Chapter 3 3

The package was a box. Inside the box was a sparrow, dead, wings pinned open in a shape that took me exactly one horrible second to recognize as the Hollow Mark, and tucked beneath it, a single unsigned note in handwriting I didn't recognize.

Found you.

"That's cheerful," I offered, because apparently my coping mechanism for existential terror was commentary.

"Two words to a sensible person," Cassian murmured, studying the note without touching it. "To me it says someone already knew you'd come here before you did. Which means either my household has a leak, or you were followed the moment you walked into that workshop this morning."

"Comforting."

"I didn't say it to comfort you."

"Noted." I made myself look at the sparrow a second time, past the horror of it, the way Jonas had taught me to look at forgeries, for the details a message wants you to miss because you're too busy being afraid. "This was made carefully. Someone took time pinning the wings exactly right. That's not rage in any sense, that right there is patience."

"An excellent point, and also deeply unsettling coming from someone who identified it that fast."

"I have a complicated relationship with dead birds."

"I'm sure there's a story there."

"There's always a story," I murmured. "Most of mine end badly."

He almost smiled at that, which felt like an accomplishment I hadn't meant to earn, and then the household staff swept in to clear the box away and the moment collapsed back into logistics, guest lists, cover stories, the enormous tedious machinery of pretending to be engaged to a man I'd known for approximately three hours.

The summit itself started two days later, and if I had expected the ruling Houses of Duskhaven to be dignified, elegant people conducting themselves with restraint, I was disappointed within the first ten minutes, watching two grown House heads nearly come to blows over seating arrangements at the opening dinner.

"Everyone here hates everyone else," I murmured to Cassian, tucked against his side in a dress that cost more than my shop's monthly rent, playing the part of adoring fiancée with what I privately felt was Academy Award levels of commitment.

"Everyone here has hated everyone else for four generations. It's practically a hobby." He guided me smoothly past a cluster of whispering nobles, hand warm at the small of my back.

"Smile more. You look like you're calculating an escape route."

"I am calculating an escape route. It's a skill, not a mood."

"It's very convincing. Also slightly terrifying."

"Good. Keep them nervous."

That earned an actual laugh out of him, short and surprised, like it had escaped before he'd approved it. "You're better at this than I expected."

"I've been lying to powerful people for a living since I was twenty. This is basically Tuesday."

"Remind me never to actually make you angry."

"Too late," I singsonged sweetly, and he laughed again, and somewhere in the back of my mind a small, treacherous voice noted that I liked making him laugh far more than the situation strictly called for.

A passing noblewoman paused just long enough to examine my dress, my ring, and my face in that exact order, the way people here apparently evaluated worth. "Draven's fiancée," she murmured to her companion, not quietly enough. "Nobody's ever heard of her family."

"Small family," I chirped brightly, before Cassian could intervene. "We keep to ourselves. Very boring people, honestly, mostly farmers and one memorably enthusiastic beekeeper."

The woman blinked, clearly unprepared for that level of specific, cheerful nonsense, and drifted off looking faintly confused, which I considered a personal victory.

"A beekeeper," Cassian murmured, once we were alone again.

"Great uncle Rufus. Very passionate about hives. Tragic falling out with a swarm in his youth."

"You're making this up as you go."

"Obviously. It's the only way to keep it interesting."

It was Alaric Draven, Cassian's uncle, who approached us during the second course, silver haired and soft spoken in the specific way of men who have never once needed to raise their voice to get exactly what they wanted. "Cassian. And this must be your intended. I confess I was surprised to hear the news. You've always been so particular."

"Uncle. This is Marlowe."

"Marlowe." He tested my name slowly, turning it over like he was testing its weight. "An unusual name. Where did you say your family was from?"

"I didn't," I replied pleasantly. "Small oversight. My family kept mostly to the eastern districts. Nothing very interesting to report."

"How modest." Something in his eyes didn't match his warm tone at all, calculating in a way that made the back of my neck prickle. "I do love a woman with secrets. They're so much more interesting than the alternative."

He drifted away before I could respond, and Cassian's hand tightened almost imperceptibly at my waist.

"That was not a comfortable conversation," I murmured.

"No. It wasn't." His jaw had gone tight in a way I hadn't seen from him yet. "My uncle doesn't do small talk. If he approached you directly, he's already looking for something."

"Looking for what?"

"I don't know yet." He guided me toward the terrace doors, voice dropping lower. "But I intend to find out before he does."

Outside, the night air was sharp enough to clear my head, and for one strange, quiet moment neither of us said anything at all, the party noise muffled behind glass, the canal below reflecting a hundred lit windows like scattered coins.

"Can I ask you something?" I ventured finally.

"You're going to whether I agree or not."

"Fair." I studied his profile in the low light. "Do you actually think your family's innocent in all this? Or are you just hoping hard enough that it feels the same?"

Something flickered across his face, and for once the easy, charming mask slipped enough that I caught a glimpse of something rawer underneath. "My father catalogued Hollow Mark carriers for this family before he vanished. I found the ledgers two years ago and I have never been able to decide whether that makes him a victim of whatever's happening now, or the person who started it."

My whole chest went tight. "You never told me that."

"I'm telling you now." He turned to face me fully, close enough that the space between us felt charged with something neither business nor pretend. "I need you to know I'm not hiding it to protect my family's name. I'm hiding it because I don't know the answer myself, and I am terrified of what it means if the wrong version turns out to be true."

"That's a very honest thing to admit to a woman you've known for four days."

"You forged a customs stamp in my building and threatened to disappear so thoroughly I'd doubt you existed. I think we're past the part where either of us pretends this is normal." Something almost vulnerable flickered across his face before he schooled it back into something steadier.

"For what it's worth, I trust you more after four days than I've trusted most people I've known my entire life. I don't know what to do with that information yet, but I thought you should have it too."

My chest did something complicated and unhelpful at that, warm and terrified in roughly equal measure.

Before I could respond, the terrace doors burst open behind us, a household guard breathless and pale, and whatever he said next made every trace of warmth drain out of the night entirely.

"Sir, there's been another one. A body, found in the eastern canal an hour ago. Same mark burned into the palm. And the guard who found it says the victim was carrying identification for a woman named Marlowe Kestrel."