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“You like that, love? Watching as he sucks you off my fingertips? Tasting your essence, just so he may crave more?” Edward states. My chest rises and falls faster.

A distant, playful voice echoes down the corridor. “I can hear whispering.”

Lazarus.

Alcott leans toward the wardrobe door. “No, you cannot.”

A pause. Then Lazarus replies, “Yes, I can.”

“No.” He teases Laz.

“Alcott.” I scold.

“It may be ghosts.” As Alcott continues, I notice his hands, caressing my side, while Edward’s fingertips dance along my spine.

“This house has no ghosts,” Laz remarks.

“Not with that attitude,” Alcott scolds.

I press my lips together to keep from laughing. Edward’s hand tightens slightly at my waist as he fixes my clothing, and I feel the vibration of his own suppressed amusement before I hear it. That nearly undoes me. Edward laughing in the dark. Edward touching me without fleeing. Edward calling me his girl, darling, love, as though the words had been waiting behind his teeth for years. The wardrobe door creaks. Light cuts into the darkness. Lazarus appears in the opening, dark hair mussed, eyes bright with triumph. Then he sees us.

His face falls with theatrical devastation. “No.”

Alcott smiles over my shoulder. “Yes.”

“You both found her first?”

Edward’s mouth curves. “Technically, we never lost her.”

Lazarus looks betrayed, jutting out a lip dramatically. “Sabotage.”

“Strategy,” Alcott says again. “Brilliant, was it not?”

Lazarus points at him. “Villainy.”

“You know, coming from you, that feels like praise.”

Lazarus looks at me. “Darling, say they cheated.”

“They cheated.”

“Thank you.” Laz pouts, trying to reach for me like a wounded mammal.

“They also won.” I retort.

His hand drops as his eyes narrow. I step out of the wardrobe, smoothing my robe with as much dignity as one can manage after being discovered in a closet by three murderers before breakfast. Lazarus watches me. Then his expression shifts. The teasing remains, but something softer settles beneath it.

“You look radiant,” he says.

A simple statement. No flourish, not a joke. It catches me unprepared and I look away. The morning light pouring through the dressing room window catches on the black silk of the robe, the gold suns at my sleeves, Edward’s pale hair, Alcott’s bright eyes, Lazarus’s rings. Color everywhere. Again. Always. I wonder if they know what they have done. These men. These monsters. This strange little constellation of damaged people orbiting closer and closer, until none of us can pretend the gravity is accidental. Lazarus steps forward and takes my hand, lifting it to his mouth.

“Well,” he says, mischief returning, “a bargain is a bargain. Whoever found you first earns your choice of reward.”

I glance back at Edward and Alcott. Edward’s gaze is steady. Alcott’s smile is wicked. Lazarus waits before me with the patience of a man pretending not to be impatient at all. My pulse hums.

I lift my chin. “You said whoever found me first.”

“Yes.” He nods.