My Lady Quicksilver

harm. If you wish to wait in the carriage, you may.”

“If I see my father, then I know I shall not come to any harm.” Her expression tightened. “I cannot say the same for him.”

Cold foreboding traveled down his spine. “Do you have your pistol?”

“Of course. It’s strapped to my thigh.” She pasted an impressively convincing smile on her face. “Fear not, my lord, for I don’t intend to hunt him down.” She reached up and trailed the edge of her fan over his lips. “I also have no intention of waiting in the carriage.” This time her smile softened with genuineness.

“It was worth a try.”

She laughed under her breath, low and husky, the sound stirring over his skin like soft fingers.

“Can you see Garrett or Perry?” he asked, looking around. “I wish I could wear the aural communicator.”

“Garrett is probably still gaping like a breeched cod,” Rosa murmured, catching a handful of her skirts as she smoothly took the first stair at his side. “They’ll have to leave the hackney out of sight and walk on foot. I shouldn’t expect them very soon, not with this crush.”

More people turned to glance at them as they reached the top of the stairs, whispers sprouting.

At the door, a pair of Coldrush Guards gave him an uneasy glance. The prince consort and queen must be in attendance then. Lynch’s gut clenched. As if tonight wouldn’t be difficult enough.

Handing over his tickets at the door, he and Rosa slipped inside the marble foyer. A black-and-white checkerboard of tiles extended all the way to a gilded pair of spiral stairs.

“Where to?” Rosa whispered, looking up at him. She was almost breathless with excitement, her eyes sparkling in the candlelight.

“Upstairs,” he murmured, shielding her from the buffeting crowd with his body. Dozens of gold-plated servant drones wheeled through the crowd and he snatched a pair of glasses off the flat tray on one of their heads. Offering her the champagne, he sipped at his own blud-wein. The crowd was starting to move, and across the foyer he saw Garrett protectively ushering Perry inside.

If the mechs were here, they’d know him on sight. They wouldn’t, however, recognize the pair of Nighthawks unless he did something to draw attention to them. Lynch glanced away, focusing on the liveried servants that mingled with the crowd. None of them looked as though they’d led a hard life and he could see no sign of a distinctive mech limb anywhere.

“Not the servants,” she murmured. “These men are from the enclaves. There’s no way they could blend in enough for the Echelon to mistake them.”

She was right. They’d be somewhere deep within the bowels of the building, perhaps posing as workmen behind the scenes or maintenance workers.

A blue blood minced past with a pale young woman on a leash, her gaze downcast and a thin, gauzy white robe revealing inches of decadent skin. Rosa’s eyes hardened and Lynch steered her away with a hand to the small of her back. One glance told him she knew exactly what he was doing; that diamond-sharp gaze scored him and for a moment he felt a flush of shame, as though by his very complicity, he himself had put the golden shackle around the young blood slave’s throat.

“There’s nothing I can do about it,” he told her. “Nor you.”

“So we simply ignore it?”

Swallowing her champagne, she slammed the glass flute down on the tray of a passing servant drone and jerked away from his touch.

“We keep our minds on the business at hand.” He grabbed her elbow in a hard grip and Rosa stilled, her back rigid with barely suppressed fury. Lynch sighed under his breath and stepped closer, lowering his face close to her ear. “I have no influence here. I’m as much an outsider as you are, Rosa.”

One look at Rosa’s face, at those implacable black eyes told him she wasn’t swayed. “If you could, would you help her?”

Something about the stillness of her figure told him the answer was deadly important to her. She looked right through him, as though seeking to bare his soul, to find something inside him that she desperately needed to find.

“Do you have to ask?” His hand gentled on her arm. Hell, he couldn’t believe what he was thinking, his mind branded with shock. She’d admitted her brother was a humanist, but her own thoughts on the matter were dangerously revealing. “Rosa, you need to keep such thoughts close, especially here. If anyone overhears…”

Rosa sucked in a sharp breath, her entire body quivering beneath his touch. “They would think I had humanist tendencies. Perhaps I should say something. Perhaps this eternal damned silence—this hold-your- tongue-or-die attitude is what keeps women like that in shackles. This lack of a voice—it’s the very reason we are here. The reason there is a war going on, played out in secret beneath the Echelon’s very noses.”

She was shaking so violently he could barely contain her. Darting a look over his shoulder, he pressed her against the wall, using his body to screen hers. For once, he was relieved at the oppressive laughter and gossip nearby, for it kept Rosa’s damning words from common ears.

Their eyes met. She was angry and he didn’t quite understand.

“If I said something—”

“Then you would die, and I with you,” he said curtly.

Rosa’s lips parted, her eyes widening. He watched thoughts racing in rapid emotion across her face, like the shadow of cloud cover over the ground.

“They would have to go through me first,” he explained. “But I would die, and you too, and perhaps there would be some to cry ‘martyr,’ but in the end it wouldn’t matter. Nothing would change. That girl will go home with her collar and leash, and her master will take as much blood from her as he desires.” The back of his gloved fingers trailed over her jaw. She looked so lost, so crushed. “That is why I must stop these humanists, these mechs. They will bring war and death down upon the Echelon, but they will trample the innocent in their path just as much as the enemy. If we don’t find them, theirs will be a hollow victory, earning them nothing but hate and fear. And when the Echelon fear something, they destroy it.”

She quivered, her lashes drifting shut—but not before he saw the diamond glimmer of a tear in her eye.

“Thousands will die,” he said. “You know I’m hunting humanists, but the Echelon shall not be as discreet. They’ll simply round up whoever they can and execute them all until they get what they want.”

“That’s not true,” she whispered hoarsely. “There has to be a way. We have to have some way to fight —”

His mouth tasted like ash, his worst fears springing to life. We… She’d named herself amongst them as surely as if she’d claimed it directly to his face. Doubt assailed him—a moment where he wondered just how deeply she was involved, how much trouble a spy in the Nighthawks could cause.

But she couldn’t feign everything, could she? If she was a humanist, then she never would have kissed him, never would have…

Mercury did.

That was different. That was lust, a burning brand between them. A flickering match thrown on a puddle of oil. Whatever lay between he and Rosa, it was more than that.

Or it could have been, if he let it.

Still, his thumb stroked over her chin, doubt crippling him. He had to know. Was this real, or was she the greatest actress to ever grace a stage?

He took her mouth, capturing a gasp. Rosa’s hands fisted in his coat instantly, her body pressing against his as she kissed him. This was madness to take such liberties here. The corner was in shadows, weak golden light dripping down the red and white wallpaper throughout the foyer, but he knew this would be noticed and remarked upon.

Still…the taste of her set the darkness roaring inside. A need to claim, to take her as his. Damn her. His hand fisted in the base of her elegant chignon. He was losing himself in her, no matter what he promised himself.

Just once he cursed duty and pushed it aside. Fuck the Council. The prince consort could go to hell. He wanted this—he wanted her, with all his heart. A lifetime would never be enough.