But her every nerve bristled with dread. Through the cracked window, the cold air carried a charge that prickled the hairs on her arms. It promised a thunderstorm. Beyond that, she felt something—something fast-approaching and malicious. In wartime, she’d trained herself to startle awake at even the crack of a twig. Right now, it felt too much like a battlefield, with unseen dangers lurking at the edge of her vision.

As her eyes adjusted, she noticed Hal sitting upright beside her. The blankets pooled around his waist, leaving him bare. Pale moonlight painted the ridges of his muscles with deep blue shadows. Wren reached out to him, the pads of her fingertips brushing his spine. His entire body went rigid at her touch, but when he turned over his shoulder, relief softened him.

“Do you feel it, too?” she whispered.

“Yes.” His eyes were impossibly tender beneath the concern. “We should get Dryden.”

By the time they dressed and gathered their things, three sharp knocks on the door sounded. Una stepped through the doorway, her face drawn. “We need to move.”

A cold fist of unease clenched around Wren’s heart. “You think it’s the Guard?”

“It’s likely,” Una said, her expression steely. If she was at all afraid, it did not show. “We’ll put some distance between us.”

They crept through the darkened corridors and emerged into the main hall. Only the most tenacious moonlight squeezed in through the stained glass. Through the lingering haze of ceremonial smoke, it patterned the floor like waves. Wren could only focus on the long streaks of red. The color of blood. The color of the rubies always glittering on Lowry’s hands. It reminded her far too much of Colwick Hall.

Wren followed Una through the gloom and out the main doors of the abbey. The doors banged shut behind them like the fall of a gavel. Outside, it was too quiet. Nothing stirred but a gust of wind that ruffled her hair and slipped into her jacket like a blade. Una took one step forward—then came to a dead halt.

It took Wren a moment to see them. In their black uniforms, the squadron of Guardsmen were daubed across the courtyard like shadows, but the dim moonlight scintillated on their silver buttons. They gleamed like rows of monstrous, beady eyes.

In an instant, all of her hope crumbled like ash. They were undone.

A woman stepped forward, her uniform marked with the single, glistering star of a brigadier general. Her voice rang out, amplified in the cold air. “Una Dryden, Wren Southerland, and Hal Cavendish. You’re under arrest for conspiracy against the crown.”

No one moved. No one breathed. Piecing her own experience into anything coherent was like reassembling a broken mirror, every shard a fragmented sensation, an eternity condensed into a moment.

The feeling of Hal’s hand sliding into hers.

The resignation that smoothed his face into cold impassivity.