“If we’re going to fix this,” Lottie declared, “we’re going to have to think outside the box. In fact,” she added, heart thudding, “we’re going to have to fly as far away from the box as possible.”
Lottie and Ellie flew back to the palace immediately, seven hours of silence like death following them across the world. At the end of their journey waited Ellie’s parents, the king and queen of Maradova, who held the power to rip Ellie and Lottie apart at the snap of their fingers.
All thoughts of the journalists, her fall at the gate, and Aimee Wu had vanished.
“Okay,” she told her princess, staring down the snarling wolf on the great doors of the palace. “This will be fine. I’ll sort this, and then we’ll talk to your parents.”
The door creaked open to reveal an endless vista of history, stretching along the corridor ahead. Previous rulers of the kingdom glared at the girls, following them with every echoing step on the marble floor.
Ellie shuddered when they passed the black-framed painting with green irises that dripped judgment like poison. Claude, the lone wolf of the Wolfsons, smirked down at them, a shadow in the hallway that acted as a bitter reminder of what became of those who couldn’t handle the expectations of the Maravish throne. Exile, complete and final.
Lottie would not let them fall to the same fate.
“Edwina”—Lottie nodded to the head of the house staff, who was holding a shimmering silver tea tray—“please make sure Ellie gets a hot drink and heads to bed; she’s very ill.”
She gave one final glance back at her princess. Her lips were purple like a bruise, and Lottie felt the weight of her trust pulling at her along with the wolf on the chain around her neck.
Jet-lagged and uncertain, Lottie had decided to do the one thing she dreaded more than anything else. She was going to talk to Jamie.
You can do this, she told herself. You can speak to him.
Making her way through the palace, every gold-framed painting, every chandelier and rare antique seemed to judge her for the terrible mistake she’d made.
“It wasn’t me,” she wanted to tell them. “Someone tampered with the grade. I’m going to fix this.”
But first she needed to get Jamie on her side.
She caught her reflection in a gilded mirror at the end of the narrow corridor by Jamie’s rooms. Tired. She looked tired, but she felt strong in the sportswear she’d worn on the plane journey, as strong as she could in this situation, and she allowed that sliver of hope to fill her with determination. Everyone had found a way to occupy themselves after Leviathan tricked them. For Lottie that had been through training—and she was now fitter than she’d ever been. Even if Jamie refused to train with her, she wasn’t going to let anything stop her.
I will be kind. I will be brave. I will be unstoppable.
If her ancestor Liliana Mayfutt could successfully run away from home, take on the identity of a man so people would take her seriously, and set up Rosewood Hall, one of the most prestigious schools in the world, then Lottie could grow strong on her own, and she wouldn’t let this little blip get in her way.
Pulling her hair up tight into a ponytail, she wondered if perhaps Simien had been right, that her hair was too long. It had sneaked up on her; just as the height difference between her and Ellie was slowly closing, her hair had grown unexpectedly. Mounds of memories and experiences were tangled up in the straw-colored curls.
Her fist hesitated in front of Jamie’s door, then she rapped her knuckles against it, hard, in the same way she’d seen Nikolay do a few times, hoping to trick Jamie into thinking it wasn’t her.
After only a few seconds, he opened the door, his gaze falling much higher than Lottie’s eyes, clearly expecting Nikolay, and as he took in his visitor he made no attempt to hide his irritation at being tricked.
He was shirtless, and still not wearing his wolf pendant. She blinked rapidly, tearing her eyes away before she could fully take him in, her cheeks going red with the sudden thought that this was a very stupid idea.
Whatever had remained of the regular boy in Jamie was officially gone. In its place stood a dark, brooding tower of firm muscles and eyes sparking with anger. Somehow he was taller, his dark hair longer but tied back. He truly looked like the deadly assassin he was trained to be, and it hadn’t crept up on them like Lottie’s hair or height—this had happened within weeks of the attempted kidnapping at the Tompkins Manor. It was as if the event had triggered something inside him, something he might never be able to undo.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, leaning an arm on the doorframe. “Why aren’t you at Binah’s?”
Beyond his shoulder, she glimpsed a corner of his room—immaculate. Cinnamon and spice swirled through the air, mixing with the scent of roses that lingered from Lottie’s deodorant.
It smelled weird.
Everything in the room was crimson. The bedding, carpets, and lighting, all an ominous red. And glinting like a precious jewel on his bedside table in a box was the wolf pendant, its gemstone glaring at her like an eye, a creature Jamie had sworn not to wear again until he felt worthy.
Lottie had tried to persuade him that what had happened at the Tompkins Manor was not his fault, that none of them could have known it was a trick, but no matter what she said he had been determined to punish himself. As a Partizan, her constant protector, he felt he should have shielded her from danger, refusing to believe that there was nothing that could have been done to change things.
Noticing her line of sight, Jamie leaned in farther, blocking her view until there was nowhere else to look except at him.
“What are you doing
