“What is that?” he asked, eyes flicking up to her face.
He imagined she saw something dark cross his visage. Because she sat straighter, pulled the skirt of her dress down, made the markings of some other man disappear.
Patrick tilted his head, felt something horribly improper invade him. Heat coated his tongue, simmered behind his eyes.
“Patrick—”
“I asked you a question,” he said slowly.
She swallowed. “There was a Scribbler in the club. He was… easily distracted.”
“I can imagine,” Patrick rumbled. That was precisely the problem, he was imagining it with piercing clarity. Some Scribbler leaning in, talking into her ear, scratching his fucking ink onto her thigh. “Who?”
“Does it matter?” she asked. She seemed to sicken as she spoke. She pulled her skirt down farther. “It worked.” She buried her face in her hands, as though she couldn’t bear to look at him. He hated that even more—that she was ashamed.
He watched her, seething, for several moments. Then he turned.
From the basin, he took the washcloth. He swallowed fire as he crossedthe room toward her, and, for the second time in as many days, knelt before her like a damned acolyte. He ignored the alarm on her face as he took either side of her skirt in his hands and tugged it apart, ripping it to the hip.
She looked down at him with open desire, her legs parting for him already.
And it was torture not to take that invitation, not to rip that godforsaken dress to the bust. She was all too willing. Always so fucking eager. And there was still so much they hadn’t had time for.
There was a room number inked into her. A meeting time. A question mark. As though there were ever a possibility, a hope in hell, that a Scribbler who wrote on women’s thighs could be indulged by someone like Nina. Patrick rubbed the pad of his thumb over it, and the ink smeared.
Nina inhaled.
“Think about this,” Patrick said. Letting the water from the washcloth drip onto her thigh, the droplets racing over the curve. She shivered. “We’re going to find the Seam, and I’m going to make you more powerful than anyone’s ever been.” Patrick wiped the cloth over the Scribbler’s ink. Her eyes lowered to his lips. Her breaths lengthened.
“And you’ll watch ’em all cower at your feet. Every lord, every minister. You’ll go where you like, do what you like, and there won’t be a single person who takes it from you. No one will ever touch you again. And if theytry, Nina…” He gripped her thigh with one hand, washed the ink away with the other. “I’ll pull them apart myself, piece by piece.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHTNINA
We left Morland by tunnel, of course, the mouth of which was hidden in a brick culvert in the city outskirts. We slithered to it single file, Patrick leading, the night always on the verge of dawn.
Tamir was desolate, cradling a heavy trunk to his chest. He slipped into the culvert last, shivering. “I ought to return to the dockyards, Meester Colson. Perhaps find passage to my homeland.”
“You’ll be looked after in Kenton Hill,” Patrick assured him. “They’re expectin’ you. You’ll be welcomed.”
“Will it be safe there?” I asked Patrick. Kenton Hill was no longer shrouded in anonymity, after all.
“By now, Gunner and Donny will have ensured Margarite was caved in. The hills are still wired and protected. Kenton is as safe as it can be, even if it’s no longer a secret.” Patrick opened a drain cover, revealing a ladder.
“We’ll point you down the right path, Tamir. It will take you to Dorser. A man named Otto will meet you there and escort you into Kenton,” John told him.
At the mention of Otto, Polly blanched.
“Send him the scribble, Polly,” Patrick said now, lowering himself onto the ladder. “Be sure to change the handwriting.”
Polly’s jaw twitched, but she stayed silent and obeyed without protest.
The tunnel was, as Patrick had promised, a stinking, waterlogged mess.The roof sagged threateningly, roots bursting between struts. The mud came up to our knees; a chorus of water leaks fell.
I was struck by a memory of me and Theodore in a Gilmore field, Professor Dumley watching as we slipped through the mire and tried to charm the soil into something fertile. I remembered falling, sinking into the bog, Theo laughing and taking my hand over and over, his cheeks smeared with the grime.
He offered me a wary smile. “If only Dumley could see us now.”
I didn’t yield even a twitch of my lips.
