Zaira stopped suddenly, her heels digging into the carpet. “Bollocks. This is the trap.”

“Quite correct,” a voice called. “Well done, Zaira.”

Chapter Fourteen

Half a dozen armed men rose from behind the seats around us, leveling knives and clubs at us. Two more appeared in the balcony seats above, with flintlocks aimed down.

They were a rough-looking lot. One sported an odd scar along his jaw, almost like a handprint. The sight sparked a flash of recognition, but the situation was too urgent for me to examine it now.

A long-haired man in a scarlet coat pushed through the curtain onto the stage and bowed.

“Welcome, Lady Amalia Cornaro.”

Zaira drew her dagger. “Orthys,” she hissed.

My heart battered against my ribs as if it wanted to escape this theater as badly as I did. I put a hand to my chest, fingertips brushing the catch of my flare locket. “The villain himself.”

“Nothing so grand as a villain,” Orthys said modestly. “In fact, all I wish is to make my exit from the scene. But La Contessa has made that difficult.”

“You’ll get your exit,” Zaira growled. “In a hearse.”

Orthys laughed. It was a cultured, sneering laugh; for that matter, his accent was pure drawing-room elite, without a trace of the docks or the Tallows. There was something familiar about his voice. “Oh, but you, little fire warlock, are coming with me. I’ve got a buyer who’s been waiting for you for years.”

“Release me.” Zaira murmured to me, her voice raw and urgent. “I’ll burn them all down.”

Balos’s words stuck in my memory. This situation wasn’t deadly yet.

“I’d keep her hood on if I were you,” Orthys called. “She isn’t very discriminating about killing people close to her.”

Zaira started forward. “You shut up.”

“Zaira, no,” I whispered. “Can’t you see he’s baiting you?”

Orthys raised sculpted eyebrows. “Why, how do you think I found you? I heard about the sad, sad story of the tenement fire that killed that old woman, and the miracle of the Graces that left a poor little girl unharmed.”

A strangled noise tore out of Zaira’s throat. The ruffians around us kept their distance, eyes wary, weapons ready. Not attacking, but blocking our escape.

“But that wasn’t all,” Orthys continued with relish. “I wasn’t sure, you see, because you hid yourself so well. So I did some research, and I turned up another tragic fire, several years before that. You would have been perhaps four? And once again, everyone in the tenement died, except for one little brat, who was miraculously untouched—found crying over the ashes of her mother and father.”

The Graces wept.

Zaira screamed with enough fury to shame a demon. She charged down the aisle at Orthys, knife in hand. He awaited her, unmoving, a smile curling his lips.