I take it anyway.
"What business?"
He shrugs. "Property, mostly. It's an undervalued market. All those quaint shops along the main street, half of them held by sentimental old landlords who don't understand what they're sitting on."
He smiles at me.
"There's a dress shop, actually. You would know it. I hear your sisters are clients. Prime location. Terrible finances, from what I can find. The kind of place that will go bankrupt on its own in a year or two." He considers that, pleased. "Buying it now would be a mercy."
"Choose your next words carefully."
I don't raise my voice.
Princeton stops with the cup halfway to his mouth.
For one bare moment, the charming merchant vanishes. Something colder looks back at me.
I don't like it.
It doesn't like me either.
Then the smile returns.
"Merely business talk, my lord. Dull stuff." He stands and claps my shoulder as though we're friends. "Look after that little brother of mine, hm? He's the good one."
He drifts back toward Caden and Mirelle.
I sit there with my pulse beating in my throat.
Why do I care?
Over what? A shop that isn't mine. A woman who isn't mine. A woman who hums while she pins fabric and calls my sisters happy.
The thought of Princeton Voss tearing apart everything she has built makes my hands curl into fists.
Fuck.
I find Mirelle alone on the east parapet after the Voss brothers leave. She leans against the stone with the crooked box held in both hands, smiling down at it.
"Mirelle."
"Don't," she says without turning.
"I haven't said anything."
"You've been saying it all night. You say a great deal for a male who barely talks."
She turns. The smile is gone. The expression beneath it belongs to someone much older than twenty. Someone preparing for bad news to take her happiness away.
"Go on, then. Say it again. His family is dangerous. His father is a viper. His brother assessed our assets all evening." Her chin lifts. "I saw it too. I'm not an idiot."
"His brother is trying to buy up Starling Vale. Including the building where your dressmaker works."
Her fingers tighten around the box.
"Caden isn't them," she says. Her voice shakes.
"Caden is a Voss. When his father calls for him, and he will, Caden will go. That's what the sons of rich fathers do, Mirelle. They obey because they know what happens if they don't."
