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Aldric corrected it so smoothly that anyone watching would have assumed the mistake was part of the dance.

"The same long fingers," he continued. "Even the way you hold them reminds me of her."

His thumb moved once over my pulse.

"I knew her a long time ago, when she was considerably younger than you are now."

I kept my eyes on his face.

"She was compliant too," he added. "For a while."

The clock began to strike ten.

The music ended beneath the first chime, but Aldric still didn't release me. He simply kept hold of my hand until the quartet began another piece, then drew me into it as though nothing had happened.

One chime followed another across the Hall.

I had been supposed to leave at ten.

Aldric knew that.

There was no reason for him to insist on a third dance unless he knew exactly where I had planned to go and wanted to keep me from getting there.

"Relax, Miss Hale," he murmured as he turned me again. "The night is young."

At a quarter past ten, the silver thread around my left wrist began to burn.

I faltered.

This wasn't the warmth I had grown used to feeling beneath my skin. The pain sharpened almost immediately, tightening around my wrist beneath the satin glove until I had to fight the urge to grab at it. Then the thread pulled hard toward the doors.

Toward the courtyard.

Toward the Pit.

And through it, I felt Silas.

There were no words. What reached me was pain, the hot rush of blood, and something building beneath both of them that felt too large for him to contain. Buried deep under it was the part of him I recognized, still trying to stay in control. The part that counted his fingers when the world became too much. The part that had once carried me home by the hood of my coat rather than leave me behind.

That part was still there, but only barely.

Silas was slipping.

I stopped.

Aldric's hand tightened at my waist. His thumb pressed down over my wrist, directly against the burning thread, while the pleasant expression on his face remained unchanged.

"Miss Hale," he said quietly. "We haven't finished."

I looked at him.

Behind his shoulder, the envoys were still watching, and so were the Wardens. Marion's penciled warning came back to me: don't bargain. So did the plan: remain publicly compliant, preserve the Charter, get out of the Hall before the pens opened, return for the Severing and give Aldric no refusal he could use against me.

He had arranged the night so that I couldn't do all of those things.

If I stayed in his arms, I preserved the plan and abandoned Silas. If I left, I gave Aldric the public act of defiance he had been waiting for.

There was no way to protect both things anymore.