“What’re you doing?”

Wren grinned, her fingers aching with cold. Then, she packed the snow into her palms, turned—“Think fast!”—and lobbed it at him. It struck him on the chest with a wet thud.

Hal looked at her as if she were the most insufferable person he’d ever met.

It filled her with an indescribable delight, fizzy and bright, like sunshine marbling the ocean. As she watched him dust snow off his jacket, it occurred to her that they could stay here. They didn’t have to go back to Colwick Hall, which almost certainly promised failure.

It would be so easy to simply … quit. There was too much at stake for so little chance at success. Without that key, they had no case. Without the case, neither of them could find redemption and go home. Somewhere in these mountains, the Guard lurked, waiting to collect on her bounty. At the estate, Lowry awaited with a sinister plan. If they wanted, she and Hal could find a future somewhere beyond this nightmare.

Before she realized she was speaking, she said, “We could run away.”

“Run away?”

“Think about it. Right now, no one knows where we are. Not even Lowry. We could take the nearest train off this Goddess-forsaken peninsula and go somewhere else. Anywhere else. We could start over where no one knows us.”

“Wren…” Her name on his lips, full of yearning, shattered the dream.

It was impossible. If they ran, war would break out. They’d let Lowry get away with his crimes. They’d never see home again. It was a foolish idea, as tempting as it was.

They weren’t children. They were soldiers.

For them, there could be no ordinary life, and no matter how far they ran, they could never outstrip their mistakes or their duty. Yesterday, Wren had almost lost every chance they had at finding Byers and the others. She wouldn’t turn her back on her comrades again.

“In another life, maybe.” She closed the window, and suddenly the room felt suffocating. “Or maybe when there’s peace.”

“Peace,” he echoed. “I’ve never allowed myself to think much of what comes after peace.”

“You’d better start thinking, Cavendish,” she said. “It’ll take a long time to undo three hundred years of war, and you can’t work all the time.”

Past their window, pristine snow glittered like diamonds beneath the first break of daylight. To give the next generation a chance—no, to give themselves a chance to truly live—they had to go back. They had to stop Lowry, or die trying.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

They returned to a Colwick Hall in chaos. Nothing could have prepared Wren for seeing it, the vision of her naïve imaginings, the house she had expected when she’d first arrived nearly three weeks ago.