Dancer sat down on the bed next to her. “No. You saved our lives in Arden. You deserve a hearing. I want to know what’s wrong with you. These past few weeks you’ve seemed different. Kind of desperate.”

“What are you talking about?” Han said irritably. “You hardly know her, so I don’t know how you could—”

“You’re never around,” Dancer said. “You have no idea what’s going on with your friends.”

Han waved a hand at Cat. “This is a friend?” He rolled his eyes. “Friends don’t hush friends in back alleys.”

“Cuffs is right,” Cat said, opening her eyes and looking at Dancer. “You don’t know me very well. I’m a thief. I betray my friends. I deserve to die.” Tears gathered at the corners of her eyes and trickled into her hair on either side. “I should’ve just left, but I needed money to get home,” she said. “There’s nothing for me here. I’m not cut out to be in school.”

“What did you want with the amulet?” Han asked, a terrible suspicion growing in his mind. “If you needed money, you should’ve taken my purse.”

“I wasn’t going to go poking in your breeches for it,” Cat said. “For all I knew you had a stash of weapons in there.”

“You were after the amulet all along,” Han said. “Weren’t you?”

After a long pause, she nodded. “I…thought I could sell it,” Cat said. “You acted like it was valuable. And you always kept it with you, so I had to take it off you.”

Han blinked as the puzzle piece fell into place. “You were the one who tossed my room,” he said. “You were looking for it.”

“I didn’t never toss your room,” Cat flared. When Han raised an eyebrow, she mumbled, “How’d you know? I put everything back where it was.”

“It was the night of the Dean’s Dinner, so you knew neither of us would be here,” Dancer said. He was looking at Cat, and she was looking at him, and Han suddenly felt like he was an outsider, just a bystander in the room.

“I…I came here because I thought I could help,” she said, keeping her eyes locked on Dancer’s face as if she were witch-fixed. “I felt bad. I thought I could…make up for what happened in Fellsmarch.” She swallowed hard. “I should’ve stayed away.”

“What do you mean, what happened in Fellsmarch?” Dancer asked, his voice low and soothing, like a witch-talker.

“To Cuffs. To his mam and sister. To…to the Raggers,” Cat whispered.

Dancer removed the rag, resoaked it, wrung it out, and replaced it. “Why did you feel that you had to make up for it?” he asked.

Cat jerked the rag off her forehead and flung it away. “Because it was my fault.”