“How nice for you,” she replies, deadly quiet, her whisper rasping like the words are being dragged out of her. “This has nothing to do with me.”

“Don’t you see?” I’m practically tripping over my words, my own whisper fierce. “It has everything to do with you. I realized last night that there’s a price I won’t pay, no matter what. That there’s a price my brother never would’ve wanted me to pay.”

Our gazes are locked still, and I see something stir in hers. I press on, desperately. I have to make her see.

“I think your father would tell you the same thing. I think he’d tell you there are some prices not worth paying. What it would do to you, what you’d lose—you’re not this person. Trust me, I’ve been to the edge of this cliff, I’ve looked right over. I won’t let you do this.”

“You’re not me, Gideon,” Sofia hisses, her expression fierce. “And you don’t know me. We’re different. I’ve lost my father, my home, everyone I’ve ever cared about—if I lose one more thing taking LaRoux out, so be it. It’ll be over. It doesn’t matter.”

Her eyes are brimming, and I’m aching desperately to touch her—not like I am now, my hands banded around her arms to keep her from running, but properly. Slowly, carefully, so she could turn her head if she wanted, I lift my thumb to brush it across her cheekbone, wiping away the tears. “It matters,” I whisper. “You don’t know how much you’ve got left to lose. Oh, Sof. It matters.”

She doesn’t turn away, and the fact that she’s letting me hold her makes my whole body hum. She’s one degree softer, just one, but when her eyes flick up to meet mine again it feels like the first drops of the thaw. “I don’t know what else to do,” she whispers. “This is all I have.”

“We do what we planned. We find the rift, we stop LaRoux from taking over the Council. We can do it,” I promise, heady, knowing I shouldn’t—knowing I can’t make that promise. And then, when we’re done, there’ll be time to earn your forgiveness. There’ll be time to leave the Knave behind.

Another degree. Another couple of drops, the snow melting. She tilts her chin up just a fraction, and my heart seizes as I recognize the invitation. Slowly, reverently, I duck my head to brush her lips with mine, then deepen the kiss. My hand presses into the cold marble at her back, and hers slides under my jacket, fingertips pushing over the equipment I have strapped to my torso to find a place they can press through the thin fabric of my shirt, against my skin.

I’m buzzing, I’m electricity, and it takes me several beats to realize that some of that buzzing is external—the dancing has halted for applause. Something’s happening on the dais, but I’m still too distracted to care. I lift my head, blinking, and she shows me her dimples for a moment as she lifts one finger to check her lipstick hasn’t smeared.

“He’s here,” she whispers, though she’s still looking at me.

I nod, still reluctant to pull away. Still searching her gaze. “Promise me,” I murmur. “We do this together.”

“Together,” she whispers, and my heart soars. Now, all she needs is the gentlest of pushes to ease me back and away, so I can turn and trace the applause to the platform at the front of the ballroom.

Monsieur LaRoux is taking the stage.

He looks the same as he always has—piercing blue eyes and close-cropped white hair, a face that’s recognizable all over the galaxy. He’s flanked by a pair of bodyguards, and just behind him come a couple who’ve spent the past year on nearly as many HV screens as he has. Even in black tie, Merendsen still looks military—it’s in the way he stands. He only softens when he rests a hand at the small of Lilac LaRoux’s back, ushering her up the stairs after her father, so that he can stand between her and the photographers at the bottom of the stairs.

I’ve talked with them on text chat dozens of times, and via the feeds I hijacked when I locked down their personal security arrangements, I can get a look at their faces any time I like. But this is the first time we’ve all been in the same physical space, and I’m transfixed. They look exactly like their publicity pictures, from the way she turns her head to gaze up at him, to the way he keeps an arm around her, smiling faintly as their eyes meet. Everybody knows the way those two look at each other. Like there’s nobody else in the room. I swallow down a moment of the bitterness that always surges when I watch them together on the screen. They make it look so easy, being together.

Sofia’s staring alongside me, but we’re hardly at risk of blowing our cover. The whole room’s transfixed. Then she shifts her weight, starting to step forward toward the trio onstage, like she’s forgotten I’m even there. I grab her arm, and she tries to shake me off. “What are you doing?” I whisper, stepping up beside her.

She ignores me, turning her head to conduct a slow sweep of the room. She takes in the security goons one more time, lets her gaze pause on the stage, every muscle in her body tense—like a hound on a scent, pointing her quarry.

I squeeze her arm. “Time to go,” I whisper in her ear, tugging her back toward the pillar—nervousness surging up all over again, the fear that she’ll forget her promise to me.

And abruptly, as though some decision is made, or conclusion reached, she lets me draw her away. She turns to take hold of my lapels and pull me back against the pillar, then stretches up on her toes to kiss me. Her hand curls around the nape of my neck, sending another shot of electricity down my spine as her skin touches mine, and her lips brush my ear. “Time to go,” she agrees. “We need to look like we’re sneaking out to…Well, try and look like you want me.”

No problem, Dimples. No problem at all.

We keep our hands linked as we slip through the door, the space between my shoulder blades twitching with the discomfort of turning my back on all that security. She uses her grip to drag me to a halt when I’m about to stride away down the corridor, instead pulling me a few steps in, and then leaving me to skip back and press her ear to the door, listening for pursuit. After a few seconds, she nods. “Hold still,” she says, stepping in close to reach up and start pulling my tie undone with one hand, unfastening the top buttons of my shirt with the other.

“Is now really the time?” I hesitate as soon as the joke is out of my mouth—I might have her agreement, but I know I don’t have her forgiveness yet.

But she flashes me a small smile and pulls out a tube of lipstick from her purse, reapplying it carefully, then pulling me down so she can press her lips to my collar, leaving a crimson smudge there. She steps back to give me another once-over, then tugs at one side of my shirt until it’s untucked from my waistband.

Next it’s on to her own preparations. She musses her hair, running her fingers through her curls until they’re sitting askew, then leans down to unfasten her towering heels, stepping out of them and hooking her fingers through the straps to carry them. If anyone finds us, they won’t be that confused about what we were doing, looking like this.

When she looks back up at me, she’s steel once more, nothing but determination in her gaze. “Let’s go. The clock’s running.”