Nina.

“Just the House of Lords scramblin’,” he said and offered her the newsprint.

Beneath the headline was a rendition of Tanner, offering an address at his lord’s lectern.

Assuring a crowd, no doubt, that all was under control, that peace was imminent.

That soon, the errant Crafters would give over their Alchemist, and idium would be restored to the dispensaries.

Otto chuckled heartily, clouds of smoke enveloping him. “Bunch o’ old nutters.”

“I take it no such negotiations are afoot?” Nina asked, her eyes rapidly tracking the lines of print.

Scottie tipped his head back and crowed.

“When the canals freeze over,” Otto said. “Them lords say whatever they want to their news Scribblers. Bunch of fuckin’ lies.”

Nina seemed pensive. She smiled wanly. “They must be desperate.”

Patrick nodded. “The tide’s turnin’. They can feel it.”

“Almost time to storm the castle,” Otto said, rubbing his hands together. “Just need that pathway, miss.”

Nina’s smile weakened, and Patrick wondered if she judged these men their callousness, the slapdash way they spoke of mounting an attack against the House of Lords. He wouldn’t blame her if she did. They had not lived in the castle as she had.

He wondered, in a deluge of sudden worry, what effect this was having on her. Could she live with it all, after it was done, knowing the part she’d played? Could she live with him, knowing he’d asked it of her?

But Nina dusted her hands together, then looked to Patrick. “Time’s wasting,” she said lightly. “Shall we?”

They waited for Gunner, Briggs, and Theo to arrive. It seemed all three were suffering last night’s choices. Gunner and Briggs cursed and swigged black coffee from tin mugs. Theo’s eyes were dark-rimmed and slitted. He looked at no one.

“Let’s get this over with,” Gunner growled, yawning widely, and down they all went.

The tunnel was, finally, clear of water. Whatever Theo had done to curb the seeping had held overnight. The floor was malleable but not sodden. The walls felt dry underhand. Patrick stayed with Nina at the corpus, shoveling loads of waste into mine carts as she carved.

He tried not to distract her while she worked, but it was a trial.

Distraction was normally a requirement down here, when the walls and ceiling felt too close, the air sulfuric and clotted.

Scottie was humming to himself by the waste chute Nina had created.

Gunner and Briggs were speaking in foreign accents for entertainment while they framed the walls.

Theodore appeared and disappeared with every cart that Patrick filled and pushed it away on its tracks.

With each pass, his face grew more and more tempestuous.

Patrick estimated how long it would take for the man to snap.

He could hardly blame Theodore his jealousy. If he had fumbled a woman like Nina Harrow, he’d likely walk about with a stuck jaw, too.

Patrick wondered how deep that bitterness went. Wars had been forged and finished in jealousy. Entire cities lay in the ruins of jilted hearts.

And jealous men made unpredictable allies. Theodore Shop ought to be watched closely.

Nina exhaled heavily at that moment, pressed her muddied fingers to her forehead.

Patrick went to her immediately. “Rest awhile,” he urged her. “We’ve been down here for hours.”

“It’s all right,” she answered, giving him a tight smile.

But he watched her hang her head, roll her neck, and his concern mounted. “I don’t want you to push yourself if it’s painful.”

“It’s a good pain,” she said. “Like stretching a muscle.”

“We’ve passed thirteen miles,” Patrick told her. “I’d say we’re somewhere between Dunnitch and Trent. It’s far enough for today.”

She sighed, yielding. “Will we walk back?”

“Unless you fancy skippin’.”

She hit him lightly on the chest.

It took four hours to return. Tomorrow, he would let Nina rest. The journey through the tunnel would need to be made by mining cart as it lengthened.

As they walked, Nina peppered him with questions. She threw them over her shoulder every few minutes, and he answered them—about the Miners Union, the tunnels, the capture of the Alchemist.

“Last question, Scurry girl,” Patrick said, placing a hand to her waist when she staggered sideways. “Then show me some mercy. I’m beggin’.”

“I’m only curious,” she said. “If I’m to be a member of the Miners Union, I should have the facts.”

“The Miners Union, eh?” Patrick smirked. “Are you plannin’ on joining the fight, then?”

“Whether I choose to fight or not, that shouldn’t stop me from being a member.”

Patrick smiled at the ease with which she said it, though the thought of Nina amid the fire of explosions made him ill. “I won’t deny you, but you won’t be going anywhere near the bullets and bayonets, darlin’. Just so we’re clear.”

She turned abruptly, leaving the others to walk on, already much farther ahead than them. “You underestimate me. I think I’d serve well in a battle.”

Patrick rolled his eyes, braced his arms on either wall and looked down at her. “Have you ever fired a pistol?”

“I don’t need one,” was her answer, and dirt rose around her, began spiraling into a funnel. A diminutive windstorm.

“Show-off,” he muttered, and she grinned, then let the dirt fall. “Keep walking,” he told her gently, turning her by her shoulders.

“How much farther?”

Hours. “A short while.”

She was dragging her feet already, exhaustion setting in. “If my knees give out, you’ll be forced to carry me, I hope you realize.”

“Ask me your final question,” he prompted. Distraction was key. It delayed all kinds of mental voids.

She paused for a beat, then asked, “Why have I never caught wind of Domelius Becker in Kenton Hill?”

Patrick did not answer immediately. It seemed to him that her breath had shortened. “If he were in Kenton, you would’ve stumbled across him by now, Nina. There ain’t many places to hide a man. No dungeons.”

“I remember,” she said. “How can you be sure he is kept safe, then? If he isn’t where you can see him?”

Wariness fluttered to life. “That’s two questions.”

But Nina only gave an exasperated laugh. “You’re not a very good walking companion.”

“Choose a different subject matter,” he said, “and you can keep prattlin’.”

She looked at him over her shoulder. “I don’t mean to pry.”

“Then trust that what you don’t know won’t hurt you.”

“But holding a man like Domelius Becker must be dangerous,” she said now. “Surely he’d be better served as a trade.”

A pulse of warning ran through him. “We’ve discussed this already,” he said warily.

“We have,” she said, and though her expression was neutral, Patrick couldn’t help but detect a note of panic in her voice. Of urgency. “But I can’t help but think it a surer course to save the hostages.”

Ah. But of course she should be worried for her mother. Patrick sighed. “I promised I’d get her out, didn’t I?”

“But if the Alchemist—”

“Enough.” His tone was low, firm.

She appeared admonished, facing forward once more. For a while a restless silence stretched. “Is this how it is to be?” she asked, whisper-soft. Her shoulders drooped as though it took enormous effort to say it at all. “Secrets? Things I can’t know?”

Patrick sighed. “This is how war works, Nina. We deal in secrets. The people in charge of keepin’ ’em become targets.” He thought of his father, locked away in a cell and holding his tongue while the Artisans thought of cruel ways to unravel it. “I won’t make you a target.”

She chuckled bitterly. “I’ve been a target since I was a girl, Patrick. I’d hardly know the difference.”

A lick of violence ran the length of his spine. He imagined Nina in the hands of Lord Tanner. He imagined the things the House would do to acquire Nina, the weapon he could make of her.

And was that so different from what Patrick himself had done?

“Nina,” he began, and he placed a hand to her shoulder to turn her, setting the lantern on the tunnel floor.

Then he bent down to look into her face, to ensure their eyes were level, and she could see the sincerity with which he spoke.

He swiped a finger across the freckles of her right cheek.

There were times when he’d found himself staring at them, plotting their constellations.

Her hands fisted his shirt at his chest. Her lips parted invitingly.

“Ask me how many there’ve been before you. ”

She seemed taken aback. Suspicious. “How many what? Women?”

He nodded, delighting in her shock.

She narrowed her eyes. “How many?”

He moved his lips an inch from hers. “None.”

She blinked once, twice. “You’re a rotten liar, Patrick Colson.”

He caught her waist when she tried to turn away. “I’m not talkin’ about women I’ve taken to bed . I’m talkin’ about women I’ve—”

“Kidnapped?” Nina interjected, winding her arms around his neck. “Hog-tied and carried through a tunnel?”

“You got a smart fuckin’ mouth.” But she pressed that smart mouth to his, and he abruptly lost his train of thought.

“So why haven’t these other women stuck around?” Nina continued, watching him carefully. “Was it the smoking? The whiskey? Did you drive them away?”

He dug his fingers into her waist so that she squirmed. “I never wanted any of ’em to stay. Partly because I never cared for anyone enough to try. But mostly I knew what I’d be tyin’ ’em to. All those secrets. All those enemies. It isn’t a life any woman wants, Nina. You should know that.”

She watched him carefully, confusion marring her features. “But… you asked me to stay.”

Patrick nodded. “I did. And I’m a selfish bastard to do it.”

“Then why—”

“Because you’ve been stuck in my head for thirteen long years,” he said.

“And now that you’re here, I can’t bring it upon myself to see you leave.

” He lifted her then, clear off the floor, and her screeching laughter tinkled down the tunnel as he pressed his forehead to hers. “I’m in love with you, I’m afraid.”

When Patrick was a boy, he and his brothers had stolen flares and lit them all at once.

The gunpowder combusted into a million bolts of hot light.

He saw it all again in Nina Harrow’s eyes when he told her he loved her.

“There might be things I can’t tell you,” he said.

“There might be secrets. But I’ll never lie to you, Nina.

And I promise I’ll love you as well as I can. ”

She was quiet and contemplative for a long moment, and then she grew sad. Her lips pressed together. “I… I want this to work.”

His wretched heart soared. “Then it will. But I’m warnin’ you. I won’t be an easy man to love.”

“Ah,” she said, tightening her hold around his neck, her mouth hovering dangerously close to his. “But that’s exactly the problem. You’re entirely too easy to fall in love with.”

If he ever forgot her face, and the way she looked at him just then, he’d loathe himself, so he didn’t kiss her right away. Instead, he lingered. “Do you trust me, Nina?”

She nodded. “I do.”

“Then there’ll be trust between us, too. As well as love.”

She exhaled and closed her eyes. “I hope so.”

“Good enough,” he said, and he kissed her as reverently as any man had ever kissed a woman, completely oblivious to the dark. Oblivious to Theodore, who waited twenty paces down the path, blending with the shadows, churning with rage.