But he’d agreed to that fabricated scandal and gone to Kenton Hill for two years. Two years in the hole with Crafters who’d loathed him. Two years of scurrying around the parish like a rat, looking for the Alchemist. Only one slip of loyalty, in the end. And hadn’t he returned and taken his penalties with good grace?
Hadn’t he tucked his tail and heeled, the way a son of a lord should?
Hadn’t he forsaken the one thing, the onlyrealthing he cared about?
“Nevertheless, I must ask,” Theo began, though the words were difficult to pass, “once Nina… recovers, where will she go?”
Again, his father sighed. “She will remain here, of course.”
“She ought to be offered something more comfortable.”
Lord Shop pulled his spectacles down the bridge of his nose and pressed his fingers to the pockets of his closed eyes. “These are trivial details, Theodore. They can wait.”
Theo felt his neck heat, but he bit his tongue. “She ought to be moved.”
“There are plenty of available rooms in this building.”
“Which offer no privacy,” Theo argued. “The conditions are hardly appropriate for a lady of her station.”
“A lady of her station,” his father repeated, as though feeling the words on his tongue. “And what station do you imagine for her?”
Theodore frowned. He watched, as Patrick had told him to. “She’s a Charmer. She graduated with a high-order fellowship—”
“And now, she is an assassin,” Lord Shop interrupted, finally turning from the fire to face his son. “Perhaps the most infamous in all of our country’s history.” He had his hands clasped behind his back. His face was expressionless. “Where should such a lady be accommodated, Theodore, if not the cellar?”
Theo’s molars ground together. What he said next was quiet, tampered by embarrassment. “I could offer her my living quarters temporarily. Or—or they could be shared.” He heard how pathetic it sounded. Had he really imagined carrying her over that threshold? Nursing her back to health?
He had. He must have been mad.
His father was laughing now. The sound was cold. “You still believe yourself in love with her, boy?”
His skin burned hot; sweat collected along his collar.
“Love is the strangest illusion, don’t you agree? I think it was the great poet Lady Pennyrook who once saidLove is the reflection of the agony beneath.” Lord Shop picked up his cane and tapped it on the floor. He exhaled once more. “At the very least, it would serve us, if she could be convinced to love you in return.” He glanced up as though dissecting the thought. “Though I don’t hold much hope.”
Theo felt the blade of a guillotine overhead, balanced precariously.
“For now, Theodore, Nina will need to play the part of prisoner to appease the ministry, and every other Artisan besides.”
“For how long?”
“Until she has won enough favors,” Lord Shop quipped, having grown tired of the conversation.
“By finding terranium.”
“Of course.”
“And if she is unwilling?” Theodore asked now, the guillotine blade slipping free of its hold.
“If she ever wants to escape this House, she will have to,” Lord Shop answered. His knuckles cracked as they flexed around his cane. “Or perhaps you can atone by persuading her to our side.”
Theodore closed his eyes. “She’d be persuaded, I think, if she knew it were for a worthy cause. If she saw the bluff and idium distributed to the brink.”
There was no answer from his father, who had pulledThe Stewards’ Testamentfrom his pocket and flicked idly through its unreadable pages.
“Youdointend to distribute to the brink, do you not?” he pressed, his heart beating a requiem.
Terrence Shop closed the book with a slap, then walked unhurriedly to that overlarge desk, shutting the old tome away in its drawer. “I intend to show them whatever illusion is necessary,” he said. Then he collected his coat and shrugged it over his robes. “If that illusion eases your conscience, Theodore, then by all means, do not look beneath.”
