“Another story for another day.”

I frown but don’t feel like I know him well enough to press. But if I don’t know Nick, I think, then why do I trust him?

He bumps me with his arm, nodding ahead to where the crowd is moving into the great room. “We both need to be ‘on’ when we walk through those doors. Any more questions?”

“A ton.” The features of his face are caught halfway between the loose, charismatic boy I’d met last night and the stern, noble Nick whose eyebrows are drawn tight with some emotion I can’t identify. “Why are you helping me?”

His mouth quirks. “I like helping people, if I can.” The light in his eyes dims. “And I know how it feels to watch your family shatter right in front of you and not be able to stop it.”

Before I can ask another question, he turns away—and then I’m struck silent by the massive living room in front of me. Brown leather couches sit clustered in front of a large fireplace on one far end. The fireplace itself is Biltmore House–big; the marble hearth could hold a horse standing upright. I glimpse a bright chef’s kitchen through a swinging door to the right, but most stunning are the twelve-foot-high floor-to-ceiling windows that make up the entire back wall and give an expansive view of the forest. The Lodge is high enough on its hill that the darkening horizon is visible through the earthen browns and evergreens.

Nick has paused beside me while I take everything in. Once I’m done, I notice that, again, half of the eyes in the room are glued to Nick and the other half have found me. A few of the more nicely dressed people from the foyer trail curious eyes up my boots to my jeans and T-shirt. Some stare openly at Nick’s coin around my neck, and heat rises up my ears. Nick leads me over to a display of beverages in a corner. When the eyes follow us, I find my irritation shifting from the gawkers to Nick.

The moment the voices around us return to idle chatter, I move closer to him and whisper, “Everyone’s staring.”

His back to the room, he passes a glass of cucumber water to me and keeps his voice low. “As far as they know, I haven’t walked into this house since I was twelve years old. Then I show up out of the blue to reclaim my title and sponsor a Page no one’s seen before. And…”

“And?”

Nick presses his lips into a thin line and pours a water for himself. “And, traditionally, new Pages come from the Vassal families who pledged themselves to the Order decades or even generations ago, so…”

I groan inwardly. “So it looks like I skipped the line.”

He chuckles. “You could say that.”