Eventually she quieted, and he could hear a soft rhythmic breathing that said she was asleep.

Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the green serpent amulet, like it was engraved on his eyelids. He was beginning to think it was a bad-luck charm. His recent troubles had started when he’d found the thing. Maybe Micah Bayar had cursed it when it came into Han’s possession. Maybe he should ignore Lucius and dig it up and return it to its rightful owner.

Only, according to Lucius, the Bayars weren’t the rightful owners.

But why wouldn’t they be? They’d killed the Demon King and taken it from him, hadn’t they?

Maybe that was it. Maybe it was only good for dark magic. But all the tools of dark magic would have been destroyed after the Breaking, right?

Finally he slept. And Corporal Byrne’s face haunted his dreams.

Somehow, Raisa slept, though she’d have said it wasn’t possible, trapped in this dirt-floored cellar with a multiple murderer. She woke early, unravished, though stiff and aching all over from sleeping slumped in the corner.

The lamp had gone out, but pale morning light leaked around the cellar doors. Cuffs was asleep, sprawled on his cot at the base of the steps.

Raisa watched him for a bit, to make sure he was really out. He slept fitfully, muttering and twitching as if troubled by dreams.

Or a guilty conscience.

Raisa creaked to her feet, padded across the cellar, and looked down on him. He looked younger, somehow, when he was sleeping, his splinted arm over his chest, his other arm flung out to the side, his eyes moving under his bruised eyelids. His knife lay half underneath him.

He was handsome under the bruises, though his muddy red-brown hair didn’t match his coloring. She resisted the urge to reach out and run her fingertips over his fine-boned face.

Why would he be wearing clan garb? she wondered. It was just one of many mysteries she’d never have the answers to.

Could she trust her instincts—the ones that said he wasn’t capable of doing the crimes he was accused of? Did he really mean to let her go? He hadn’t harmed her yet, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t.

Then again, maybe it would be better just to let him cut her throat. When her mother heard about this adventure, Raisa would be locked up for sure. Amon would be exiled to Chalk Cliffs, and it would be her fault. Even now, the whole of the Queen’s Guard was probably combing the city.

She’d spread her cloak, skirts, and petticoats over a chair to dry. When she fingered them, she found they’d gone from dripping to stiff and only damp. She considered changing back into them, but worried she’d wake Cuffs in the process and be caught betwixt.