Drawing in a steadying breath, I offer her the shallowest of nods back.

I don’t have faith in much, but I do have faith in her. And that will make all the difference. They may think they have us right where they want us, but soon enough, they will learn that they don’t. Not even a little bit.

Eventually, the carriage rolls to a bumpy stop on what feels like a dirt road.

“Oh, good,” I say. “I was just about to ask if we could stop for a piss break.”

Kiki sighs. “Ana.”

Musket man holds said musket up, looking for all the world like he really, really, really wants to use it.

“Right. Silence or death. Got it.”

“Christ, you really are something else, aren’t you?” Sebastian asks.

“Took you this long to figure that out?”

Rolling his eyes, Sebastian slips his knife back into the holster it emerged from, hidden beneath the depths of his coat. He wraps a hand around Kiki’s bare arm and fixes her with a hard stare. “Try anything and she dies.”

Kiki’s breath stutters on the exhale, but she nods.

Sebastian turns to me. “Try anything and—”

“You’re not going to kill Kiki.” Yeah, yeah, silence or death. But I know he won’t. Why go through all this trouble just to murder his fiancée by the side of the road?

“No. Her death would be a tragedy. Yours would be collateral.” The corner of his lip ticks upward, as if considering a smile. “But how do you think our poor Eustaquia would feel if she had to watch a musket ball blow half your skull into the dirt?”

A dirty tactic, but an effective one. “Fuck you, Sebastian.”

“You will never know the pleasure. Come on.”

With that, he pounds on the side of the carriage. A coachman is there to open the door, and Sebastian yanks Kiki through it, heedless of her undressed—and unshod—state.

Musket man grunts at me. “Move.”

“Fuck you too.” But I do as he says, and I move.

I’m going to figure something out. We’re going to get out of this.

Just—not yet.

We are marched through the woods. Kiki maintains a steady stream of complaining about her poor delicate lady feet. Sebastian grits his teeth and bears it because there’s really nothing else he can do about it.

I love this woman more than I can say. Here we are, trudging on to some unknown doom, and she’s finding any way she can to make the lives of the men forcing us into it as miserable as possible. That’s my girl.

Musket man stays close behind me, weapon trained at my back. If shot from this angle, a good chunk of my body would paint the earth with blood and bones. I would like to avoid that, if at all possible.