I follow Abel as the rain pours down around us. Each cool drop of rain sinks into my clothes, chilling me down to my bones and promising I’ll not leave this unscathed.

  The buildings have shifted from run-down apartments to tidy, pristine townhomes and I know we must be close to the Privett’s brownstone. With too much time lost to that little boy’s rescue, I’ve abandoned hope of returning the book today and agreed to Abel’s escort home.

  Oddly enough, even with the weight of my dress dragging me down, something inside me has lightened. A tentative release. Like I can draw breath a little deeper. The possibility hangs in the air, glittering off every soaked cobblestone: Father’s death might not have been my fault.

  If Abel’s right, someone killed my father—which isn’t all that much better, especially since Abel’s never discovered who. But still, it feels as if Abel’s pulled a poison thorn from my heart.

  Not my fault.

  Abel passes midway down the alley behind the Privett’s townhouse and I glance up at my now-shuttered window, closed against the pouring rain—someone has gone into my bedroom. They know I’m missing.

  Abel tugs down his mask and squints up at the rain. The rhythmic lap of the canal water drifts down the alleyway to us, over the pitter patter of rain. Again, I am struck by his beauty. The tan of his skin, his thin slightly crooked nose, those high, angular cheekbones.

  “Thank you. For everything,” I say, just loud enough for him to hear me over the rain. It doesn’t seem enough.

  “Thank you.” He drops his gaze to mine, eyes an intense dark, forest green in the overcast gloom. The corners of his mouth twitch, almost a smile. He takes a step closer, too close. Rainwater drips trickles over his bottom lip. “You got that boy away, I’m grateful. It kept my hands free to deal with the rest.”

  His gaze, unguarded and raw, pulls at that place deep inside me. An insatiable draw. A contagious, sensational feeling that, just maybe, everything he is—fearless and dangerous and free—can seep into me with the rain. With the rise and fall of his chest brushing against my dress, I almost believe it will. Almost as if I can be more than I am, more than the life that lays just a few steps ahead.

  His throat bobs with a swallow, and he glances at the street beyond this alley. My world. Much of his hair has pulled loose from the tie at his nape and now the rain plasters it to his forehead and neck. Raindrops snag in the dark stubble of his angular jaw.

  “To what end are the means justified?” he asks.

  “I don’t know.”

  His mouth presses into a grim line and he pins those beautiful eyes of the forest upon me again. “By any means necessary. Remember that about me. You’ll make a good queen, Lady Aubrey. I think we should try to stay away from each other from now on.”

  Even though his tone holds gentleness, the words tear into my chest and squeeze.

  He backs away and fades into the shadows, as if he’s not been here at all.

  Alone, I stand at the precipice between the glamorous highbrow street that leads to my temporary home and the kind shadows of Abel’s world.

  I am an imposter of both.

  If Father was not just the High Guard, not just the only man to change his station and rise to the exalted honor of Lordship… if he was also the founder of the Rebellion… how am I to honor both a hero and a traitor?

  I force a long breath of air into my lungs and swallow down my emotions. Face set to neutral, I grip my sodden skirts, and charge onto Canal Street and back into my world.

  At the base of the steps to the Privetts’ townhome stands the present-day High Guard, one boot frozen on the first step as he stares at me.

  Horror seizes my chest and it takes everything in me to keep going, to keep walking, to approach the man who will end me if he ever discovers what I’ve done the last few hours.

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  The rain dribbles over his armor in glistening rivulets. His gaze glides over me, like he knows exactly where I’ve been and with whom. “Lady Aubrey,” he says, low and cold and cruel. “I have a letter for you.”

  Fighting a shiver that has little to do with my rain-soaked clothes, I force myself to cross the last of the distance between us.

  He removes his helmet as I near, allowing the rain to bead and roll down the scarred sides of his shaved brown scalp and into his tightly curled, black beard. Again, the monstrosity of his appearance is disarming. Pity curls in my gut at the torture he must have endured to gain such scars.

  He thrusts an envelope at me and his brows subtly twitch upwards as his gaze takes in over my rain- and mud-soaked dress.

  I will my hand to not shake as I reach across the space between us to take it. Even this near, I want to crawl out of my skin away from him, away from those eyes that see too much.

  He doesn’t let go and the envelope hangs in the air between us, rain splattering the paper. His thickly gloved fingers tense, as if he can sense my treason across that narrow gap between our hands. Even the suspicion of rebel sympathizing is enough to ruin me.

  “Prince Emory requests a prompt response.” He releases the envelope, and I almost stagger from the loss of tension.

  I clutch it to my chest, unable to tear my eyes away from that piercing gaze. His eyes are so dark, an odd cool brown almost nearing that blue-black hue of the night sky.

  He nods up at the house.

  I’ve somehow forgotten we still stand in the pouring rain. “Do you care to wait inside?”

  “No,” he says. “I’ll wait under the eave.”

  I hurry up the steps to the Privett’s front door. “Shall I send out tea or…”

  “No.” He clears his throat and doesn’t even have to look up at me from several steps down. “Thank you.”

  I nod. My hands shake as I let myself inside.

  At the click of the door behind me, Clara bursts from the study and into the hall, face livid. The Foundress shuffles out behind her.

  “Where have—” Clara abruptly cuts herself off at the sight of me. Horror replaces her fury.

  “Good afternoon. Stepmother, Foundress. The High Guard waits outside for my immediate reply,”—I raise the dripping envelope in my hand—“to the Prince’s letter.”

  Clara freezes and her eyes widen. “What does it say? Open it.”

  A smile pulls across the Foundress’s face, and her eyes dance with mischief.

  Lilianna appears at the top of the stairs and dashes down to join the others, her gaze darting from my soaked dress, to Clara and the Foundress’s expectant gazes, then to the letter in my hands.

  I loosen the wax seal and pull out the folded piece of parchment.

  “My Dearest Aubrey.” I swallow at the intimacy of the address. “I am most depressed with this rainy weather, for I had intended to request your company for a ride this very afternoon. Considering this miserable weather that keeps me from you, I would like to extend that request to tomorrow afternoon, should the rain cease, and if not, the day thereafter instead. Yours, Emory.”

  Everyone lets out a breath at once. And then they all begin to talk. Lilianna gushes. The Foundress laments about the rain.

  Clara, as only Clara can, silences them all with the derisive, inarguable lash of her voice. “You must write back to him at once.”

  The Foundress sends Mr. Bens for paper and quill, and I sit in the library, still soaked, to write. Once finished, the letter passes between all the women and is rewritten twice, until they settle on:

  Prince Emory,

  I would be delighted to join you tomorrow or the next or the next. I pray for the sun, for the sight of its glow signals that I will soon see you again.

  Yours, Aubrey

  I open the front door and step out onto the front porch where the High Guard stands, sheltered from the rain. His height and the mass of his armor dwarfs the space to excruciatingly small. My gaze falls to his arms crossed over his chest and I habitually count the fingers of his hands. The smallest finger of one hand protrudes slightly, as if it’d been broken and doesn’t sit right. Not my Ray. No, this is the furthest man from my kind-hearted childhood friend.

  “Thank you for your patience.” I thrust out my letter, voice coarser than I intended. Something about him gets under my skin.

  He doesn’t smile. Not a single emotion flickers across his face. He might as well have been made of stone—all except for those perceptive, grey-brown eyes that meet mine. He takes the envelope with a leather-clad hand and gives one stiff nod. Tucking the letter beneath his breast plate marked with the royal family’s crest—a sword-pierced wyvern’s head—he descends the steps.

  “High Guard,” I blurt.

  He pauses and turns back to me, expressionless as the rain splatters his armor.

  “Did you replace my father as High Guard?”

  His lips twitch into a blanched press. “No. I wasn’t yet in the guard when he died. I took the title from his successor three years later.”

  I frown, hardly able to believe this scarred man can be younger than Abel. At most, he could be twenty-four if he’d joined shortly after Father’s death. I’ve never heard of a High Guard so young and… three years? That’s not even long enough to complete guard training.

  I shake my head. His age isn’t what I care about. “Do you know how my father died?”

  His eyes flick back and forth between mine for several beats of my heart. “I do not.”

  I swallow against a rising lump in my throat. That’s not an insistence that Father was killed by a wyvern. Not a repeat of the very public story. Had he, too, heard the King’s question? Why is William’s name on this stone? “Thank you.”

  The leather of his gloves creak as his fists flex. “Good day, Lady Aubrey.”