Taron’s jewel-embossed crop taps methodically on his thigh as we ride down Canal street along the waterway that separates the city from palace grounds. Taron spent the entirety of the previous day with the Prince and royal family. Hunting, drinking, riding, and who knows what else. He’d been late to rise and now the falling sun casts long shadows across the street.

  “Well,” Taron says, drawing in a sharp breath and blowing it out. “I wish I had better news.”

  The pit of my stomach—already roiling from the lackluster smile he gave me when we left the brownstone together—does a sickening flop.

  “He’s still got it into his head that he’s entitled to you. That whole ‘royalty gets to claim the Golds’ thing. If he can’t have you, well, no one else can either. Except Maurus.” He glances at me with an expression just shy of a grimace.

  “Why except Maurus?” My throat rasps, dry as parchment.

  “He’s under the impression you despise Maurus. So, naturally, it’s either him or Maurus.” He twirls his crop and his horse doesn’t so much as flinch—clearly he’s never hit her with it. “I did attempt to offer myself as an alternative, but he’s not interested in any proposition you won’t detest. But I’m hopeful that, with time, I can get him to see reason.”

  I twist my parasol and watch the fabric’s patterned shadow spin and play across the cobblestones. I’ve never felt more like property. Something to be owned, traded, bargained with. “You shouldn’t put your neck out for me. You should marry someone of your choosing.” Taron has never looked at me like the Prince, or even Maurus.

  “Ha!” A rueful smile curls Taron’s lips and he casts his face away and towards the canal. “I’m unlikely to ever marry someone of my choosing.”

  “Why’s that?”

  He sits back and his mare stops. He percusses his fingers on the pommel. “I have lovers in many places. But they are not… like you.”

  I frown, trying to understand. “My gold?”

  He turns to face me and something apprehensive lingers on his not-quite smile. “The breasts, dear.”

  “Oh?” I blink several times. He dislikes my breasts? “Oh.”

  He shrugs as if it’s nothing, but there’s a hitch to it, an unease. He urges his mare forward, slightly faster this time. “It’s not a future I expect to have.”

  I nudge Sebastian after him and catch his forearm. “It’s one you deserve.”

  Both our horses stop and his throat bobs. He covers my hand in his and squeezes. “As do you. And yet, here we are.”

  A bell tolls and we both straighten. The sound comes from a gate or watchtower far south of us. Taron’s catches up my horse’s rein and my knuckles blanch white on my parasol’s handle.

  The palace’s Wyvern Bell rings out in reply and the roar cuts across the air a half-second before we see it.

  A blue-gold wyvern this time, its scales still glistening with that same iridescent sheen in the glare of the afternoon sun. It soars towards us from the southern edge of the city, great tautly-stretched wings beating the air.

  Taron kicks his mare into a gallop and Sebastian lurches after him, needing little prompting from Taron’s grip on his reins. We’re too far from the brownstone to ever make it back in time.

  “Where?” I begin.

  Taron steers us towards the line of buildings opposite the canal and to a building with a large awning. He reins our horses into a skidding stop and drags me out of the saddle and onto the business’s landing.

  “The horses!” I cry, reaching for Sebastian.

  “They’ll be fine, wyverns never eat them.” But even as Taron says it, a servant bursts from the establishment and corrals both horses down a narrow alley on the side of the building that’s covered by a metal awning and slams a gate shut to contain them.

  Another terrible scream-like roar rings out and a massive plume of fire erupts overhead, billowing over the terracotta tiles of the building’s overhang.

  Taron loops an arm around my waist and slams his shoulder into the door, yanking us both into darkness.

  The servant rushes in behind us and slams the door, shutting out the crackling dry heat.

  I clap my hands to my chest as I draw in ragged breaths. That was too close.

  A man in a black apron walks to the front window and pulls aside the curtain to peer outside. “Another wyvern? That’ll be the third in four days now. Wonder what’s got them riled up.” He slides down a barred shutter over the window.

  Me, that’s what’s got them riled up. I shiver and blink my surroundings into focus as my eyes adjust from the bright afternoon to this dim interior. It looks like a small tavern, or a smoking lounge. Both, perhaps, by the sour reek of woody tobacco and fermented liquors.

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  “Indeed, another.” Taron takes my parasol from me, closes it, and tucks it into a rack by the door. Then he straightens his waistcoat and guides me over to overstuffed chairs situated on either side of a small table. “Are you alright?”

  My hands shake so hard I have to clasp them together. I nod and flop rather ungracefully into one chair. “Quite, thank you. It can’t get us in here?”

  “No, and I don’t think it saw us.” Taron reclines into the other chair and pulls a pipe from his pocket. He sets about packing it with rhythmic familiarity. “We’ll wait here until they’ve driven it off. No sense in risking your life.”

  The ambiance in this small tavern has a distinctly different edge to it than Black’s, where I found Abel. Here, there’s a calm and quiet to it. The few other patrons at the front of the room settle back in their chairs, puff on their pipes, and sip glasses of liquor. One elderly man rises to peer out of the now-barred window, each exhale releasing a circular puff of smoke.

  “Have you encountered wyverns often in your travels?” I ask to fill the void of guilt I feel towards him—if it weren’t for me, the wyverns might still only visit this city once or so a year. Yet another consequence of my selfish aversion to the Prince’s advances—if I hadn’t run outside that day, it never would have seen me and maybe this entire mess wouldn’t have started.

  He shrugs, strikes a match, and holds the little flame over his pipe. He puffs on it a few times and then blows the smoke out. “A few. I, myself, am no knight or High Guard. I bring with me a number of those skilled in such endeavors, but the pass is quite forested. Most of the time, we’ve been able to simply take cover. We’ve only been vulnerable on the Pachuate side and often simply dumping some shiny valuables is enough to distract them while we escape. A wyvern’s priority is, always, the pursuit of gold. Only a few times have we had to engage them and... well. We lost a lot of men. I’d rather not, if at all possible, do it again. Wyverns are good at what they do.”

  A chill rolls over me. Even Taron, with his Wyvernmail and a regular traveler through dangerous lands, fears the wyverns.

  The barkeep shuffles over to our table and sets down two glasses on the table. He fills one with amber liquor and nudges it to Taron. “Good to see you, lad. Anything for the Miss?”

  Taron nods and blows out a puff of thick white smoke. “She’ll have the same. Thank you, Samir.”

  I open my mouth to disagree, then promptly snap it shut. The barkeep splashes some of the amber liquid into my glass and bows away.

  Taron smiles and nods to my clasped hands. “For your nerves.” He offers me his pipe.

  I shake my head at the pipe. The smell burns my nose enough already, no need to burn my lungs too.

  Taron chuckles and pops the end of the pipe back into his mouth. “Now, let’s be sensible here too. Because Emory will pick his bride at the Summer Solstice Ball and once he has his pretty new bride, he may not care so much about you by next season. More opportunities may present themselves. I could also take you to Pachuate. It wouldn’t be... admirable, but perhaps out of sight might lead to out of mind. He won’t love the idea of risking you to a Pachuate man, but perhaps it’d be more appealing to him than having to look at you in his Court. Like his father did with your mother.”

  I don’t have until next season. The estate won’t make it, and Clara certainly won’t refuse Maurus’s offer for so long. “I feel very callous and ungrateful for asking this, but... why did you and your mother take us in? Take this upon you? Keep me with all the trouble I’ve brought?”

  His lips quirk into a smile, but it quickly falls away. His gaze drops and drifts away and a terribly sad expression flickers across his face. “My father and your father... Let’s just say they were friends once, and that my family owes your family a debt. One of mutual respect and admiration. Your father was just, and he was just to my father. And thus I am to you. Like me, my father’s job was to make friends. He had good friends and terrible friends. Your father was a good friend.” He falls silent and fingers the pipe.

  “I think I’m beginning to understand that,” I whisper. My father had been so much to so many people.

  Taron leans across the small table between us. “Do you know the story of how your mother came to live in Kheovaria?”

  Goosebumps break out across my skin. “No? She’s not from Kheovaria?” I’d always been told my mother was a lower noble—one with an unusually high percentage of gold markings, like me.

  “Well…” He takes a long swallow of his whiskey and taps his fingers on the glass. “To be perfectly honest, I don’t know where she came from originally. She lived in Pachuate when your father met her, was my understanding. Your father asked my father to bring her here. We are merchants, you see, traders, and smuggling is... well, simply one of the trades.” He flashes me that devilish smile. “So, my father came up with a name—Chartruse, as you know. A lower noble Kheovarian trading family, living abroad in Pachuate. He brought her back to Kheovaria with the story of her family’s passing and her desire to return to her homeland. Being of lower nobility, there were few assurances required—especially for a Gold like her. She was, as you can imagine, welcomed with open arms.”

  “She was of Pachuate, then?” Skies, apparently I know even less that I thought about my own heritage.

  Taron shrugs. “Honestly, I doubt it, but who can say? If my father knew, he didn’t tell me, nor did he record it in his journals—though he would never have put such a thing in writing. His death wasn’t exactly planned, so perhaps he’d have told me if he’d had the opportunity. The Pachuate have very few gold-marked, and little markings at that. But I can’t say for sure.”

  I take a drink of my own whiskey, hoping it will, in fact, settle the nerves jumping more than ever now. My head swims with questions. “Did you ever meet her?”

  His expression saddens. “When I was very young, but I’m afraid I don’t remember. I would have been four when she died.”

  I nod. Skies, I knew that. My mother died birthing me and I certainly have everyone’s age memorized. It’s a simple calculation to do.

  “Anyway, that’s why I and my mother help you, for better or for worse. I should also point out, in good faith, that it is also self-serving of us. Golds often rise to positions of great power. Though most don’t resist it as much as you.” He winks at me.

  I can’t help but smile. It’s a small wonder he doesn’t hold it against me. “I do, deeply, appreciate everything you’ve done for me and for my family.”

  He waves a hand, as if just like that, my debt is forgotten. “In other news, I think I ought to warn you that at the end of this month, my mother and I will travel to our estate for a peasant festival. It’s not one that most nobles even recognize, but it’s meaningful for the peasants. We’ve made a sort of tradition of making a speech to the people, thanking them and what not, it helps boost morale for the coming harvest season. We’ll only be a few days and back before Summer’s High Court. Certainly before the Summer Solstice Ball.”

  “Oh,” I say, warmed by the notion of Taron and Foundress Privett taking the time to travel all the way back to their estate just to give a speech and morale boost to their peasants. That feeling quickly sours as I realize the meaning behind the heavy look he continues to level upon me. “Oh.”

  I’ll be alone with my stepmother.