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Chapter 39

Theo

“Extra! Extra! Holtzfall Heiress Defeats Troll! Wins Second Ring!”

The newspaper boy’s voice met them as they got close to the Paragon. It was late, but the kid brandishing newspapers was surrounded by people handing over their half a zaub for the news. Bellboys from the hotel and upper-circle residents alike.

Finally, Theo relaxed his grip on his sword. If a ring was won, that meant the trial was over. He had been on guard for the marble troll storming past the charm and coming after them. But even as his tension eased, he felt Lotte draw tense next to him. She swiftly checked her own hand, but even in the dim streetlights they could both see there was no ring there. And in spite of himself Theo felt a dart of relief. A ring would only draw the attention of the Grims to Lotte.

The newspaper ink wasn’t even dry yet; it stained Theo’s fingers as he handed over the half a zaub. But her face was clear on the front page.

Modesty.

Behind her was Angelika Bamberg’s house. Or what was left of it.

The rest of it was consumed in flames.

Back in Grace’s suite in the Paragon, they read the article. It was short and hastily written, the reporter from the Herald clearly rushing to be the first to break the news and get it on stands.

Details of the thrilling events at the Bamberg mansion are still coming in, but the way this reporter heard it, all the Holtzfall heiresses were in attendance when a troll suddenly wrenched itself free of the Ionian stone floor in the Bamberg ballroom. Details of what happened next are scattered since many guests were both tipsy and panicked, but everyone agrees the troll’s rampage was ended with a fire started by Modesty Holtzfall. Which seems to have earned her a second win and a second ring in the Veritaz Trials.

“What are you going to do?” Lotte asked. He was aware of her on the settee next to him, searching his face. The secrets they shared hung heavy between them. Modesty had two rings now, and the whole city knew that, the Grims included. Theo’s options were narrowing with every day.

“I don’t know.” It was the truth. Another truth was that it would be easy to break his oath. He had been with Modesty all week. He had driven her place after place under the guise of protecting her from another attack from the Grims. And all the while, at any time, he could have taken a left instead of a right and delivered her to their door. Exchanged her for his brother.

But Theo couldn’t do that. He couldn’t turn his back on what the Grims might do to a Holtzfall with a ring to get it from her. It wouldn’t just mean betraying his oath. He could not be the sort of person who traded one life for another.

If it were Nora with two rings, he could have just…asked her for one. No matter what kind of mood she was in, if it were for Alaric, Nora wouldn’t hesitate.

The idea of Modesty giving up anything was laughable.

“What if we did ask Nora?” Lotte said. And Theo realized that she had read his mind without meaning to. Her hand was resting next to his on top of the newspaper, of the picture of Modesty wreathed in fiery victory. He was sure that half the time she didn’t even realize why she was doing that.

“Nora doesn’t have a ring.” Theo didn’t draw his hand away.

“Not for a ring,” Lotte said, “for help . Nora is—well, she was right about this.” She held up the glass charm she’d taken from the vault. “She has answers the rest of us don’t.”

She wasn’t wrong. Over the years, Theo couldn’t think of a time Nora hadn’t had an answer. But still, Theo hesitated. Their whole lives, Nora had trusted him with her life, but Theo had never had to trust her with his.

Mercy Holtzfall had let a dozen knights die without a thought. And there were days when Nora was more her granddaughter than she was Verity’s daughter.

“Nora despises Modesty,” Theo hedged. Even admitting aloud that he wasn’t sure of Nora’s loyalties felt treasonous. “Her answer would probably be to throw Modesty to the wolves.”

Lotte leaned back into the settee, her chainmail dress starkly at odds with the plush velvet. She was turning the small glass charm over in her hands absently, fingers closing around it intermittently.

“There will be other trials,” Theo said. Other rings. Other chances for her to stay a Holtzfall. For him to buy time from the Grims. He wasn’t sure who he was reassuring. Her or himself.

And for the first time the thought crossed his mind…if Lotte won a ring, would she give that up?

“More trials,” Lotte echoed remotely. “And for all we know, Modesty might win them all.”

He wasn’t sure when, but sometime in the early hours of the morning, they’d both drifted off. Distantly, Theo remembered that he’d been telling Lotte about his brother. That she’d been telling him about the convent. About the scars they’d given her. About the things that he was too late to protect her from.

He woke in the sitting room at the Paragon with a jolt.

His half-lucid mind hunted for whatever it was that had roused him. The sun was barely rising through the curtains, casting a ribbon of light over her face, the mirrored dress dancing in the sunlight.

And then Theo realized someone was standing over her.

A maid in the Paragon Hotel’s pale blue uniform, a small white apron tied around her waist and a white cap covering her hair. She had every right to be in the room. If the maids didn’t clean when the Holtzfalls were sleeping, nothing would ever get done. But something wasn’t right. Her stillness. The hardness in her eyes watching Lotte. And even as she noticed him stirring, her eyes dashed up, and a sly smile danced over her face. She brought one finger to her lips.

“Quiet now,” she whispered. “If you wake her, I’ll have to kill her.”

He knew that voice, he realized. It seemed so out of place from this primly coiffed girl in her pinafore. The last time he’d heard that voice, it came from inside a fox’s mask. “Unlucky she didn’t win the ring last night.” The fox maid gestured to Lotte’s bare hands. “If she had, I could just saw her finger off and be done with all of this.”

As he glanced at her, Theo realized Lotte was awake. She was faking sleep. Staying perfectly still, but her chest wasn’t rising and falling as it had been. Theo held himself still with effort. “What are you doing here?” He kept his voice low, but every nerve in his body was vibrating with the need for action.

“Well, being a Grim doesn’t exactly pay the many bills I owe to the Holtzfalls.” The girl gestured at her uniform. “But if you mean right this very moment, I want to know how Honora Holtzfall found out about our meeting place last night.” The fox maid leaned on the back of the couch, watching him over Lotte.

“Nora?” What would Nora want with the Grims? Unless she somehow knew about Alaric. Knew that them having him likely meant they were involved in her mother’s murder…

“Nora.” She said it with a mocking singsong voice. “What a familiar way to refer to your master. How did she know where to find us?”

The fear that went through him wasn’t for Nora, he realized—Nora could take care of herself—but at what the Grims might do in reaction to Nora. “No one knows how Honora Holtzfall knows half the things she does.”

She is smarter than you.

Than all of us.

You don’t want to cross Nora’s path if you know what’s good for you.

“She was on a wolf hunt.” Her eyes narrowed, as if she didn’t fully believe he was as ignorant as he seemed. “Traitors don’t fare well in our world.”

Theo might have laughed if the words hadn’t made him so angry. “You are the ones who asked me to be a traitor.” He clenched his jaw.

The girl sighed dramatically. “You just don’t understand that we’re on the same side yet. Knights are supposed to be the champions of noble causes, you know. Our cause is noble even if our blood isn’t.”

The fox maid ran her tongue along her teeth thoughtfully, something new passing over her face as she looked down at Lotte. She drew out something that looked like a small pocket knife.

Theo felt every muscle tense in his body as he prepared to move across the room before she could slice Lotte’s throat. “She’s not your enemy.”

The fox girl’s eyes flashed. “They are all our enemies. They have enslaved your family for a thousand years with an oath made by your ancestor. Just like I am a debtor in my city because they cut down some trees a thousand years ago.” The fervor that danced across her face was raw. But in that moment, Theo saw something of himself in it. The purpose that drove him, that had pushed him every day to train, to fight, to stand by the Holtzfalls because they shielded this city. He saw it in her now. This was her purpose. “But once you get us that ring, we will be able to draw enough magic out of the woods to fight back.”

Fight back. He had seen the kind of violence they were capable of the day of the riots. Theo could see it in her now. More than equality, the Grims wanted retribution. They didn’t just want to rise to meet the Holtzfalls. They wanted to bring them to their knees.

“But until we have that magic”—the knife flicked open, sparking with magic as it did—“maybe we can borrow some.”

Theo surged to his feet as he recognized the Raubmesser charm. But the girl was fast, moving until the knife hovered a hair’s breadth above Lotte’s face. She didn’t stir. She stayed completely still, trusting Theo not to let it get any closer.

Raubmesser charms were illegal. Unlike the Holtzfalls and the other families of the 1st circle, who were born overflowing with magic, most were born with only scraps of it in the blood. Enough to feed a heating charm for a few days of winter, maybe. Or to get an automobile from one end of the city to the other before it sputtered out.

Many people chose to sell their little allotment of magic when they got old enough. Pawn it off to a charmier for a few hundred zaub. If not, they’d usually use it up before they hit adulthood. But a Raubmesser charm, that had the power to drain someone’s magic straight out of their blood. It had been outlawed as soon as it was invented, the charmier who created it sent to prison for the rest of his life.

Still, every so often, in the more dangerous parts of the city, someone would find themselves cornered in a dark alley with a knife to their throat, mugged for their magic. And now a knife was hovering dangerously close to Lotte’s neck.

“If you hurt her”—Theo fought to keep his voice even—“you will not make it out of here alive.”

“I wouldn’t be the first of us not to.”

The face of the redheaded girl at the Veritaz Ceremony flashed through Theo’s mind. The cold certainty on her face as she chose to die. The Grims truly believed they were fighting to change the world.

“I can give you something better.” It was desperation that pushed the words from Theo’s mouth. Desperation to keep his oath. To protect Lotte. To buy time to find a way to save Alaric—without giving them a ring.

“Better than an heiress’s worth of magic?”

“How about a factory’s worth of magimek?”

The fox maid paused. “We told you we have ways of getting into LAO to get the charms we need.”

“Leyla Al-Oman caught employees trying to steal from her. I assume that’s your plan out the window. You need another way in.” The words tasted like treason on his tongue, but it was too late to swallow them back. “I know another way in.”

The maid flipped the pocket knife closed then open again, then closed again as she considered. “LAO is charmed and guarded to the gills. Even your brother couldn’t give us another way in.” Theo felt his fingers clench, trying not to picture them trying to force the information out of Alaric.

“I can.” The guilt twisted in his stomach at the idea of betraying Nora. Nora, who had led them to safety through the secret passage into her grandmother’s factory. Who hadn’t even hesitated to tap the code into place in front of him. Who had never imagined he would use this information against her.

“Today,” the fox maid said. “The factory will be empty for the election. We go today.”

No, I need more time . But he bit back those words. More time for what? There was no one he could warn. No one he could turn to for help. Not without risking Alaric’s life. Not without revealing his own treason. “Fine. Today.”

The fox began to answer when the door to the suite opened suddenly. The energy of the entire room shifted in an instant. With one swift movement, the knife was gone and the maid was gathering the remnants of the mess around the room. Eyes respectfully on her feet as Grace floated in, trailing a dress made of white silk emblazoned with pearls.

The noise brought Lotte’s eyes open. Theo caught her gaze, saw in it everything she had just heard.

“Oh, good, one of you is already here,” Grace addressed the maid, oblivious. “Get me a hangover tincture, won’t you? I don’t have time to sleep this off before we leave for the governor’s victory celebrations.”

“Of course, Ms.Holtzfall.”

“And hurry, or don’t expect a tip,” Grace ordered as the maid moved toward the door.

“Of course, Ms.Holtzfall,” the maid said again, turning for one last curtsy. As she came up, she caught Theo’s eye. She pressed one finger to her lips before closing the door.

“We’ll leave for the governor’s victory celebration at midday,” Grace was informing Lotte, tossing her handbag and gloves on the ground.

“I thought the polls didn’t close until sunset.” The lightness in Lotte’s voice rang false, but Grace didn’t seem to notice.

“The polls are a formality, darling.” Grace didn’t break her stride. “Besides, it’s never too early to celebrate someone’s victory.” Theo watched the pointed words land on Lotte like a jab. The door to Grace’s bedroom slammed behind her, leaving Lotte and Theo alone.

The weight of their secrets thickened the air between them.

“You traded my magic for a whole factory.” Lotte spoke first. “Was it because you saw just how unbelievably bad I was at using it?”

Theo ran his hand over his face tiredly, but he couldn’t help but smile. “You’re right. It was a bad trade. But I’m oathbound not to let her slit your throat.”

A long silence passed before Theo spoke again. He thought back to Lotte’s words from last night. “You were right,” he said. “We need Nora.”