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I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to save her if something terrible happened, just like I hadn’t been able to save Emmaline.

Staring into her eyes, eyes I frequently lost myself in, I was able to admit that I loved this woman. Even if my blood stone didn’t recognize her as my mate.

I loved her, and I didn’t want to lose her.

But Cora was right about our past efforts to catch The Devouring. By the time Severin had arrived at The Drowned Goose with enough men to search it, Lou had scurried off. The part of me that had spent eight years on a balcony while my city rotted from the inside out wanted to catch these criminals, too. If only to set one thing right.

If only to make this city safer for her and Adrien.

This key could open nothing important, but if The Devouring was using these grounds as a hideout, that implicated The Minuit Company, and I needed to know.

My fingers tightened around her wrist before I made myself release her.

“At the first sign of danger, we leave.” She beamed up at me. “I mean it. I will carry you out of here if I have to.”

Her smile only grew, and by the gods, seeing her look at me like this was worth the risk.

She slipped the key inside her pocket, then brushed a strand of hair out of her face. “Where should we start?”

I couldn’t help myself. I pressed a kiss to the top of her head, breathing in bitter orange and clove and smoke one more time. “Let’s try those storage sheds first.”

We barely made it twenty feet before a porter in a navy jacket with a star stitched over the breast pocket stepped into our path. He was young, no more than twenty, and he had the look of a man who had been told to stop people and hadn't yet been told what to do if they didn't want to be stopped. I let my gaze settle on him. He faltered, glanced at Cora, then back at me, his throat working up and down.

“Guests aren’t permitted back here.”

Cora had her wand out before I could answer. A flash of red light struck him between the eyes, and his legs folded beneath him. I caught him under the arms before his head could hit the ground.

“Put him over there,” she said, gesturing toward a stack of empty produce crates. “He’ll wake up feeling like he’s having the worst hangover of his life.”

I laid him down behind the crates and called it good enough.

We worked the sheds after that, one by one, moving between them while employees came and went in their identical blue coats. No numbers hung above each door. We tried the key in a few locks, but they didn’t fit.

By the time we ran out of sheds, the garden seemed to have recovered from the fire. The orchestra had started again, and the crowd noise grew. That should have reassured me The Devouring wasn’t watching our every move, but it didn’t.

We retraced our steps and tried the loading yard instead, cutting through an open building where workers sorted dirty tablecloths into bins and stacked empty bottles into crates. Thankfully no one looked up. But no place in the loading yard looked under lock and key.

“We’re running out of time,” I told Cora. “And places to look.”

She cursed, then peered down a service road that ran behind the loading dock. I gave her a weary look. “That seems like the perfect place for us to be ambushed.”

“Or for Hartley to hide something.”

“Both can be true, you know.”

“Don’t tell me you’re afraid of the dark, Your Grace,” she whispered coyly.

I blew out a tight breath. “Let’s get this over with.”

We slipped down the back service road and into an older section of the gardens, one the recent restoration hadn’t touched. The hedges were feral. Lanterns with broken glass panes hung from hooks along the walls, thick with grime. Broken furniture was piled beneath an open shelter.

Cora walked with her wand out, and I listened for the sound of nearby heartbeats. The deeper we went, the more the scent of rot crept in. Wet stone. Standing water. And a sour smell that didn’t sit right with me.

I stopped walking.

Cora noticed a half-step later and turned back. “What is it?”

“There’s a strange smell. It could be the garden’s drainage system,” I said, looking around. “Standing water goes bad.”