It hit me in a giddy rush that it was over. I had saved—if not all of Raverra, at least a block or two of it—by myself, with my own hands. Not with my mother’s name, or with my mother’s wealth, but on my own.

Too dangerous to go to a pawnbroker’s shop? Ha! I’d taken out a fire warlock. I smiled at him, tucking my burned hand into my sleeve. “I’m fine. I’m glad I could help.”

“Lieutenant Marcello Verdi, at your service.” He bowed. “What is your name, brave young lady?”

“Amalia Cornaro.”

“Well, welcome to the doge’s Falconers, Miss …” He stopped. The smile fell off his face, and the color drained from his bronze skin. “Cornaro.” He swallowed. “Not … you aren’t related to La Contessa Lissandra Cornaro, surely?”

My elation curdled in my stomach. “She’s my mother.”

“Hells,” the lieutenant whispered. “What have I done?”

Chapter Two

My mother wasn’t even here, and still she dominated the conversation. I bent over the unconscious girl, both out of concern and to hide my frustration.

“Will she be all right?” I asked.

“She’s fine, my lady. Warlocks often collapse from exhaustion after loosing their power.” The new stiffness in Verdi’s voice smarted like salt on my burns. I shouldn’t have told him my name.

He knelt, reaching for the girl’s wrist. At first I thought he meant to check her pulse, but his fingers instead traced the delicate weave of the bracelet.

The jess was the most complex wirework artifice I’d ever seen. The intricate braid of the wire and position of the blood-red beads formed a language dictating the terms of the spell. It was too elaborate for me to follow.

Some of the golden wires had blurred and melted at the knot that bound the strands together. That shouldn’t have been possible; jesses were supposed to be nearly impervious to physical harm. But balefire was a powerful magical force.

“It’s fused,” Verdi breathed. “I don’t think it will come off.”

I lifted my eyes and found his green ones. The worry in them was frank and unguarded, in a way I never saw in the drawing-room circles of the Raverran elite.

“Why would you want it to come off?” I asked.

“Because, my lady, you are the one who put it on her.”

“Please, call me Amalia.”

“I’m sorry, Lady Amalia. I should never have involved you in this.” He shook his head. “We’re trained to recruit civilian volunteers to put on the jesses in unexpected emergencies like this, but I’ve never heard of anyone accidentally enlisting a noble before.”

“You didn’t involve me. I chose to help. I did it myself.” Crouching in the street with my face inches from his suddenly felt awkward. I straightened, cradling my burned hand. The growing pain of it intruded into everything, like an unwelcome guest.