Page 99 of Queen of Volts

Once inside, she stripped off her heavy scarf and boots and crept upstairs, her pulse drumming against her every pressure point. The Empress card seemed to burn so hot in her pocket that her coat might as well have been letting out steam.

She paused in the hallway. Fractured moonlight spilled onto the tiled floor from the grand window, offering a glimpse of Olde Town’s jagged skyline and the South Side beyond it.

Enne’s hand paused over the doorknob, wondering if her actions would damn them both.Herlife she was willing to jeopardize, but his?

She shook her head. Their pardons were meaningless if Scythe beheaded one of them or their friends before dawn. Besides, Enne had no intention to stay long. She’d come only with a final request, one she wasn’t sure Levi would fulfill. But she hadn’t been able to ask it at the boardwalk, even in the privacy of their ferris wheel compartment. It was too dangerous. And it made tonight the last chance she had left.

Enne opened the door, wincing as it creaked. The blinds were drawn, so only a sliver of light sliced through the room as she slipped inside. She closed it carefully, not daring to draw a breath. She reached into her pocket and squeezed her tokens for support.

Despite her attempts at stealth, the bedside lamp switched on, making her squint and stumble back in surprise. Levi sat beside it on his desk chair, his elbows resting on his knees, his gun clutched in his hand.

Enne yelped back in shock. “What—what are you doing?” she breathed.

“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?” Levi shot back, his voice heavy like lead. He didn’t point his pistol at her, but he did tap it lightly. A threat. “I knew you’d come.”

“You did?”

“Of course I did. I knew what you were thinking. That Scythe has already killed two players. Any one of us could be next. And even though I’m your target, I’ve never offered you my card. So you came to take it.”

His words left a burn in her throat like she’d sipped a Gambler’s Ruin. “Is that what the gun is for?” she demanded.

“Don’t bluff. You have yours in your pocket.”

Cowardlyandthickheaded. Enne lifted her hand out from her coat and dropped the tokens she held. They clinked to the floor, piercing the tense quiet of the room. “It seems,” she said icily, “that despite how well we both claim to know one another, we cannot always guess each other’s mind.”

Levi cursed and set his pistol on his nightstand. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking. I’ve been on edge ever since we found Owain.”

“You thought I would shoot you?” Enne asked furiously. “After I was forced to shoot Jac, I can’t even hold my own revolver, but you thought I’d steal here in the night and shoot you while you slept? What sort of monster do you take me for?”

He looked as though she’d slapped him again—this time for real. “You were right about everything you said this afternoon. I shouldn’t have blamed you for Jac’s death. I should’ve never made plans without you. I should’ve never acted as though we weren’t...”

“Weren’t what?” she prodded.

“Partners,” he breathed. “But you know how it would look if someone saw you come here.”

“Yes, which is why I was careful and why I won’t loiter. I only came to ask you a question.”

“Then ask me,” he told her, his gaze intent.

“If your claim that you accepted the pardon for my own survival is true, if you love me but value my life more than us together, then you will give me your card. Because if this game continues, I’ll be doomed without it. I know it, and so do you.”

Levi sucked in his breath, then he reached into his pocket and pulled out the Emperor. But he didn’t hand it to her.

“Is it because you don’t trust me?” Enne asked softly. Relinquishing your card was putting your life in someone else’s hands.

“No, no, it’s not that,” Levi muttered, so quietly that Enne had to tread closer. She removed her coat and rested it on his bureau. “There’s something that I never told you, about the pardon.”

Enne’s eyes widened. “What do you mean?”

“Before we met with the Chancellor, Lola came to visit me,” Levi said. “She came upon some information concerning your lineage—she dug far deeper thanThe Crimes & The Timeshas ever managed.”

“My...lineage?” Enne repeated. Of all the subjects they could’ve discussed tonight, this was not one she’d expected.

“Your father was Veil,” he told her carefully. “He was the bastard son of a member of the royal family, hidden to avoid scandal before the Revolution, which is how he survived after. It’s why Veil always kept his face covered—to hide his eyes.”

Enne felt the truth spread through her like a wildfire. Her entire story, her entire identity seemed to slip from her grasp as her memories were cast in a harsher, grimmer perspective. She felt the illusion of a sea breeze sweep across the harbor as a girl clutching a guidebook took a weary step onto dry land—as though all of New Reynes had hitched its breath, remembering the child who’d been born there, the daughter of its most infamous crime lord, who had once brought the city to its knees. She imagined herself standing over Levi’s shoulder during the Shadow Game, watching the moment her eyes shifted from brown to purple. She watched the crowd as Jonas hanged, at the same place where her father had hanged for being a criminal, and her grandfather before him for being a royal.

Enne wanted to speak, but she hadn’t found the right words before Levi continued. “I supported you signing the contract because I was scared that, should this information come to light, there wouldn’t be a contract. I was too nervous to fight it, when it seemed like your only chance at a pardon or happiness.”