“How?”

I explained the streaks and flaws as Pénélope had explained it to me. “I didn’t notice before,” I admitted. “But when you hold them up next to each other, it would be obvious to anyone with an eye for detail.” I all but held my breath, praying he wouldn’t ask what had caused me to finally notice it myself.

But he only swore and kicked a rock. “I think it’s fair to say that the Duke is possessed of the required eye for detail.” He shook his head sharply. “If nothing else, Pénélope will have proven her worth to him on this one.”

I bit the insides of my cheeks, saying nothing.

“Destroy this batch of pamphlets and switch printers,” he said. “This looks bad for the twins, but they’re protected by the fact that they can truthfully say that they’ve never ordered pamphlets or attended any meetings.” His eyes flicked to me. “You have no such protection. You need to be on your guard. Stay away from Pénélope for the next while.”

“I don’t see why–”

“You make mistakes around her, that’s why. Think of what would happen if you got caught. It wouldn’t just be your life on the line.”

“You know I’d take everyone else’s identities – including yours – to the grave,” I snapped, growing angrier with him by the second. Tristan loved the plotting. The planning. The spreading of propaganda, the drafting of new laws, the secret meetings where we discussed a new Trollus. But sometimes I wondered what it would take to push him past the planning and conspiring into taking actual action. What would be his tipping point. Whether he even had one, or whether we’d find ourselves old men and women who’d talked a great deal, but done nothing.

“And I’d rather it didn’t come to that,” he replied.

Anaïs’s soft whistle pulled us from our conversation. She had stopped a dozen paces ahead of us, spear held at the ready. Lifting a hand, she tapped her nose, and a second later, I caught the stench of sluag waste. Tristan set his book on a ledge to be retrieved later, and I nodded at the twins, who squared up behind us. We might be here for their entertainment, but their duty – and mine – was always to protect the heir. Even if he didn’t like it.

Anaïs in the lead, we branched off the main tunnel, bending and squeezing and crawling through tight spaces and under low ceilings. She threw the occasional orb of magic forward, watching to see if it faded or flickered before proceeding, Victoria doing the same behind in case a sluag was tailing us. No one spoke, ears peeled for the telltale slither of a heavy body or the click of shifting rock, but all I could hear was the steady thud thud of my friends’ hearts, quick with anticipation and not nearly enough fear.

Anaïs’s hiss of disgust echoed back over us, and I stepped into a small chamber to find her crouched next to a pool of greenish slime, a skeleton draped in tattered fabric floating in its depths. She lifted a piece of the fabric out with the end of her spear, eyed the golden thread on the patch stitched to it, then let it drop. “Half-blood. Miners’ Guild.”