“You—come here.”

I turn, keeping my eyes half-lowered. An unfamiliar tanned noblewoman whose pendant bears the Renaldi crest—a dancing bear—is staring at me, expectantly holding up her wineglass. She’s only a few feet from Liam and Verissa.

I know refusing to pour for her will only draw attention, so I hurry to her side, hoping my servant’s cap will conceal my face, and that darkness and the influence of time will do the rest. And suddenly Lady Verissa’s voice reaches me, although she’s obviously doing her best to be quiet, and I freeze.

“Lord Schuyler’s daughter is here,” Verissa is saying. “Meet with her.”

“You don’t know her name, but you know she would be a good wife?” Liam’s voice is scathing.

“It scarcely matters—” She catches herself, then speaks more evenly. “You can’t inherit Everless without marrying.”

“That’s enough, you fool. Can’t you tell when a glass is full?” the Renaldi woman snaps, and I step quickly away from her. She spins and strides off, dropping something small and gleaming into her wine as she goes.

Still, I linger in the shadows, curious despite myself to hear the rest of Lady Verissa and Liam’s conversation. It gives me pleasure to imagine Liam forced to do something he dislikes, although I feel sorry for the poor girl who will have to marry him.

“Let Roan inherit. He’ll enjoy it more than I will.” His voice makes a shiver race along the back of my neck. With my eyes lowered, I can’t see Liam’s face, but I can imagine his glare.

Lady Verissa fidgets. “You know as well as I do that Roan—”

Her words are drowned out when a drunken cheer goes up from the partygoers. Automatically, I look for its source—and almost gasp. I’ve seen Roan Gerling a handful of times in the past few years, when he made his visits to Crofton. But I only ever saw him from a distance, watching from the shelter of a stall while he made the rounds on his horse.

This is different. Standing at the gates of the garden with his father, Lord Nicholas, Roan is just a few yards away. He’s dressed in an elegant black suit, a golden cravat encircling his throat. His blue eyes shine in the firelight like pieces of summer sky.

I forget everything at the sight of him—the fact that his family is the cause of our ruin and poverty, the fact that he’s engaged to be married to a girl whose beauty, some say, is proof sorcery still exists. For an instant, there’s nowhere I’d rather be than in this garden, on this night, seeing Roan smile.

The next moment, a cry of distress cuts through the buzz of conversation. A red-faced nobleman has another servant girl by the wrist. Bea, who I recognize from the kitchen earlier. There’s a spreading wine stain on his blue doublet, and a carafe of wine in her shaking hand.

“I—I’m sorry,” she stammers.

“Stupid girl,” he growls at her. “I’ll bleed you a month, and maybe then you’ll mind your hands.” His words are slurred, his eyes bulging with rage. He yanks a small knife from his belt. Time seems to melt, to slow like an icicle unwinding in the sun.

And then, in the next heartbeat, Roan is there behind him, reaching out to grip his shoulder and at the same time gently detaching the knife. “Lord Baldwin,” he says with a low laugh. “No need to scare the poor thing. It’s a hideous shirt, anyway. You should be thanking her for doing you a favor.”

Everyone laughs. The man blinks and it’s as if a spell has been broken: he releases Bea, who throws a thankful glance at Roan. He takes the carafe from her, and she slips back into the crowd.

“There.” Roan claps Baldwin on the back and pours from the carafe himself. “Wine fixes most ills, doesn’t it? Drink with me, friend.”

Unconsciously, I’ve moved closer to them, drawn by Roan’s voice, his smile, his kindness the way a bare, hard bulb underground is drawn toward the sun in spring.

And then, Roan’s eyes meet mine. I am breathless, paralyzed, bound in his gaze. He raises a glass.

He winks at me.

Then he tosses back the glass of wine to a roar of approval. Only Liam, I notice, still glowers in the corner.

As the music resumes and people begin to dance, Roan is swept up into the crowd. My heart is pounding. Fear reaches through me too, like the dark and twisting smoke of the fire.

Roan knew me.

I’m sure of it.





6




That night, I finally have the chance to write two letters: one to Amma and one to my father. Then, on the day the Queen and her company are to arrive, in the fifteen minutes I have to eat my hard roll and cheese, I run down to the stables, hoping to catch one of the couriers who rides daily into the villages.

I’ve written Amma the truth, if only a sliver of it—that Lora seems to favor me, although she has a funny way of showing it: she runs me from morning until night, so that by the time I reach my cot I can barely unplait my hair before I’m asleep.

I don’t tell her that new blood-iron clinks in my purse, which I never take off my belt; that Ivan leers and lingers when he hands them over at the end of every day. I withstand it along with the others, thankful it’s not Liam who’s distributing wages. I always wonder, briefly, what poor man or woman the Gerlings have drawn them from, remembering the line of people waiting to bleed themselves of hours, days, years, and how it snaked through the market.

I stayed up for hours, huddled over a candle in my bunk, trying to find the right words for all the things I need to tell Papa.

I settled on I’m sorry. It doesn’t come close, though I don’t regret what I’ve done. I’ve been here two days and have already earned four weeks, which I would have sent with the letter if not for thieves on the road. If anyone has recognized me, they’ve left me in peace. A single thought cuts through everything: soon I will have enough to pay the rent we owe, and then spring will be here, and better hunting. When the month is out, I’ll be back in Crofton, with enough blood-iron to restore what the collector already took from Papa.

I count the coins in my head. It will be only a fraction of what they’ve taken from us; from Crofton. But I swallow my anger, let it dissolve in me like a blood-iron in tea. For Papa.

For now.

In the stables, a broad-backed boy shoes the courier’s horse. Leather bags stuffed with letters are looped to its saddle. Hearing me approach, the boy turns.

Without thinking, I cry out. “Tam!”

Too late, I realize I’ve given myself away. But I don’t care. My old friend is the son of two Everless guards, but as a child he and I both wanted to be blacksmiths like Papa. He skulked around the forge until Papa invited him in, and we spent hours there together, our feet swinging from Papa’s workbench as we watched him work the glowing iron.

He squints at me, trying to puzzle out who I am. I pull off my cap.