5

I stand there, stupid as the day I was born, and think through my options. I hadn’t brought the phone that would connect me with Storm’s keep. The last time I used it, I figured out it had a tracking device in it—absolutely the last thing I wanted for today’s adventure. Only, getting myself gutted isn’t exactly the other option I’d been hoping for.

“What do you want?” I say to the boy. “I haven’t any money.”

He tilts his head like he can’t quite figure out what I’m doing. Maybe he can’t hear? I sign a few words, but although he stares avidly at my hands, I can tell there’s no comprehension.

“Don’t bother,” a twangy voice calls from above.

“I haven’t any money,” I repeat. The man who owns the voice leans casually over the balcony railing. He’s got a shock of dark hair, striped white-blond like a dirty skunk. A green button-up opens down his chest. A smattering of chest hair. Beyond his shoulder bobs Marta’s fuzzy locks. “Only five Dominion dollars.”

“I know that.” Even before I see his long grin, a mouth full of metal and rotted teeth, I know I’m in trouble. He pulls a crisp fiver taut between his hands.

“What do you want, then?”

The man nods to the boy behind me. I turn, wanting to keep an eye on him. But when I pivot my body around, I count four boys. Three of them look better fed than Rock Boy. I look back up to the balcony, but Skunk Man is gone.

The boys behind me spread out, their arms outstretched to form a net. They don’t say anything more. A raindrop plops down on my face. It occurs to me, a little absurdly, that for a little while the rain had stopped. The drizzle changes to mist, making it hard to tell what the boys in front of me are doing. My heart hammers in my chest as my teeth start to chatter, a combination of terror and chill.

And then Skunk Man is standing before me on the broken asphalt. Marta cowers behind him like a dirty rag doll.

“What do you want me for, then? Since you’ve clearly already picked my pockets.” I nod at Marta and pretend as best I can that I’m not afraid. My hair clings to my neck and face, but I take a small pleasure in seeing how unhappy the skunk man looks in the rain, his striped hair wilting around his face.

Skunk Man shrugs and looks me up and down like I’m a head of lettuce in a market stall. “Marta here is my apprentice, not some common thief. Thieves are thick in Dominion. Information is better. And interesting Splicers who hang about in Heaven Square are even better.”

A chill works its way down my spine. I might be okay if he doesn’t yet know who I am. Those hopes are dashed a second later.

He sucks his teeth. “You’re that True Born’s girl. People’d pay a lot of money for his girl.”

They’ve been watching us, then. My chin goes up. “He’ll rip you to shreds with his bare hands.”

As though it’s a signal, one of the boys, a thick, beefy boy in overalls, pulls out a length of painted black chain. Out of another pocket he pulls a rusty combination lock. He comes forward at Skunk Man’s beckoning.

They’re going to lock me up, it suddenly occurs to me. “Y-You don’t want to do this,” I stutter.

“Checkers,” says Skunk Man to the beefy one. “Don’t hurt her too badly. Just make her shut up.”

The rain comes tumbling down from the sky, fat drops slapping like hands on my face. I stare at the beefy boy and wonder what making me shut up will feel like. I close my eyes as he comes toward me with outstretched hands. A thick crack rents the air like thunder. I open my eyes. Thick red ribbons of blood blossom from the beefy boy’s chest. His face goes slack as he crumples to the ground.

The other boys seem as confused as I am. For a moment they look around, especially the lanky boy with the rocks. But then he hurls one. A bullet flies into the rock and it skips sideways, knocking into Marta. She falls, too, a streak of red oozing from her temple.

They scatter, leaving behind Marta and the lump of beefy boy at my feet, blood oozing onto the cracked pavement beneath him.

It takes me a moment longer to spot the gunman. He wears a hat. The brim shadows his face so all I can see are wide, curving lips.

“Don’t move,” he calls out to me gaily. “I’ll be right down.”

He grabs at a cable attached to an old power pole and shimmies down, an automatic rifle strapped over his chest. I look about. There are no doors, only boarded-up windows and balconies too high to jump. A dead boy at my feet. And Marta, little Marta, crumpled and lifeless. There’s a choice here. I can wait for the gunman. Or I can run out the alley, knowing the likelihood that I’ll end up right back in the hands of the kid gang.

As I consider my options, the gunman looks up, and I get a glimpse of a handsome set of features. “I won’t hurt you,” he says in a wounded tone, as though he knows I was about to choose being a hostage over him.

“How do I know that?” I reckon my voice shakes as badly as my knees.

“You don’t.” He hits the ground with a thud and strides toward me with a strange loping gait. With one hand, he casually tosses up and catches what looks like a small reddish stone. “I’m a shade safer than a kid gang, mind.” He looms over me, a tall, slender figure, though his shoulders are broader than I’d realized.

I choke out, “Who are you, then?”

“You can call me Alastair.”

“What can other people call you?” I say, then kick myself mentally. Why am I being such a smart-mouth? This boy can kill me.

He regards me for a moment. When he tips his head back, I can see his eyes, a luminous brown flecked with green. “You’re a funny one, aren’t you?”

“Some people think so.”

The stone goes up in the air again, lands in the young man’s palm as though magnetically drawn. Goes up again. “Is that what you’re doing here? Making Fitz and his kids laugh?”

“I hadn’t been properly introduced to him, either, so no.”

“Touché. So what is your name, then, little girl?” His smile lengthens, a thin piece of rope.

“Are you always so rude?”

“Are you always so touchy?”

We stare at each other. His hands have gone to his hips. So have mine, I realize. But he’s the one with the gun strapped to his chest, I remind myself.

“You can call me Lucy,” I tell him grudgingly.

“Okay, Lucy.” He eyes me like a salvager. “So what’s a pretty Upper Circle girl like you doing in a dirty back alley like this?”

The puddle of Beefy Boy’s blood has grown. The red fan is almost to my feet. “I wasn’t being smart, I guess. I thought she’d help me,” I grumble under my breath.

“That little ragabond? Help you what—become a slave?”

I don’t know why I decide to tell the gunman the truth—maybe I’m in shock. “I need information, okay? I thought she’d be in a position to help me find it.”

The gunman cocks his head and looks at me from beneath the dripping brim of his hat. He snorts. “She was in the perfect position to help herself. None too smart, you Upper Circle girls.”

I decide to overlook the insult, since I’m not in much of a position to argue. “Well, then. Thank you for your assistance.” I don’t meet his eyes. “I suppose I should be getting back. Can you point me in the direction of Heaven Square?” I cast about for the top of the tree, but all I can see are crumbling, ruined buildings.

A long silence falls between us as my champion looks me up and down. Then, “You look like a drowned rat.” Alastair’s eyes gleam like dark, polished wood. “You know, I just might be able to save you twice today,” he says with a sly grin.

It’s a long, wet walk back to Heaven Square—much longer than it had seemed when I’d been following Marta. Shoes drenched, my feet squish with each step. And I can’t get away from the smell of wet wool.

I feel strangely inclined to trust Alastair, though that knowledge comes as little solace, given that I’d had no problem following Marta, either. Regardless, I need his direction, so I stay vigilant and allow him to lead me through the city.

“How much farther?” I inquire politely of my guide.

“Why, you bored of me already?” Alastair tosses back, casual as you please. I haven’t a clue what to make of the strange young man who’d killed a boy to save me, so I decide to fish.

“Where are you from?”

“Around. Not from your block.”

“You don’t say,” I tease back. “Talkative lot, your people?”

The young man scratches at his jaw. “Extremely.” Then a beat later, “So Lucy, what information could a nice, rich girl like you be trying to dig up from a rotten kid gang?”

I give my rescuer a sidelong glance. “What would a chivalrous young man like you need with a semi-automatic?” I ask, poking fun at his heroic escapades in a way that I’m surprised to note doesn’t make me nervous.

It earns me a laugh. “I asked you first. And anyway, how do you know about weapons?”

“I’m a nice, rich girl from the Upper Circle, aren’t I? You’ve got me pegged to rights. What do you think all us rich girls learn from our Personals?”

Alastair hitches his gun up on his chest. “And here I thought you were all busy studying dancing and knitting and such.”

“You’ve a pretty poor opinion of us, don’t you?”

He looks over at me, something strangely truthful in his eyes. “Not all of you.” Alastair stops. The rain falls down like tiny hammers, cold and sharp on the skin. “We’re almost there. So…are you going to let me help you?”

I shake my head. “I’m not sure what you’re suggesting. Or why. Why would you?” I narrow my eyes suspiciously.

“Pretty tough for an Upper Circle girl,” he says after a long minute, not looking at me. “I can’t think of another one who would be brave enough, or silly enough, to seek out a kid gang.” There’s an insult in there, but I also hear a faint note of admiration in his voice. Still, that doesn’t answer the basic question. What does he want from me?

He must read my silence as refusal. Face raised to the sky, Alastair pushes his hat back before giving me an annoyed look. “You need information, right?”

“I told you I do.”

“It just so happens I’m having a sale on information.” He grins, so much like a mischievous little boy that I can’t help but laugh.

“So you’re in it for the money, fine. But—how do I know I can trust you?” I put a hand to my hip and regard the stranger before me. Money, at least, is a motive I can understand. Money is power, both in the Upper Circle and on the streets of Old Dominion.

“How do you know you can’t? I like to gamble, Miss Lucy. Do you?” Alastair stops to toss his little rock. “Besides,” he continues, squinting at me. “I can’t be worse than a kid gang, can I?”

He has a point there.

The reception line winds slowly around and down the elegant stone stairs of the mansion. I sneeze once, twice. Storm murmurs, “Are you coming down with something, Lucy?”

Surely being soaked in the freezing rain will leave its mark on me. I’ll be far more marked, though, if Storm finds out I snuck out of his place. And even more marked should he discover I plan to do it again. “No, I’m fine.” I sniffle.

“Glad to hear it. This will be our last outing for a few days. You’ll have a chance to catch up on your rest.”

I nod and smile vaguely at my guardian, sweeping my eyes over the understated opulence of Senator Josiah Gillis’s home. This senator is a different breed than I’m used to. I’d crossed his path many times in my former life, of course. He was at our Reveal, Margot’s and mine. He might have even been driving the car that mowed down a dozen or more Lasters at our gates as people panicked and spread like wildfire.

It’s more than his opulent home that draws attention. Gillis is huge—a towering man with the physique of a merc. Against his silver-black skin, the white of his tux gleams. He’s clean-shaven, immaculate, his close-cropped hair kept military style. Unlike many of our father’s other cronies, when Gillis looks around a room, you believe he really sees what’s happening.

Two guests ahead of me in the reception line, Gillis engulfs the Asia Minor ambassador’s hand within both his own. He adds a sharp military bow, shoes coming together with a clack, then crosses one arm behind his back and the other against his belly as he greets her with a few words in her language.

It has been more than two hundred years now since the various countries of the world were rolled up into continent-wide nation-states. At Grayguard they teach us that the continental blocks helped countries large and small deal with the creeping droughts and Flux storms that had flattened the world economy. Here in Nor-Am, for instance, there were once hundreds of vibrant cities across the continent. That all changed when the storms grew more frequent, more powerful, sweeping away the farmers’ fields and, in some cases, leveling cities. My father always laughed at these history lessons, telling us girls to instead think like Foxes.

“Cause and effect is more complicated than a fairy tale. The harvest moved north,” he boomed, “and when it did, the Upper Circle was ready to lead.”

What our father meant was that Dominion was settled with an iron fist. They like to pretend differently now, but everyone knows that the powerful brought armies from the south of current-day Dominion. They expanded their empire, settling Nor-Am and its capital city through bloodshed—forging alliances along the way. All the country blocks owe their existence to Nor-Am and Dominion, the new world order’s first and most powerful capital.

I eye the Asia Minor ambassador again. She’s slender, with the dark-brown eyes and sweeping black hair common to her people. Asia Minor is now headed by a small country state whose name once meant “the land of the rising sun.” I’ve heard the sun rarely rises there now, though. And while the chief diplomat for Asia Minor may be one of the most important visitors to our city, she’s still just a pawn to those who rule Dominion’s Upper Circle.

I mentally scroll through my facts on Senator Gillis: No one has ever mentioned military background, though it’s clearly there in every nuance of his bearing. He’s always glided below our father’s radar, this one. Even his wife, a lovely and statuesque woman of mixed descent, has escaped our mother’s claws. Marigold—that’s her name—kept out of the spotlight and therefore out of trouble.

Tonight, the senator’s wife shines. Her long dress, with its Grecian cut and folds, is printed with long dark-blue flowers. She’s pinned one to her ear, holding her cascading curls at bay, the blue of her dress and the dusky hue of her skin accentuating the startling blue of her eyes. She doesn’t look at her husband, but after a lifetime of speaking a silent language with Margot, I can read their cues. She gives the tiniest flick of her slender hand, tilts her chin, and Gillis is there to pull that guest forward. They’re a team, these two.

When it’s finally my turn, I grace them with my most respectful curtsy, head lowered to just the right degree. “Senator Gillis, Mrs. Gillis. It’s such a pleasure to be here this evening.”

I don’t think I imagine the frost in their eyes, and I reckon I can’t blame them. Antonia and Lukas Fox likely represent everything these people detest: a plague of corruption they’d as soon tear down Dominion to get rid of than live with. And then, of course, there’s the fact that I’ve brought a True Born as escort.

It’s the senator’s wife who greets me first. “It’s Lucy, isn’t it?” She tilts her head and stares at me quizzically, as if memorizing the uniqueness of my features. I’ll admit, she’s as good at this as any diplomat’s daughter.

“Good guess.” I laugh, crinkling my nose up in mock delight.

“I had heard your sister is on an extended vacation with your parents, so it was an easy game for me,” she confesses. “And of course, I am in charge of the guest list.” She smiles her welcome. There’s that small flick of her wrist, and I’m passed on to her husband.

“And may I present Mr. Nolan Storm?” I indicate the hulking man at my side with a flourish of my hand. “Mr. Storm has been appointed my guardian while my parents seek their health.”

Senator Gillis’s eyes sharpen. “Mr. Storm.” He greets Storm with the same two-handed shake, but he doesn’t let go right away. “Your name has been coming up with increasing regularity,” the senator says.

No subtlety with these two.

“I hope with complimentary and rosy tones,” Storm replies. He shoots them both a charming smile that shows off his dimple.

The senator doesn’t budge. “Some men’s compliments are another man’s complaint,” he says thoughtfully. “Although I look forward to hearing your views on where Dominion should put its attention. I understand that the majority of the city’s current contracts are your own.”

“That’s true, sir, and I look forward to sharing my plans with you.” Storm steers me clear of the reception line and into a series of receiving rooms that ends in a giant ballroom. It isn’t me Storm speaks to next. It could be any number of the True Borns on the other end of his ear bud, feeding Storm the intel he’s looking for. Still, somehow I know it is Jared who’s signed up for this assignment. He’s been mysteriously absent for most of the day. “What have you got from all that?” My escort pauses, looks around with a sweep that speaks of years of ingrained intelligence work.

It’s a sophisticated setup, subtle but effective. White light bounces into the room from an outside bulb. Discreet cameras rove at almost every cornice in the massive, airy room. Most don’t bother with machine-based surveillance any longer, since there are men’s lives to be had for cheaper. Then there are the Personals, security operatives everywhere murmuring to themselves, dressed in dark-blue tailored suits with telltale bulges. Not your ordinary mercs, I reckon, but true military.

Just where does Josiah Gillis get his backing?

“What do you make of all this?” my curiosity drives me to ask as I smile at an elegant couple nearby.

Storm stops a waiter bearing champagne flutes and hands one over to me. He takes the other, which I know he won’t bother to finish. In his large grip it looks like a skinny toothpick. “What do you know about Senator Gillis?”

I sip delicately. A blush of bubbles and the faint aroma of flowers waft from the stemware. Real, then. None of that synth stuff for the newly crowned prince of the Upper Circle.

“He’s got good taste in champagne,” I offer Storm with a mock toast. When his flat silver eyes rake over me, I sigh and add, “Not much. He stayed out of our father’s way…which means he’s smart. Judging by this, though—” I look up from my drink to gaze around the opulent ballroom filled with the Upper Circle’s most powerful players. “He seems to have done well in my father’s absence.”

The more I think of it, the odder I find it. Senator Gillis should have been a threat to Lukas Fox. Anything that our dear father can’t control is something to be destroyed.

I blink up at Storm. “Do you reckon they’re working together?” It’s the only thing that makes sense. Our father must have had Gillis on the backdoor payroll. Maybe still does.

Storm’s eyes glitter at me as he sets down his flute and takes my hand. “Good question. Let’s go find out.”

When I have danced with Colonel Deakins, a fat-cat banker named Hollister, and one of the lesser senators—with breath like the dead—Storm pulls me back into his orbit.

Since I went through this hell for him, I don’t feel the least bit guilty as I wipe a greasy sweat trail the senator has left on my hands all over Storm’s beautifully cut tux. He pulls me in for a dance.

“Well?” he murmurs into my ear.

“If you ever make me dance with him again,” I say, indicating the stinky senator La Roche with a discreet dip of my head, “I will throw myself under a bus.”

Storm chuckles. “Well, I don’t think we’ll need to worry about him much. Nielson just told me that the senator is about to be bounced for a financial indiscretion.”

I pull back to stare at Storm. “You mean the mistress he’s been keeping on House funds? Everyone’s known about that for a decade at least.”

Storm turns thoughtful. “Could Gillis be the real thing, then? They’re calling him ‘the Incorruptible.’”

I eye the decadent room meaningfully. “Is anything connected to the Upper Circle incorruptible?” I’m startled as the words leave my mouth. It feels like an oddly traitorous thing to say. After all, I was born and raised in this Circle. Half the people in the ballroom have been to my former home. All of them know my family.

Storm murmurs close to my ear, “You might have a point.” He sweeps me across the dance floor masterfully. Couples turn to admire him. But I can’t relax. A burning, prickling sensation picks at my back. Someone is watching me.

“Is Jared here?” I ask. But Storm doesn’t have time to answer. One of Senator Gillis’s aides silently walks up and taps Storm’s elbow.

“Sir, a meeting is just now getting under way that you will want to attend. Please follow me.”

Storm threads me through the audience of dancers and political pollywogs to a door set in paneled wood. The Personals swing their heads subtly as the cameras sway to catch our every movement.

We’re ushered into a room at the back of the mansion, hushed and quiet and entirely paneled in dark wood squares, right up to the fifteen-foot carved plaster ceilings. Over these squares hang oil paintings of what I presume were once powerful men.

“Mr. Storm.” Obscured behind the light of a glass-shaded desk lamp, Senator Gillis stands and gestures to a set of chairs ringing his desk. “Miss Fox,” he adds as an afterthought, “please.” One of the chairs holds the lumpy olive-uniformed shoulder of Colonel Deakins, who smiles sweetly at me.

Sitting in the chair opposite is a stranger to me. Wire-rim glasses pick up the light and obscure his eyes. He wears a fine suit, teal kerchief folded with precision into his lapel pocket. Bloodless, thin lips in a face drawn thin with pain, the bald sheen of someone who has recently been through hell and back and lived to tell the tale.

A Splicer, then. And recently, too.

Senator Gillis wants Storm to sit, but my escort insists I take the chair on the right. Storm perches solicitously behind me, one hand gently pressing into my shoulder. I get the message, but I’m not too big to admit I’m scared to Sunday. Whatever the purpose of this little meeting, I presume it will come at a price.

“Mr. Storm,” Gillis begins. “The colonel here was just telling us that you and Miss Fox recently paid him a house call.” Ah, so that’s what this is about.

“Yes. Miss Fox and I are fortunate in our circle of friends,” counters Storm breezily. The colonel blushes slightly and sits up straighter in his seat, the cigar in his hand all but forgotten. “How are you, Colonel?” Storm inclines his head ever so slightly, the fine cobweb of his antlers catching the light.

“Fine, fine,” says the colonel, coughing into his hands.

Fox and henhouse, I think to myself, remembering the game Margot and I used to play. In the art and war of diplomacy, there are only two kinds of people: those who are eaten and those who don’t go to bed hungry.

“I don’t believe you know Senator Theodore Nash.” The senator indicates the sweating man, who takes out his handkerchief and mops his forehead before folding it back into his pocket with elaborate care.

“I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure.” The man smiles at Storm. His teeth are even and white, but there’s still no mistaking the slight lilt to his words, the tinge to his teeth that marks all those outside Dominion’s limits, no matter how carefully you dress it up.

“You’re the new senator for the territories.” It slips out before I realize what I’ve done. Stuck, I go on. “We’ve heard about your recent…victory…” I bite my lip and blush. “Over the NewsFeed, of course.”

They say the territories are more of a wasteland than Dominion itself. With so few people to sustain the farmlands that keep the remainder of the city’s populations fed, they’ve resorted to shipping lifers from the penitentiaries out into the fields. They barter for rum and a few less years on the line, and when their time is up, some of them even stay to make up their own merc franchises, take over lands where the family lines have bled to dust and bone. In the Upper Circle, these merc men of the territories are whispered of behind hands, accompanied by shivers of dread.

Our father used to say they were the problem Dominion was going to have to stand against at some point—and the king of the territories would be key to it all. But even our father would have been shocked at the election victory proclaimed for Senator Nash a scant month ago. The NewsFeed hinted it was an unexpected landslide, when a third-rate senator no one had ever heard of came from behind to obliterate the competition…

No—our father likely would have thought the man a genius.

Rather than being offended at my social gaffe, the sweating Senator Nash gives me a great big NewsFeed smile. “Oh, you follow politics, do you?” he says politely. “How nice.” The rest of us exchange an uncomfortable look.

He doesn’t know who I am.

It’s a first for me, the daughter of Dominion’s unspoken king. I pick a spot behind his shoulder and smile. I would have been content to leave it there, but it’s Gillis who won’t let it die.

“Plague take you, man.” Senator Gillis slashes at a paper on his desk. “Do they not have NewsFeeds in the patty fields?”

Nash dabs at his forehead and sits up a little straighter. His smile tightens like a vise. Gillis leans over the desk with a meaningful look. “Perhaps you’ve been so busy with your campaigning you haven’t had a chance to meet some of our first families,” the senator says with meaning. “Miss Lucy Fox is the daughter of one of Dominion’s brightest stars.”

The card has been played. I have no choice but to lay it down. “Perhaps you’ve heard of my father, Senator Nash. He works closely with the government. The Honorable Lukas Fox?”

The color drains from Nash’s already pale face until I think he’s fainted dead-gone. I file this away for later: clearly our father has made an impression in the territories, too. Storm presses a finger down on my shoulder. He’s paying attention, too.

“Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, perhaps you can tell Senator Nash about your bid for the city’s security contracts.”

“I would be happy to, Senator Gillis, but perhaps another time? Forgive me, gentlemen,” Storm breaks in. “It’s getting late and I’d like to have Lucy home before the rats come out.”

Nash stammers and wipes his head like it has been filled with a sudden, stabbing pain. I know the feeling. I’m tired, and we’ve gotten absolutely nowhere, and I’m wondering what the point was for this little meeting. I squeeze the hand on my shoulder briefly.

“Colonel,” I say, addressing Robbie’s father. He’s almost as uncomfortable as Nash at this point “The other day you mentioned that you’d routed those bastards who burned down my home.” I throw in a growl, making it clear where my loyalties lie. “I can— I mean, I trust that they won’t be able to come back. Will they?” I give Colonel Deakins a wide-eyed look through strands of my hair, every inch of me praying that I’m a good enough actress to pull this off.

“Oh, sure, sure.” The Colonel paws at the air and relaxes. “But Senator Gillis can speak more to that.”

The good senator looks like he’d rather chew glass than admit anything to me. He rubs his ear as if he could rub out those last words. “Yes, the colonel is quite right. We believe that the preachers and a few of their more militant followers are contained. We’ll make sure they stay that way.”

The colonel clicks his tongue in approval. “Too right—and once we’ve routed the preachers, the rest of the population won’t be so inclined to believe all that superstitious nonsense.”

I wonder if the senator buys it when I force my eyes even wider, even more vapid. “But how? Surely there are too many to throw in the jails. And you wouldn’t ship them out as lifers, would you?”

But it is the colonel who steps in this pile of bones. “Not at all.” He chuckles, as though incarcerating thousands is a joke. “We won’t need to throw them in jail. Just bury ’em, I say. Then we won’t need True Borns— Ahem,” he ends delicately. He thinks he’s being coy, but by the way his eyes tilt toward the senator, it’s clear Colonel Deakins expects a pat on the back for his rudeness.

I nearly choke on my tongue but am able to keep my face composed, and I studiously avoid looking over at Storm. “Oh, I see,” I murmur, standing. “Thank you.”

I wait for Storm to say his good-byes and let him lead me away. My gorge rises, and I fear I’ll be sick before I’m out of the room. But it’s not until I’m in the ballroom surrounded by a crowd of sequined and silked ladies, twirling around the perimeter on the arms of tuxedoed men, that the true horror hits me.

I grab at Storm’s arm. “Wait. Did you…?” I begin.

But what do I really want to ask? Did the colonel just admit he and other factions of the government are against True Borns? Did you know the government is planning on murdering a large portion of its remaining population? Are you in support of this? Will you stop it?

I shake my head, as much to clear the seesaw of my thoughts as to think carefully about what I want to say next.

As usual, Storm is one step ahead of me. He sweeps me into a dance. Jaw rigid, his breath tickles my ear. “The answer is no. It’s the reason we’re here tonight.” He turns me gracefully and I sink into the half curtsy the dance requires before I’m swept up again. “I thought we were going to have to abort. But you were marvelous.”

I wasn’t sure whether I was playing the part too well or not at all. This is the part of our bargain that troubles me, the odd blurring of lines between my old life and some fictional character I become for Storm. Which one is even real?

Storm smiles, but it doesn’t reach his wintry eyes. The luminescent lines crackling around his head grow solid as flesh.

“What are you going to do?” I whisper.

Storm has the hearing of a forest god. He looks down at me, something gentling in his expression. His hands tighten around mine reassuringly. “Lucy, I won’t let anything happen to you. You know that.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about. That’s the last thing I’m worried about.”

He considers me again for a long moment. We’re barely swaying there on the floor. Then suddenly he swings me out before curling me back onto his rock-hard chest. I can feel eyes gathering to us. Not that we don’t stand out anyhow. Nolan Storm has all the presence of a hurricane.

“You’re not going to tell me, are you?”

“Not here,” he murmurs with a charming, dimpled smile. I tamp down on my urge to stomp my foot and yell at him. Because he’s right. This isn’t the time or place. Not in this pit of Upper Circle vipers and vixens.

The dance ends and the floor erupts with polite applause. I turn to head off the floor when the sight of Jared arrests me. He watches us, still as a sculpture. Hands crossed at his waist, his back lines straight against a wall. He’s decked out as a rich man’s Personal in a perfectly cut black suit paired with a crisp white shirt, just a degree shy from a proper tux. Pale-pale face. Serious, so serious. The only life in his face throbs through his eyes.

I can’t take my eyes off him.

For reasons I can’t begin to fathom, I surge forward through the crowd, stepping past the broad shoulders of elegant men and their high-heeled ladies. My eyes stay riveted on Jared’s handsome form, the flip of a blond lock on his forehead. Jared’s awareness, the still attention of a hunting cat, remains trained on me. Maybe twenty feet away, I brush past a particularly large man only to be knocked by a waiter bearing a tray of drinks in cut crystal cups. The cups rattle against my bare arm. When I look up again, Jared hasn’t moved but he looks ready to spring. His eyes brush back over me, making sure I’m all right.

I take another step or two, my skirt pulled behind me in the crush of bodies. “Jared,” I call.

It’s all I have time to murmur before I’m hit with a stab of panic so thick it chokes me. It lances through my head, my eyes burning hot with pain. My stomach drops as though I’ve been sucker punched. Something claws at my wrists. I drag my eyes away from Jared, who has lost the facade of a disinterested merc.

I hold up my wrists. Twin impressions of crescent moons appear on the delicate white skin, livid red and bloody.

“Margot,” I breathe. Whatever hell my sister has been holding back from me tumbles through me like a broken dam.

And as I rush headlong into darkness, doing all I can to stifle a scream until I am out of earshot of the other revelers, I imagine I hear Jared calling my name. I sink into unconsciousness.