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She squirmed and frowned, like they didn’t fit.
It was occurring to her that this whole thing was rather dashing. Will looked just like the sort of handsome young lord’s son she had always imagined asking her to dance at a ball. I always knew I’d meet you, came the thought, out of nowhere. Of course, her aunt wouldn’t approve. This was one of those “unnecessary youthful experiences” her aunt wished her to avoid. One she never thought she’d have. She was conscious of her own pulse.
Something about the casual nature of the gesture made her flush.
Tom said, “You’re my sister.”
Instead, a bitter, transactional silence passed between them. It was the closest they had ever come to understanding each other. Violet ducked her head and hurried out.
Her final goodbye to Tom had been that ghostly feeling of his fingers in her hair.
“Take her,” said Justice.
“You will follow the Dark,” said Justice. “Unless we prevent it. That’s what Stewards are. We’re the last protectors. Against creatures like you.”
He was brave; it was infuriating, like his spotless tunic and his perfect posture.
“The boy savior,”
The collar of his shirt began untying itself, invisible hands pulling it open, exposing his neck, then his collarbone, then baring his chest.
“Did you get it from your mother?” said James, and the fingers on Will’s neck slid to his chin, tilting it up. They weren’t James’s real fingers. James wasn’t close enough to touch him.
He kept his eyes on Cyprian, but his awareness of James was a bright and dangerous thing. He knew what James’s power felt like, sliding over his skin. He half imagined he could still feel it, even as James mounted, a dangerous blue-eyed boy sharing Violet’s horse. And from the look that James gave him, eyes glittering over the cloth gag, James knew it too.
He adopted Cyprian and Marcus after his first son died six years ago.
No one could look at him and not want to possess him.
“I’m not Simon’s lover,” said James. “I didn’t ask.” Will flushed. “And there’s no way to know if you’re telling the truth now anyway.” “You could stick it in again.”
It was, undoubtedly, a challenge.
Will couldn’t help touching it, spreading his palm over the place where the stab wound had been only an hour before. The wound had healed—had vanished—it was utterly gone. There was no mark, no scar—James had nothing to show for the violence that had been done to him.
“How many times,” he heard himself say. “What?” “How many times did he try to brand you?”
“Do the Stewards realize you’re clever?” James’s voice was intimate, new, and subtly approving, like he’d learned a secret.
“I think what people were is less important than what they are. And what people are is less important than what they could be.”
The provocative words were certainly a ploy. It suited James to keep him here, Will thought. And James was good at holding attention. Was it a natural skill or a learned one? Something from his other life or from this one? James was like the locked door to a world of secrets, unattainable and alluring.
“Maybe fighting is knowing there’s darkness in you, and still choosing to do what’s right,”
Will said, “He killed my mother.”
For a moment she stared at him, the unusually earnest look in his eyes, coupled with the striking features and strange clothes that gave him an otherworldly look. She felt like she was seeing him for the first time.
Violet frowned. “Matters of the flesh. You wouldn’t understand.” “I know what a kiss is,” said Cyprian, but he’d flushed slightly.
“Because you might be the only Steward left,” said Will, and he saw Cyprian go white.

