“Captain,” Jin quietly prompted, and she handed the packet to him, watched his face as he reviewed, and saw the light when he reached the same conclusion.

He looked up, dark eyes shining. “It needs decoding, but the handwriting . . .”

“Gerard’s,” Kit finished, and they looked at each other, nodded. They’d found something. They’d have to wait for the message to be deciphered, but they’d fulfilled their mission.

It was one more mark in her favor, added to the column of miles and missions and nights beneath lightning-crossed skies. One more chance to earn some part of the life she’d been given.

Kit was a foundling who’d been left outside the palace by parents who couldn’t care for her—or simply didn’t wish to do so. The ribbon now pinned to her uniform—silk and well-worn—had been tied to the basket in which she’d been found. It was the only tangible memory she had of her childhood, and it had become her talisman, her reminder.

She’d been taken in by Hetta Brightling, a widow who intended to use her wealth and connections to house and feed girls who had nowhere else to go. Kit had been fed, educated, and brought up to believe in her own skills and the importance of self-sufficiency. And to Kit’s mind, each victory for queen and country helped balance those scales.

But for every victory, there was a matching loss.

“This was bound for Pencester,” Jin said darkly.

Kit knew from his tone their thoughts were aligned. Someone inside the Isles was the intended recipient of this missive. Someone inside the Isles was receiving correspondence from Gerard.

At least one of her countrymen was a traitor.

Jin folded the papers, handed them back to her. Kit slipped the packet into her jacket and centered herself, reached down through wood and wave to the waters below, to the bright current of power and let its presence—powerful and inexorable—comfort her.

And when she was steady again, opened her eyes. She had a crew to congratulate.

Chloe Neill is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the Captain Kit Brightling, Heirs of Chicagoland, Chicagoland Vampires, Devil’s Isle, and Dark Elite novels. She was born and raised in the South but now makes her home in the Midwest, where she lives with her gamer husband and their bosses/dogs, Baxter and Scout. Chloe is a voracious reader and obsessive Maker of Things; the crafting rotation currently involves baking and quilting. She believes she is exceedingly witty; her husband has been known to disagree.

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