Page 82 of To Catch A Rogue

She died, Lark had told him in the type of voice that shut down any further questions.

"Can you keep a secret?" The words tumbled from her lips in a rush.

"Are youtryingto insult me? Who spent a week locked in his room when someone added an invisible dye Honoria had been testing to Blade's shaving cream? Even though I wasn't even in the bloody house when it mysteriously happened?"

She didn't even counter with all the times she'd taken the blame for things he'd done, which told him this was deadly serious.

"There's... there's something I need to show you."

She sat up, the covers spilling into her lap, and the first thing he noticed was the shadow of her nipples beneath the fine lawn of her nightgown.

But you arenotgoing to look at that.

Because she clearly needed his support right now, not to have him leering at her.

He tore his gaze to hers. "What?"

Lark started to undo the buttons on her nightgown.

Holy blood and ashes.Charlie tensed. Good intentions started going out the window.Be her friend. She needs a friend right now. But she was unbuttoning her nightgown all the way down, and suddenly he didn't know what the hell her intentions were.

"I thought this was a bad idea?" he asked hoarsely.

Lark bent her head forward, exposing her bare nape. Suddenly there wasn't enough moonlight in the world.

"Tin Man would roll over in his grave if he knew I was showing you this," Lark whispered. "But I'm so tired of being the only one who knows this secret. I'm so tired of being alone."

"Hey." He rubbed her upper arm.

Lark drew her hair forward, over her shoulder. The heavy mass looked like a spill of black ink in the night, though in the sunlight it was a contradiction of browns and golds and even coppery strands. He'd spent years dreaming of running his fingers through it and—

Charlie forced himself to clear his throat. "What am I meant to be looking at?"

She let her nightgown fall halfway down her back and arms, holding the front of it to her breasts. That distracted him, but then he caught a glimpse of what was painted across her back.

All his sexual impulses fled, leaving only the sudden pounding of his heart. Reaching out, he turned her to the glint of moonlight so he could see better.

Her back was covered in an enormous sprawl of a tattoo. He'd known something was there. How could he not, growing up with her as he had?

But Lark had always kept her back covered.

Indeed, she'd been strangely protective of glimpses of her skin, always wearing dark shirts when the pair of them went swimming. Or yelling at him and grabbing her shirt to cover herself whenever he abruptly burst into her rooms as a child. He'd stopped doing that after she refused to speak to him for two weeks over it.

The only time he'd ever caught a glimpse of her tattoo had been when the rain stuck her shirt to her skin, or when he'd been trying to save her life in the courtyard of the Ivory Tower, as blood gushed from her pierced lungs.

Both times, he'd been too distracted to ask her about it.

And she'd been careful to keep her back faced away from him in the baths.

Reaching out, Charlie ran his fingertips across the ripple of color as his eyes slowly made out the images he was seeing. A Firebird rose from a flaring sun; thorny chains circled an ornate cross behind it, and heavy Cyrillic letters splayed in an arch above it all.

He'd seen these images before.

Painted on Obsidian's arms.

Blood and ashes. Charlie's blood ran cold even as he found himself shaking his head. "Lark." He could barely breathe the word. "What are you.... How?"

She had themarque du sangof the Grigoriev House on her back.