“You’re not going over the wall,” he says tersely.
When we first met, I’d been on the run from Madame Verona’s thugs.
Rollo was walking out of his private eating club when he noticed me, lying helpless, encircled by a group of leering men. He confronted the thugs, who scattered at the sight of a nobleman, and helped me up from where I had fallen on the street.
“Do you have a place to go?” he’d asked.
I’d shaken my head.
Of course, I knew it was illegal for me to be there, hiding in the bedroom of a Laconian nobleman, and heir to the wealthiest estate in the city. We Ophir are servants and thieves, inhabiting the lowest rungs of society. My mere existence is a capital offense. Lacon has been trying to get rid of us forever—it wasn’t enough that they conquered and destroyed our kingdom, but they’ve been trying to stamp us out entirely, restricting where we can go and where we can live, closing our schools, starving our community. But the Sleeve is equally threatening to my life, so as far as I’m concerned, it’s safer behind palace doors. I should hate him, this handsome Laconian lord, knowing how his people have treated mine for centuries, but I don’t. That much I know. I don’t hate him.
Being caught was inevitable.Ophir slattern!Lady Ariadne had screeched, yanking back the bedcovers this morning. By the afternoon, I was sentenced to die.
Another lesson learned: Injustice is swift.
Rollo roots around beneath the wiry vines snaking through the thick stone wall. Once he finds what he’s looking for, he pushes on one of them. There’s a scraping noise and then apop. He removes a key hanging around his neck, turns it in the lock, and then pushes on the wall and slides it over a bit, revealing a narrow doorway. We slip into the pitch dark. He shuts the secret door behind us. I’m already feeling slightly better about my survival odds.
He takes my hand again and leads me through the void. My eyes adjust enough to detect the walls on either side of us. It’s a tight space, barely enough for me to fit. Rollo bends forward against the low ceiling. “I used to hide here when I was a little boy,” he whispers. “Old holdover from the war. I hear this is how Lacon won the war, by using all these secret passageways.”
“Who was the girl in the hood?” I ask him. “The one who was supposed to be me?”
“A Guild thief. Don’t worry, she wore a harness—she wasn’t harmed.”
I nod. I saw that clearly. The girl had looked clearly irritated, and not at all hurt.
“And believe me, she was well compensated for the trouble,” he adds.
“So the guardsdidlet me go?”
“Of course. I arranged a last-minute swap. Everyone thinks you’re dead, so you’re safe now.”
I stop walking. I can’t see him, but I feel him breathing. “You did all that for me?” Though I’d been formulating an escape plan of my own—an admittedly risky one that involved getting ahold of a blade somehow—I appreciate him coming through for me.
I blink back tears, thinking about the weeks we spent before being discovered. We were strangers—a girl from the Sleeve and a young nobleman from the estates. I was wary at first, unsure of why he brought me to the palace. What did he want from me? But all we did was play games—cards, tiles, puzzles—and he’d bring me books and we’d talk all night about anything and everything. He’s the same age as me, and even though we grew up worlds apart, we share a love for all the same things. In the palace, like in all of Lacon, there were mechanical marvels, things he called automatons, statues that could come alive, animated not by magic but by the movement of machines, pulleys, and gears, and we would study them to see how they worked. There were great leather-bound books that described their making and we’d spent hours poring over the diagrams and details. Our conversation was filled with science and curiosity, and I savored it. I was happy. It seemed too good to be true and it was.
Plus, I could eat as much as I wanted, and for the first time in my life, my bony hips filled out and the hollowness in my eyes vanished after endless hours of luxurious, uninterrupted sleep. All that comfort made me heady and foolish, and I became far too comfortable in a place where I did not belong and should never have been. Naïve enough to believe I might get away with it forever. Even allowed myself to imagine a future here with him…
“Yeah,” he says softly. “Gin…”
“Yes?” I press closer toward him.
“I wish… I wish I could have kept you safe forever,” he whispers.
My heart soars and hurts at the same time. “Rollo,” I breathe.
But he moves away. “We’ve got to hurry. You don’t have much time, and I need to get back to the party or it’ll be suspicious.”
I swallow a lump of disappointment even as I quicken my pace, following him through the dark passageways that stretch on and on. Occasionally, sounds from within the palace drift through the walls, music and heated conversation as well as loud stomping as guards move from one post to another. At one point, the floor pitches down, and I nearly lose my footing. I reach out to grab the wall. My hand brushes against cold metal, a tiny hinge, as I stumble.
Rollo catches me. “Careful,” he whispers.
“What’s this?” I tug at the metal, and it swings open like a tiny door, revealing a small beam of light. Shocked, I shut it immediately.
“Some kind of spy hole. I loved these when I was a kid,” he explains.
I open it again and see that we’re next to the grand ballroom—or nearly below it. The hole must have been hidden near the floor, in the intricate carved moldings that framed the mirrored walls. Elegant guests in their best gowns and lushly embroidered brocade coats mingle in small groups while the palace musician strums an enormous golden harp. Servants offer trays overflowing with fresh fruit and salted meats.
My stomach growls.
