She’d shown it to him one of those few times they’d met as children. In the face of his stand-offish arrogance, she’d been competitive, determined to prove herself worth speaking to, not the useless lady he so clearly thought she was. After all, she had a token from the Queen herself.

She’d even said it with a little toss of her head. Idiot girl.

Ha, maybe he even wondered about his former betrothed. Lords, did he mourn her? Maybe he was the fool. He’d barely known the girl and the few times they’d met, she’d been quite mean to him. The last time, she’d challenged him to swim out to the island in the middle of their lake. When he’d refused, she’d gone without him and spent the day exploring it alone. He’d run back to his parents.

Why would he mourn such a foolish girl?

“Died …” His gaze fell away, and he gave a soft sigh.

Good, he believed it. No danger of anyone coming to look for her.

Eventually, he nodded, brow creased. “What happened to her?”

She clenched her jaw and lifted her chin. If he was that concerned about some long-dead girl who’d left him, then fine. She’d dissuade him of any such idiocy and get rid of him. This would shove him far, far away.

Two birds. One stone. Genius.

She tossed her head, just like that day she’d shown him the pin. “I killed her.”

Stay the Course

“I killed her.”

Knigh’s breath, his blood, the room stilled.

She stared at him, level, unruffled.

I killed her.

His chest squeezed as if his heart suddenly remembered how to work and heaved into life.

Vee—Vice had killed Lady Avice Ferrers. And she admitted it so calmly.

Her face was smooth, composed, just a slight rise of her eyebrows, challenging.

She had no sorrow, no remorse, no feeling of common decency at all.

Lady Avice had been a little childish, so sure of her own superiority compared to him, perhaps. And he hadn’t loved her, no, but she’d also been vivacious, burning bright with excitement about the world. What was it she’d said when she’d dared him to swim across the lake with her? A verse from an old poem:

Disturb us, Ladies, to dare more boldly,

To venture on wilder seas

Where storms will show your mastery;

Where losing sight of land,

We shall find the stars.

And Vee had murdered someone that full of life. An eighteen-year-old girl. An innocent.

But wasn’t that precisely the kind of behaviour he should’ve expected from the notorious Lady Vice?

Wild Hunt, he’d forgotten who she was.

His blood ran cold as Midwinter snow.

What a fool. A complete and utter fool, taken in by a beautiful face and that relaxed charm of hers.