“Normally, that’s my job, but you seemed more like Alec’s type,” Colin put in. “You’d like someone studious and clever.”

“I think I still might have been interested in you,” Alec said, not quite looking at me. “But I might not have been so forward about it.”

Colin laughed. “Which means he might have worked up the nerve to talk to you by Christmas.” The glare Alec gave him said he didn’t think that was funny.

I wasn’t laughing either. “You didn’t have to pretend. You didn’t have to lie to me. You all lie so easily, how am I to know what’s true? It’s fitting that your headquarters are in a theater because you do seem to enjoy your performances. What is the cause, really?”

“Liberty,” Alec said softly, but his tone grew more intense as he continued. “We want our freedom. We don’t want to depend on magpies for everything. We don’t want to have to beg for whatever crumbs they allow to trickle down to us.”

“But how can your cause be just if you have to lie about it to recruit people or to make your points? How do I know I can believe what you’re telling me now?”

“You’ll have to take our word for it, Verity,” Alec said with a shrug. “I won’t lie to you anymore, I promise you.”

“How can I believe that?” I firmly set my water glass on the table and stalked away.

I heard footsteps rushing up behind me, and soon Alec stood in front of me. “You’re just going to walk out of here? You said you believed in the cause, but now you’re giving it up because you got your feelings hurt? I thought you were better than that.”

“No, you didn’t, or you wouldn’t have felt you needed to lie to me and trick me to get me on your side.” I’d said it in anger, but the truth of my own words stung me as I stepped around him and headed down the stairs without a backward glance.

In Which the City Falls Under a Shadow

IN WHICH THE CITY FALLS UNDER A SHADOW

As I walked away from the theater, part of me wanted to turn back, even if just to prove to Alec that I was better than he thought, that I was fully committed to the cause. But I couldn’t, not now. I knew I’d act more like a girl who’d had her heart broken than like a revolutionary, and I refused to let him see me cry.

Besides, there were other ways to further the cause. In fact, I’d just run an errand for Henry that I was sure was related to the rebellion, and I could continue to share intelligence without being friends with the Mechanics.