A gasp left her when a hand clamped around her wrist. Before the air fully escaped her lungs, she was whirled around and shoved against the alley wall. Pain exploded against her shoulders, and a strong, unyielding arm pinned her throat. Somehow, he’d pulled them deeper within the shadows, away from the crowd’s prying eyes. Her hands flew up, clawing at the arm crushing her windpipe. His dark eyes bored into her, growing colder behind his spectacles. Up close, they were more striking than she had expected.
“You shouldn’t be taking things that don’t belong to you,” he growled.
Squirming under his grip, she thrashed her head back and forth, but he applied more pressure until he forced a pathetic squeak past her lips. He was taller than she had realized, and his presence filled the entire alleyway.
“Please,” she wheezed, but it was all she could manage. Still, she could breathe, and if she could breathe—she could still fight.
Summoning her strength, she jerked to the right but only succeeded in scraping her skull against the brick. The cap twisted, pulling the pins loose from their hold. A few loose strands fell over her face, and the fabric shifted against her, clinging for a moment before the hat toppled to the ground,the pins scattering with a soft metallic tinkling sound. Dirty blonde hair spilled down around her shoulders and over the arm shackling her to the wall.
His gaze faltered—only for a moment. Nin sensed the hesitation, the air crackling with something she didn’t quite understand. Her pulse leaped. The tick in his jaw slackened, and the weight cutting off her air supply loosened.
She coughed and sputtered against his hold, fearing what he might do next. But when she peered up behind her curtain of hair, his face had paled, and his eyes widened. The severity in his expression had been replaced by something startled and haunted.
He stared at her as though she were a ghost.
Chapter two
The moment her cap hit the ground, everything froze. The rolling carriages, snorting horses, and the bustling sounds of the city grew silent.
Something didn’t settle right when the pickpocket had slipped their fingers into his coat. The boy weighed nothing as Cedric slammed him into the wall, his throat too thin beneath his arm, and his jaw too delicate. The flare of anger extinguished as soon as a cascade of dirty blonde locks fell loose around the thief’s face.
A pair of blue eyes like the winter river locked onto his, and his breath hitched. This was no boy.
Princess Marianne?
His thoughts lurched for every plausible explanation to make sense of the woman in front of him.Had she escaped her rooms? Why would she disguise herself this way?
However, the gold flecks in her frightened eyes made him pause. Princess Marianne had silver lining her irises.
Cedric examined every speck of dirt on the woman’s face, noting the tough calluses on her palms, her cracked fingernailsgrasping his arm, and the deep hollow of her throat. There, at the corner of her mouth, was also a small mole that seemed out of place.
Had he not spent years serving the princess, he would have continued to be deceived by the woman’s uncanny resemblance.
Cautiously, he eased his grip over the woman’s neck. She gulped in a greedy breath of air, her body trembling beneath him. The similarities were too precise to ignore—the possibilities too significant. However, a foreboding thought flickered in his mind.
“The Silver Flame seems to be growing increasingly dangerous,”His informant, Jean, had told him minutes ago. “They’re under the impression that the princess is a danger to Aurelion’s future. They could be the possible assassin we’re looking for.”
“Who are you?” he asked, his suspicions rising. “Who sent you?”
“I’m Nin! A n-no one, Monsieur, I swear it!”
It wasn’t a lie, and the truth was laced with naked terror. A trained assassin or an imposter would not be able to mimic the emotion as genuinely as she did.
Cedric’s shoulders slumped, the tension unraveling like loose threads. She was not a threat. She was merely a street urchin playing a dangerous game of thievery.
“What do you want?” she pleaded.
His arm still trapped her to the wall, and he wondered why he hesitated to release her. Her question sank into his thoughts.
Cedric knew what he wanted. He wished to protect Princess Marianne from the dangers lurking beyond his sight, but what did he want from this street urchin? Again, he took in every detail of her face, and his breath grew tight.
“You look exactly like her,” he murmured. “In almost every way… How old are you?”
Nin’s brows furrowed, her confusion overriding the fear etched in her features. “Twenty-two—what’s that have to do with anything?”
Cedric ignored her question as his mind raced with the possibilities. She was the right age, only a year younger than the princess and five years his junior. A seed embedded itself in his mind, blooming until it slipped from his control.
“Are you literate?” he asked.
