Someone who broke your heart. Cordelia thought of her father. They would never have a good moment between them again. If only she had let him walk her down the aisle. Lucie would have understood. If only she had given him a chance.

She should have stopped him from running out of her house last night. The awful truth was that she’d been glad to see him go, and worried, not on his behalf, but on James’s. All she’d been able to think was that somehow, her father had humiliated her again. What did Father do to James? What had he said? James had insisted steadfastly it had been nothing, but he had looked sick to his stomach and had gone to bed early.

“Did you see it?” she whispered.

It was so quiet she could hear the scrape of James’s jacket against the stone wall as he moved. “See what?”

“Did you dream it? Him dying?”

James put a hand up to cover his eyes. “Yes.”

“It was the same killer?” Her voice sounded tiny and dry. “The same murderer, the same hate?”

“Yes. But Daisy—”

She put her hand over her stomach, feeling the urge to wrap her arms around herself, to keep herself from breaking apart. “Don’t tell me. Not now. But if there’s anything—”

“That might tell us who did this? I’ve been racking my brain, Daisy. If there was anything, anything at all, I would tell you, I would message Jem, my parents—” He shook his head. “There’s nothing more than before.”

“Then tell me why he came to our house last night.” She gave a dry little laugh. “Pretend I’ve won a chess game. I can owe you an answer. But tell me the truth. What did he want?”

There was a pause before James said, “He wanted money.”

“Money?” she repeated, incredulous. “How much money? What did he need it for?”

James was very still, yet oddly, the Mask had not gone up. Cordelia could see what he was thinking, feeling. The agonized look in his eyes. He was letting himself feel all of it, she thought, and more than that. He was letting himself show it.

“Your father asked me for five thousand pounds,” he said. “Where he thought I would get it, I can’t imagine. He told me I should ask my parents. He insinuated that they had so much money they would not even notice it. He said it was for Cirenworth. That he could not afford the costs of the house. I don’t know whether that was the truth.”

“I have no idea,” Cordelia whispered, though plenty of alternate possibilities presented themselves. Gambling debts. Unpaid loans. Unsettled scores. “Why didn’t you tell me?” Her body felt like fire and ice—burning and freezing with rage and despair. “If I had only known he was in trouble, I could have helped him.”