The routes unstitched in his head: corners, choke points, rooftops where men could sit without being seen. He loathed every version that ended with her in reach of a knife. A pistol. Eyes. He detested even more the thought of her walking out of this room angry and stubborn and straight into risk without his hand on the reins.
Could he even stop this at this point? “You ride nowhere without my order. Not one turn.”
“Of course,” she said with satisfaction. “I didn’t expect anything less.”
Maxen’s mouth flattened. “I don’t like it.”
“I don’t either,” Knight said. “But I hate failing more.”
“Then it’s settled,” she said with a nod.
“I’m not done,” Maxen said firmly. “Your hair stays pinned. Your ‘disguise’ gets a coat over it. And you stay back from the window.”
One corner of her mouth lifted. “Happy to oblige.”
Reaper snorted.
Maxen stepped closer without thinking and almost wished he hadn’t. This close, it was almost impossible not to reach out and touch her. “If I knock twice on the roof, you drop to the floor. If I knock three times, you get out and follow Knight. You do not wait, you do not ask questions, and you do not look back.”
“And if you do not knock at all?” she asked.
“Then you stay where you are and let me bloody work.”
She nodded. “Agreed.”
Knight sighed. “Saint will complain.”
“Saint can complain on the move.” He looked to Reaper. “If anyone you don’t recognize so much as blinks at that carriage, I want to be signaled before he finishes that blink.”
Reaper flashed his teeth. “Of course.”
He vanished through the back. Knight followed with a last hard look at Maxen that said he would hold him responsible for every hazard in this plan, and he would be right. He couldn’t stop his gut from twisting, the kind of twists that came when men made choices they could not unmake. He had never intended to give in, yet something about the way Calliope defied him—chin high, green eyes ablaze—made him say the exact opposite of what he meant.
She seemed to have that way with him.
He shrugged out of his coat and covered her shoulders, his fingers brushing against the column of her neck before he retreated. A simple contact. It burned through every lesson he had ever learned about keeping a rein upon himself. “Remember the knocks.”
“I will.”
“Come. Let’s set your trap,” he said, guiding her where the carriage waited and, with it, whatever third trouble the day had saved for him.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Calliope sat ahand-span back from the window, as instructed, her cap pulled low, while the carriage rattled at a steady pace. Rules. Always rules. She half-imagined him up there on the box, jaw set, eyes forward, reins held like he could muscle the world into obeying if it dared to veer off course.
These men lived by their rules the way other people lived by prayers. They might be outlaws, but they weren’t careless ones.
But still outlaws.
She hoped this plan worked.
Then this chapter of her life would end as well.
She gripped the lapels of Maxen’s jacket covering her and buried her face into the collar, drawing in a long breath. It smelled faintly, impossibly, of him—clean with that stubborn trace of smoke that never seemed to leave him. Solid. Male. Maxen.
How foolish you are, Calliope!
And so? A woman was allowed to be foolish once in a while.
