He could not make the world fair, any more than she could. It was only in stories that heroes were rewarded; in real life, acts of heroism went unrewarded, or were punished, and the world turned on as it always had.

He might be angry, but he was safe. She wasn’t sorry.

“I can ask one last thing of you,” he said. “One last sacrifice for me.”

Since it might be the last time she ever saw him, Cordelia let her eyes linger on James’s face. The curve of his mouth, the arch of his high cheekbones, the long lashes that shadowed his pale gold eyes. That faint mark of the white star on his neck, just where his dark hair nearly touched his collar. “What?” Cordelia said. “If it is in my power, I will do it.”

He took a step toward her. She could see that his hands were shaking slightly. A moment later he was kneeling on the rug in front of her, his head tipped back, his eyes fixed on her face. She realized what he was about to do and lifted her hands to protest, but it was already too late.

“Daisy,” he said. “Will you marry me?”

The world seemed to stop. She thought of the clocks in Blackthorn Manor, all frozen at twenty to nine. She thought of the thousand times she had imagined James saying these words, but never under these circumstances. Never like this.

“James,” she said. “You don’t love me.”

He rose to his feet. He was no longer kneeling, and she was glad for it, but he was still close to her—so close to her she could have reached out and set her palm against his chest.

“No,” he said. “I don’t.”

She knew that. Hearing him say it still felt like a blow, unexpected and shocking, like the moment when you were stabbed. The surprise was how much it hurt.

Distantly, she could still hear him talking.

“Not in that way, and you don’t love me that way either,” James continued.

Oh, James. So brilliantly clever and so blind.

“But we are friends, aren’t we?” he said. “You are one of the best friends I’ve ever had. I will not leave you in trouble alone.”

“You love Grace,” Cordelia whispered. “Don’t you?”

She saw him flinch then. It was her turn to hurt him. They were only talking, but it was as if their words were blades.

“Grace is marrying someone else,” James said. “I am perfectly free to marry you.” He caught her hand, and she let him: she felt dizzy, as if she were clinging to the mast of a storm-tossed ship.

“I also do not want a situation in which my husband is unfaithful to me,” Cordelia said. “I will not marry you and turn some blind eye to whatever you do, James. I would rather be alone and scorned, and you would rather be free—”