The door finally cracked open, and there he stood, staring down at me. I offered a tentative smile. He didn’t return it—which was fine. Really. It was. If I kept saying it, maybe it’d become true. After several awkward seconds, Coco swung the door open and stepped outside. Ansel followed. “We’ll be right back,” she promised, touching my arm as she passed. “We just need to . . . be somewhere else.”

Reid closed the door behind me.

“I should pack too,” I said, my voice overly bright. Cursing internally, I cleared my throat and adopted a more natural tone. “I mean—there isn’t much to pack, but still. The quicker we’re on the road again, the better, right? The funeral is tomorrow. We only have today to convince Blaise to join us.” I cringed into the silence. “If you need more time here, though, one of Claud’s horses threw a shoe, so they aren’t waiting on us, per se. More like Thierry. I think he’s the troupe farrier, something about apprenticing for a man up in Amandine . . .” Hunched over his bag, Reid gave no indication he was listening. I kept talking anyway, incapable of stopping. “He might be the only person alive who speaks less than you do.” I gave a weak chuckle. “He’s quite the brooding hero. Did—did I see him using magic against the bandits last night? Are he and his brother—?”

Reid gave a terse nod.

“And . . . did you happen to persuade them into joining us against Morgane?”

Though his entire body tensed, he still didn’t turn. “No.”

My nausea intensified to something akin to guilt. “Reid . . .” Something in my voice finally made him turn. “Last night was my fault. Sometimes I just react—” I blew out a frustrated breath, worrying a strand of my hair. “I didn’t mean to lose your Balisarda. I’m so sorry.”

For everything.

He caught the strand of my hair, and we both watched it slide through his fingers. I willed him to hold me, to kiss away this tension between us. He handed me a clean shirt instead. “I know.”

The rigidity of his shoulders said what he did not.

But it’s still gone.

I wanted to shake him. I wanted to scream and rage until I shattered the reproachful silence he cloaked himself in like armor. I wanted to tie us together until we bruised from the binds and force him to talk to me.

Of course, I did none of those things.

Whistling low, I trailed my fingers across the lowest shelf. Unable to sit still. Baskets of dried fruit, eggs, and bread cluttered the space, along with wooden toy soldiers and peacock feathers. An odd coalition. “I can’t believe you found others so quickly. I’d gone my entire life without meeting a single one.” I shrugged and a slid a peacock feather behind my ear. “True, most of that life I spent sequestered in the Chateau—where no one would believe such a thing—and the rest I spent thieving in the streets, but still.” Whirling to face him, I stuck a feather behind his ear as well. He grumbled irritably but didn’t remove it. “I know I’m the first to flip fate the bird, but what are the chances?”

Reid stuffed the last of his clothing in his bag. “Deveraux collects things.”

I eyed the cluttered shelves. “I can see that.”

“No. He collects us.”

“Oh.” I grimaced. “And no one thinks that’s weird?”

“Everything about Deveraux is weird.” He cinched his bag shut, throwing it over his shoulder—then stilled, gaze falling to the table. Mine followed. A book lay open there. A journal. We both stared at it for a split second.

Then we lunged.

“Ah ah ah.” Snatching the book from beneath his fingers, I cackled and danced away. “You’re getting slow, old man. Now—where were we? Ah, yes.” I pointed at the leather cover. “Another delicious journal. One would think you’d have learned your lesson about leaving these lying about.” He sprang at me, but I leapt atop his cot, swinging the pages out of reach. He didn’t return my grin. A small voice in my head warned I should stop—warned this behavior, once entertaining, was now decidedly not—even as I opened my mouth to continue. “What shall we find in this one? Sonnets praising my wit and charm? Portraits immortalizing my beauty?”

I was still laughing when a leaf of parchment shook free.

I caught it absently, turning it over to examine it.

It was a drawing of his face—a masterful charcoal portrait of Reid Diggory. Clad in full Chasseur regalia, he stared up at me with an intensity that transcended the page, unnerving in its depth. I leaned closer in fascination. He seemed younger here, the lines of his face smoother, rounder. The cut of his hair short and neat. Save the four angry gashes peeking above his collar, he looked as immaculate as the man I’d married.

“How old were you here?” I traced the captain’s medal on his coat, vaguely recognizing it from our time together at the Tower. It’d been nondescript then, a simple piece of his uniform. I’d hardly noticed it. Now, however, it seemed to consume the entire portrait. I couldn’t tear my eyes away.

Abruptly, Reid stepped backward, dropping his arms. “I’d just turned sixteen.”

“How can you tell?”

“The wounds at my neck.”

“Which are from . . . ?”

He tugged the portrait away and shoved it into his bag. “I told you how.” His hands moved swiftly now, gathering my own bag and tossing it to me. I caught it without a word. The beginning of a memory took shape in my mind, blurry around the edges. Sharpening with every second.

How did you become captain?

Are you sure you want to know?

Yes.

“Are you ready?” Reid threw his bag over his shoulder, eyes sweeping the clutter of the cot for any forgotten belongings. “If we’re going to reach La Ventre by nightfall, we need to leave now. Les Dents is treacherous, but at least it’s a road. We’re venturing into the wild.”

I stepped down from his cot on wooden legs. “You’ve been to La Ventre before, haven’t you?”

He nodded tersely.

A few months after I joined the Chasseurs, I found a pack of loup garou outside the city.

“There won’t be any bounty hunters or thieves there,” he added. “No witches either.”

We killed them.

I grew roots at the realization.

Glancing at me over his shoulder, he pushed open the door. “What is it?”

“The werewolves you found outside the city . . . the ones you killed to become captain . . . were they—?”

Reid’s expression shuttered. He didn’t move for a long moment. Then, curiously, he drew a peculiar knife from his bandolier. Its handle had been carved from bone into the shape of a howling—

The breath left my chest in a rush.

A howling wolf.

“Oh, god,” I whispered, acid coating my tongue.

“A gift from the”—Reid’s throat bobbed—“from the Archbishop. To celebrate my first kill. He gave it to me at my captain ceremony.”

I retreated a step, knocking into the table. The teacups there shuddered. “Tell me that isn’t what I think it is, Reid. Tell me that isn’t the bone of a werewolf.”

“I can’t tell you that.”