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Behind me, Garrick said softly, “Let her go.”

The door clicked shut.

I made it three steps before I had to stop, pressing my palm against the iron railing, gulping air. The bond burned steady in my chest—constant, inevitable.

Somewhere, August was trapped. And I was tied to him in a way that had never asked my permission.

I pressed my hand against my sternum and whispered into the cold, “Two weeks.”

CHAPTER 5

AUGUST

The drawing room smelled of expensive tobacco, leather, and polish—the scent of power made domestic. Every surface shone with care. Wood fed with wax, brass burnished to a dull gleam, curtains heavy enough to quiet even daylight. It was a room built to suggest comfort but meant to deliver obedience.

The windows were tall, but they did not invite the world in. They looked out upon it the way portraits did—as proof of ownership, not longing. The air never moved unless Elias permitted it.

I sat where he indicated, because the pendant would not tolerate defiance in small things. My father poured brandy with hands that never trembled.

Cold pressed against my sternum.

Not the ordinary cold of metal. This was a living cold, a patient one—a winter that had taken up residence beneath my skin and decided it belonged there. The pendant hung heavy against my sternum, and every day it learned a little more of me.

Three months since Oxford. Three months since I’d felt my magic sweep through the city and destroy everything I’d tried to protect. Three months of waking every morning with blood on my hands I couldn’t wash off.

Beyond the tall windows, Oxford continued in its usual indifference. Carriage wheels hissed over wet cobblestones. Somewhere down the street, a vendor called half-heartedly through the drizzle, his voice muffled by the low sky. A church bell struck the hour, dull and metallic.

Life proceeded. As if nothing had happened. As if fifty-seven women had not been erased so completely that even grief had nothing to attach itself to.

“You are very quiet this evening,” Elias observed, lowering himself into the chair opposite mine. Firelight caught the silver at his temples and rendered him almost distinguished—a portrait of respectable authority, the sort of man whose word passed for truth simply because he spoke it calmly.

“Constance was inquiring after you.”

Of course she was.

“I have nothing to say to Miss Sterling.” The words came out flat, emotionless, exactly the way the pendant wanted them. Even rebellion required more energy than I could muster most days.

“You will be obliged to find something,” he said mildly. “The wedding is in six weeks. People will expect the groom to appear . . . content.”

Content.

As though such a state could be performed into existence by sufficient rehearsal.

I looked down at the pendant, at the smooth surface that reflected nothing clearly. It had the polite appearance of an ornament. Only the weight betrayed it.

“I have not agreed,” I said.

“You will.” Elias lifted his glass. “You forfeited the luxury of refusal when you chose disobedience.”

The cold tightened—not painful, but insistent. A reminder delivered without urgency because urgency was unnecessary.

And beneath it, as always, the other sensation. Warmth—faint, persistent, impossible to extinguish.

Lily.

Her name did not form itself aloud, nor even in words. It existed instead as pressure, as gravity—something pulling from a direction I could not locate on any map.

I did not know where she had gone. I did not know whether she had fled or hidden or simply been carried elsewhere by the same catastrophe that had remade everything.