Hal set his mug down and slid off the chair to sit on the floor beside her. He took her wrist, turning it over carefully to bare the delicate skin underneath. Could he see her pulse thrumming under his touch? He placed the knife’s hilt in the center of her palm and adjusted her fingers into the correct grip. When she looked up, their mouths were only inches apart. This close, she could nearly taste the tea he’d been drinking on his breath. Bergamot and honey. He didn’t withdraw his hand. It settled warm over hers.

“Keep it,” he said. “Just in case.”

“This is absurd,” she whispered. “I can’t kill somebody. I’d freeze.”

“You’d be surprised at how easy it is.”

Wren imagined herself plunging a blade into Lowry’s heart. Imagined the blood staining her hands, red, red, red, and impossible to scrub clean. She shuddered. “No. Absolutely not.”

But if things went south, if they were outnumbered …

“We need your eyes.”

His calluses scraped softly over her skin when he pulled back. While he’d largely mastered the art of a blank expression, she’d begun to learn his tells. Conflict thinned his lips and weighed down his eyelids. “I’m afraid of going back to who I was.”

“I know it’s complicated for you. But this time, it would be different. You’re different.”

“How can you be so certain? I hardly know who I am.”

“Someone trying to do good. I’m certain of that much. You’d be protecting yourself and your comrades and—”

Me. The word caught in her throat, but she couldn’t say it.

Hal still watched her uncertainly.

“From what I saw of the damage to the fola in your eyes, your case is far along. But I think I can do it. You don’t need to make a decision now, but consider it.”

“I will.” He said it like an oath, solemn and binding.

But she was so tired of solemnity. Just for one day, she didn’t want to think about shadows or death or Colwick Hall. “Maybe consider it later. In fact, let’s not consider anything dark or terrible until we’re back at the estate. This is like … a holiday.”

“A holiday.”

“Since we don’t have the key to the east wing passage, we might very well die tomorrow.” Both of them shifted uneasily under that grim reality. Wren pressed on. “Come on. When’s the last time you didn’t think about anything dark?”

“And what do you suggest we do?”

Immediately, her eyes fell to his lips. Memories of last night, sweet and seductive, drifted like smoke across her mind. How desperately she wanted him to kiss her.

Oh, no. Not this again.