“What are you thinking, you handsome lad?”

Iolanthe jumped. But it was only the barmaid, smiling at her.

Smiling flirtatiously.

“Ah . . . a brimming mug of ale, served by the prettiest girl in the room?”

The girl giggled. “I will fetch that ale for you.”

Iolanthe stared at the barmaid’s retreating back, wondering how to keep her away. She couldn’t afford even the possibility of a situation where someone might find out she wasn’t such a handsome lad after all.

The barmaid glanced over her shoulder and winked. Iolanthe hastily looked out the window. At home a hub of the expedited highways usually had more than one inn. Perhaps she’d see something else nearby.

Across the street, high above the railway station, hovered two armored chariots. On the ground, a team of agents—easy to distinguish from the startled English pedestrians by their uniform tunics—fanned out from the station. Several of them headed directly for the inn.

The fear that seized her made time itself stretch and dilate. The man reading a timetable under a streetlamp yawned, his mouth opening endlessly. The diner at the next table asked his mate to “Pass the salt,” each syllable as drawn out as pulled taffy. The mate, moving as if he were inside a vat of glue, set his fingers on a pewter dish with a small spoon inside and pushed it across.

With a loud thump, a great tankard of ale was plunked down before Iolanthe, the froth high and spilling. She jerked and glanced up at the barmaid, who winked again meaningfully. “Anything else for you, sir?”

Her illusion of freedom crumbled.

She was not safe here. She was not safe anywhere. And she had no choices except between dying now or dying slightly later.

She threw a handful of coins beside her largely untouched supper and ran for the back door.

He was a bastard. Of course he was: he lied, cheated, and manipulated.

She would not like him very much when she realized what he had done.

It did not matter, Titus told himself. He did not walk this path for flowers and hugs. The only thing that mattered was that she should come back. The hollow feeling in his chest he ignored entirely.

He turned on the light in Fairfax’s room and waited. A quarter hour passed. And there she was, her face pale, her eyes wild.

“If you are looking for your hat, it is on the hook over there,” he said as casually as he could manage. “Pay me no mind; I am just here to forge a good-bye note from you.”

She dropped her valise, pulled out the chair at her desk, and sank into it, her face buried in her hands.

In the last few weeks of his mother’s life, she too had often sat like this, her face in her hands. Impatient with her anguish, he used to yank at her sleeve and demand that she play with him.

After her death, for months he could think of nothing but whether she would have still decided on the same course of action had he been different, had he patted her on the back and stroked her hair and brought her cups of tea.

He moved forward slowly, cautiously, as if the girl before him were a sleeping dragon.

Against his better judgment, he laid a hand on her shoulder.

She shook, as if caught in a nightmare.

He had always considered himself cold-blooded. Sangfroid was a trait highly prized by the House of Elberon. His grandfather had especially insisted on it: one was permitted to lose one’s life, but never one’s detachment.

Now, however, his detachment cracked. Somewhere inside him, he shook too, with the force of her fear, her confusion, and her vulnerability—an empathy that shocked him with its depth and enormity.

He yanked back his hand.

“They were there.” Her voice sounded ghostly, disembodied. “They were at the railway station. Two of those armored chariots in the air and—and agents were headed for the inn.”

Of course they had been there. He had told Mrs. Hancock that if Atlantis really thought the girl was nearby, they should watch the rail stations, since she would not know Britain well enough to vault far.

“Did you vault here directly from your dining table?”

“No, from the alley behind. I hope I left enough coins for supper—I was in too much of a hurry.”

“Now is hardly the time to worry about the innkeeper’s profit.”

“I know.” She turned her face toward the ceiling and blinked rapidly. He was shocked to realize that she was on the verge of tears. “It’s stupid. Of everything that happened today, I don’t know why this is the one thing that—”

She passed the base of her palm over her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

The thing to do now would be to pull her into his arms for a reassuring embrace, perhaps even to kiss her on her hair. Offer her the comfort she craved and convince her that she had made the right choice to return.

He could not do it. If anything, he took a step back.

She glanced up at him. “Can I still be Archer Fairfax?”

He clasped his hands behind his back. “You understand what you are to give in return?”

Her lips twisted. “Yes.”

“I require an oath.”

This took her aback. She exhaled slowly. “What do you want me to swear on?”

“Let me clarify. I require a blood oath.”

She was on her feet. “What?”

“The only meaningful oath is one that can be enforced. Your life is not the only one at stake here.”

She trembled, but she met his gaze. “For a blood oath I want more. You will always tell me the truth. You will free my guardian. And we will make one and only one attempt on the Bane. Whether we succeed or fail, you will release me from this oath.”

As if there would ever be a second attempt.

“Granted,” he said.

He found a plate, set it on the desk, and aimed his wand at the plate. “Flamma viridis.”

A green flame flared. He opened his pocketknife, passed the blade through the fire, cut open the center of his left palm, and let three drops of blood fall on the flame. The fire crackled, turning a more brilliant emerald hue. He lowered the knife into the flame again and passed it to her. “Your turn.”

She winced, but copied his action. The fire devoured her blood and turned the color of a midnight forest. He gripped her still bleeding hand with his and plunged their joined hands directly into the cold, cold flame.

“Should either of us renege on the oath, this fire will spread in the veins of the oath breaker. It will not be so cool then.”

The fire abruptly turned a brilliant white and burned. She hissed. He sucked in a breath against the scalding pain.

Just as abruptly, the flame went out, leaving no trace of having ever been there. She pulled her hand back and examined it anxiously. But her skin was perfectly smooth and intact; even the self-inflicted wound at the center of her palm had disappeared.

“A little taste of what awaits the oath breaker,” he said, perhaps unnecessarily.

“You’ve thought of everything, haven’t—”

Her voice trailed off.

The curtains were securely drawn. From where she stood, she could not see out. Yet she stared at the window, disbelief in her eyes. Her denial made the hollow feeling in his chest return with a vengeance. She still wanted to believe he was better than this.

But it was inevitable. She was too sharp, and he had been too hurried to be subtle.

Her already pale face turned ashen, her jaw hardened, she scratched a nail down the center of her palm, where the cut had been.

“You saw them in the sky, didn’t you, the armored chariots? That was why you told me about the stars, so that I’d be sure to look up and see them.”

Her voice was unnaturally even. He thought of her thanking him for his honesty. She had to be thinking of the same thing, knowing that even as she spoke those words, he was already planning to betray her trust.

He said nothing.

“You couldn’t have had the decency to tell me that they were directly overhead and that I should wait a quarter hour before venturing out?”