I twisted, bringing the rifle to bear just in time as a hand seized the back of my neck.
A thread of my energy evaporated, and my vision blurred. A Silver.
“Leave her!” Lewis shouted.
The hand departed. The contact had been brief enough that my energy returned in a rush, and I took immediate advantage of it.
I cast Lewis one last, imploring look, then bolted. The Silver, Patterson, stepped into my path but I danced neatly aside, the grace of the movement ruined by a pell-mell swing as I shifted the rifle into a club and struck him across the head. He dropped. I hurtled on.
Like Perry I made for the shelter of a tree, and beyond, a hedge. I tumbled through an archway and into the extensive university gardens, where rows of shrouded hedges and winding pathways were speckled with benches and pavilions.
Instead of taking off towards one of these shelters, I nipped to one side and threw myself down at the foot of the hedge itself, only a few paces from where I had burst in.
Shadows welcomed me. My threads prickled. I had little fear for Pretoria—she had escaped worse, even with another Starlight present. Perry, in all practicality, I had not had enough time to attach to, not to a self-sacrificing degree.
Lewis burst through the hedge, followed by another soldier. They divided, the stranger heading off in one direction while Lewis, pistol lowered, moved cautiously in the other. The two of them exchanged several glances and gestures, then the stranger slipped from sight, and Lewis progressed past me.
I shifted to one knee and levelled the rifle again.
Lewis turned. I stood. Muzzle to muzzle, we faced one another across a row of red-leafed, hip-high bushes.
“Did you betray me?” I hissed.
In the same breath he said, “Run with me.”
We stared at one another for an interminable moment, then he holstered his pistol and, instead, offered me an open hand. There was tension in every line of him, awareness that we stood in open view if his companion was to return, but he stood straight and tall and stalwart, fingers extended.
“How can I trust you?” My voice cracked, the question directed to both him and myself.
“The Guild intercepted a telegraph from Mr. Stoke to myself,” he said rapidly, pleading in his eyes. “I was shipped immediately back to Harrow, where the Guild was waiting for me.”
“Madge?”
“And her new husband. He read our letters, Ottilie. He knows everything.”
I stared, eyes so round they ached. “What?”
“Run with me. Ottilie, please.”
“Run where?” The question was vast, edgeless, and devouring. “If Moran knows—”
His response was immediate, impassioned, and accompanied by pleading eyes. “Anywhere but here.”
Reason swiftly deserted me. I was over whelmed by thewantthat the sight of him elicited in me. Want to trust. Want to be seen. Want to be held, to belong, and to run, run, run.
A shout rose beyond the gardens. “Illing!”
Lewis’s gaze shot from the sound to my rifle, then he leapt the bushes. All at once I was sprinting beside him, out of the hedges and into the university’s main sprawl.
Tall, lofty buildings and ancient halls spread around us. We passed a dry fountain, its tall, humanoid statue shrouded for the coming winter. Our footsteps echoed, but there was no help for that.
We reached the university’s outer wall, some ten feet tall, half stone, half decorative wrought iron.
“Help me over,” I panted, slinging the rifle across my back.
“Still terrible at climbing?” he quipped. It was the first emotion he had shown other than pleading and intensity, and my blood skittered through my veins at his flash of a smile.
The reader may wonder, at this juncture, why I had decided to trust him. Allow me to reaffirm the earlier departure of my reason and the fact that, despite my attempts to distract myself with Harden, I had been in love with Lewis Illing for years. That bond, his simple familiarity, and the desperateness of the situation combined to leave me with no true choice.
