It took Seven several seconds to recover. Should she tell him the truth? Deny it? But she knew that the truth was all over her face. Still, it was better to say nothing in the streets, especially with so many people milling about. Mercifully, most were drunk or too far away to care about the slice of royalty beneath their noses.

  She shoved Emmet down the walkway, hissing her words through gritted teeth.

  “Your house,” she said. “Now.”

  Emmet made a show of mock surprise. “Wow, and so suddenly! I’ve never had a woman so eager to—” Seven gave him another shove away from the dice parlor. She didn’t particularly care which direction they chose—just that she got as far away from the public eye as possible.

  “Don’t lie,” she said, shoving him. “Go.”

  “Well, some were more eager than others, but—”

  “Are you walking, or talking?”

  Emmet let out another laugh, then danced out of her grip and offered her his arm in earnest. He smiled, and Seven sobered up so fast that the entire world seemed to sharpen into clarity. She was going home with this man? To do what, exactly?

  To figure out why he knows who I am, she thought hurriedly, taking his arm as her face went hot—and not from the alcohol, unfortunately. Thirteen take me, why did he have to be handsome?

  She quickened her pace beside him, keeping her eyes everywhere but his face, and as they walked together, she swore she saw the twinkle of another smile on his face.

  ***

  Emmet’s townhome was practical and sturdy, yet bursting with small luxuries that Seven’s trained eye was easily able to spot: rows and rows of fine leather-bound books, easily good enough for the libraries back in Veilhome; a marble kitchen countertop that was far too fine to have been mined out of anything nearby; some of the finest pens she’d ever seen besides those in the scribe’s offices back home.

  Everything was an homage to quiet luxury. To the kind of quality that a man would have had to recognize and be willing to pay for. Seven shook her head as he closed the door behind them, stunned.

  “This is what a job at LMC gets you?” she blurted out. Emmet laughed, disappearing behind a pillar into the kitchen, which looked out into the living room.

  “Hardly,” he replied, digging around in some cabinetry. Seven couldn’t help but watch him a little more carefully than was particularly sane; if he knew who she was, would he try to poison her? Ransom her? She slid her lute case from her back finally and leaned it carefully against the door, still watching him.

  “What do you mean, hardly?” She asked. “Where else would you get the money? There’s nothing else around here for miles.”

  “A generous benefactor,” he explained. “One you probably know.”

  Immediately Seven’s nerves were replaced with annoyance and a touch of relief. “Moore,” she breathed, then looked around at the books scattered throughout the townhome before putting two and two together. “You’re the lawyer he sent out here,” she added. When Emmet didn’t argue, busying himself with a jug of milk, she trailed away from the door and leaned against the back of his couch. “Why didn’t you come back?” she asked. “And how did you recognize me?”

  Emmet winced, then brought two steaming mugs over to the coffee table. Seven eyed her suspiciously before sitting down, but it did just look like coffee and milk. “The second question is a little easier to answer,” he admitted. “You’re more recognizable than you realize—if one knows anything about you. And Moore spoke a lot about your gift for gambling.”

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  “Well he certainly doesn’t think it’s a gift.”

  “It was tonight,” Emmet said. “Without you winning like that, I wouldn’t have bothered bringing you home at all.”

  That startled Seven. She was used to being forgotten and disposed of, of course, but out here of all places? “You would have left me to fend for myself in Luckville knowing I was House Veil?”

  Emmet shrugged, sitting down across from her. “The real danger here isn’t the town—it’s the mines. And everything involving LMC.” His handsome face turned bitter as he spoke, and there was a dark sort of fire smoldering in his eyes as he took a sip from his own mug and plopped down on the couch across from her.

  “You didn’t answer my first question,” she said carefully. It was still nearly impossible to get a read on Emmet. Where before he’d been jovial and almost playful, now he stared into the distance at something she certainly couldn’t see, his gaze stormy. The very mention of LMC had completely changed his demeanor.

  “I didn’t answer it because even I don’t have the answer,” Emmet said quietly. “After your little Beggar’s Chance incident, Moore sent me out here to dig up what I could on Rook for the trial. It started innocently enough—hang out in Luckville, get the lay of the land—but I needed to go deeper, so I signed up at LMC.” His face went ashen, the coffee forgotten in his hands. “I figured a bit of hard work wouldn’t hurt, right? I know my way around manual labor even if my profession is mostly in libraries—helps clear the mind,” he explained.

  Well that’s fair, Seven thought, watching him. Her mind certainly felt better, played better when she’d been on a jog through the city. Even if it was dodging the crown guard.

  “LMC isn’t…pleasant to work for,” Emmet went on, “but I figured there was always a way out. I read the fine print. I understood it. But whoever wrote it…” He trailed off and shook his head. “They must have such a brilliant understanding of the law that they even caught me somehow.” He finally met her eyes, and held up his wrist, a black band adorning it, seeming to swallow up the friendly light of the room. “I don’t have a way out,” he finished. “They own me.”

  “Own you?” Seven nearly choked the words out. “How can they own you?”

  “Legal fees, mounting debt with every company policy you break, loopholes that let them abuse the system they’ve set up.”

  “So just leave,” Seven said, jerking her head somewhere in the direction of Veilhome. “I’ll make sure Moore pays your debts to LMC—even I can do that. Veil’s coffers have plenty.”

  Emmet shook his head and ran a hand through his practically perfect hair. The juxtaposition of his stress and his good looks was an odd one to see. “Can’t,” he said, then shook the little bangle on his wrist again. “I wasn’t joking when I said they own me. "One little jaunt over the border walls, and it blows me to pieces.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “Afraid not.”

  Seven sat back, stunned. “Does Moore know about this?”

  Emmet avoided her eyes. “No. I’ve been telling him that I have more I want to investigate, which isn’t exactly a lie, but…”

  “But it’s not the entire truth either,” Seven finished. The mug had gone lukewarm in her hands, and she took a sip, trying to calm her buzzing mind. Moore hadn’t been joking when he’d warned her to stay away from LMC. If someone as capable as Emmet had been caught up in their web, then it would be downright impossible for any normal person to escape.

  More than that, she couldn’t help but feel a bit vindicated—and more than a bit annoyed at Moore. If Rook was able to run such a clearly corrupt operation with little interference from the crown, what else was he capable of? It seemed clear to Seven now that any chance she stood of stopping Rook started here at LMC, even if she had to risk her own life to do it.

  And yet, the band around Emmet’s wrist gave her pause. Would she really give up the life of a princess, the life of even a fugitive, for the life of a slave? What if she couldn’t find a way out, or worse, what if she was caught in some mining accident, an obviously easy way to make her disappear?

  There’s no other choice, she thought, listening to the wind buffet the walls outside. She knew that it was a risk. That Moore would disapprove. That she should find a quiet way to live out her exile instead. But a quiet life wouldn’t earn her reputation back. It wouldn’t clear her name, or smear Rook’s through the mud. She couldn’t just sit by idly and do nothing—she had a kingdom to win back, and plenty of people to prove wrong.

  And she recognized that longing in the back of her mind—not for the tiny risks of the gambling table, but for something bigger and better. Something that wouldn’t just risk her money, but her life.

  She set down her mug with a thump on the table, and Emmet looked up at her, holding his mug like he’d forgotten it entirely.

  “I want to sign up at LMC,” she said.

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