My fingers brush Kiki’s wrist. Softly. Slowly. When she doesn’t flinch, I slide my palm across the back of her hand, wrapping my own around her white-knuckled grip on the pistol.

Gently, I lower our joined hands.

“It’s all right,” I say, even though it isn’t. Nothing is.

Sebastian skirts away from us, shrugging his frock coat back into place. He meets my eyes. Something passes over his face, but whatever thought is running through his head goes unvoiced.

“For what it’s worth,” Sebastian says, “I am sorry for what happened to Alejandro.”

Kiki doesn’t move. She remains where she is, swaying slightly, staring at the wall where Sebastian’s head had been.

“You keep his name out of your mouth.” I wrap an arm around Kiki’s shoulders and walk her out of the tavern.

I’ve got one foot over the threshold when a hand falls on my shoulder.

I turn, ready to bite the face off whoever dares stop me, Kiki’s weight growing heavier by the second.

Sebastian stands behind me, his face pale beyond the limits of the tavern’s firelight.

“There may be no love lost between us—”

“That’s putting it mildly.”

Sebastian’s brow furrows. If I had any faith in him as a human being, I would say that was concern etched into his features. “All I want is for Eustaquia to be safe.”

“Why do you care? Worried that your precious fortune will take a hit if you don’t get to leech off hers through marriage?”

He cants his head to the side, fixing me with an inscrutable look. “Whatever you think of me, know that there are far worse men out there.”

With that, he turns away, joining his friends in the tavern.

I don’t like the way he said that. If life has taught me anything, it’s what a man’s voice sounds like when he’s trying to hide something. But I can’t follow him back inside. Not now. Not with Kiki half out of her mind on piss-poor ale.

“Ana…,” Kiki mumbles into my throat. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

“If you have to vomit, don’t do it on me,” I tell her, angling her chin in the opposite direction.

It isn’t easy getting Kiki—and the horses—home in her condition, but somehow I manage by having her sit in front me on Tornado while Rocinante follows us like a white shadow. I prop her up on a bale of hay once we get to the stables as I put the horses up. They’re happy to be home and docilely chomp on their hay as I remove their tack and give them a cursory brush. I can make them pretty in the morning.