She climbed from her window at eleven, sliding down a rope, which she tossed back inside. She could have jumped, but it had taken her some time to arrange her hair under the hat correctly. She walked to Fitzrovia, and this time she did not bother to avoid the pools of streetlight. She wanted to be seen. She straightened her back and widened her step. The more she walked, the more she felt herself slipping into the gait, the attitude. She tipped her hat to a lady passing in a carriage; the lady smiled and looked away shyly.

Anna knew now that she was never going to go back to wearing dresses. She had always loved the theater, always loved the idea of a performance. The first time she had worn her brother’s clothes it had been a performance, but with each time she did it again, it became more her reality. She was not a man and did not want to be—but why should men get to keep all the good pieces of masculinity for themselves because of an accident of birth? Why should she, Anna, not wear their clothes, and their power and confidence too?

You have stolen fire from the gods.

Anna’s swagger faded a bit as she turned the corner onto Cavendish Square. Would Ariadne accept her like this? It had felt so right a moment before, but now …

She almost turned back, but then she forced herself on.

The Bridgestock house was dark. Anna looked up, fearing that Ariadne had been teasing. But then she saw a flick of a curtain, and the sash window opened. Ariadne looked down at her.

And she smiled.

A rope sailed out of the window, and Ariadne slid down it, more gracefully than she had in training. She wore a light blue dress, which fluttered as she dropped.

“Oh my,” she said, walking up to Anna. “You look … quite devastating.”

Anna would not have traded the way Ariadne looked at her in that moment for a thousand pounds.

They took a carriage to Soho. Though she and Ariadne were both glamoured to hide their Marks from mundanes, Anna enjoyed the look she got from the driver when he realized the handsome young gent in his cab was a handsome young lady. He doffed his cap as she and Ariadne alighted from the cab, muttering something about “young people these days.”

They arrived at the house, but this time, when Anna knocked on the door, the person answering was less accommodating. He looked at Anna, then at Ariadne.

“No Shadowhunters,” he said.

“That was not your previous policy,” Anna said. She noticed that the windows were now covered by the heavy velvet curtains.

“Go home, Shadowhunters,” he said. “I have made myself clear.”

The door was slammed in their faces.

“Now I am curious,” Ariadne said. “We must go in, don’t you think?”