Aliette had been afraid of only one thing her entire life. Darkness. As a child, she knew shadows hid bad people. As an adult, she avoided them for in a building’s crevice was inevitably a man with a knife. Around a corner would be a guard or a hand to grab what food she’d scavenged.

      At night, when Darkness came, she huddled in whatever sliver of moonlight she could under her bridge. Night was always worse, for she’d fall asleep and remember that, when she woke one morning, her family had left her in the night.

      Darkness was cruel. And though logically Aliette knew the man before her stood in daylight, his surroundings were clear and every feature of him was there for her to see, every instinct in her clamoured the opposite.

      This man before her was shadow and night. He was Darkness.

      Dishevelled raven hair, dark tailored clothing and a black gaze lit with a feral light. He was clutching a child wrapped in a tattered white gown that drooped almost to the floor.

      Blood. Unmistakably blood was streaked across his clothing and his cheeks. Mud splattered along his breeches, his arms and thickly encrusted on his boots as if he had tromped through freshly turned graves.

      The child’s crumpled swaddling was also streaked with dirt and blood, and it remained unnaturally quiet and still. As if it was dead...or pretending to be. She couldn’t see its face for the man held it far too tightly to his chest.

      Would it escape if he eased his grip? Perhaps it was a changeling he’d dug up for some ritual.

      The room was no comfort from her thoughts. The sumptuous surrounding only confirmed her certainty that this man was Darkness. For Darkness was powerful and encompassed everything. Perhaps kings could surround themselves with such opulence, but she couldn’t imagine they possessed such extravagance as this man.

      Too long had it been since she had been to church, but she fervently wished she was there now so she could beg for sanctuary and stand under a hundred candles. To beg for Helewise, Vernon and Gabriel as well, though they weren’t in this room with her.

      For she had feared Darkness all her life and finally he bared himself to her. His ruthlessness apparent in the savage edges of his cheeks and square of his jaw. His arrogance drawn by the refinement of his nose and arch of his brow. But the eddying dark grey of his eyes, the lush frame of lashes and soft curve of his mouth bore him a cruel beauty. If this was how Darkness deemed to personify itself, it wasn’t safe for any of them.

      Because Darkness enticed.

      ‘Why have I brought you here?’ he said. ‘It is an interesting question that you ask.’

      Fanciful thoughts she couldn’t stop that beat with the hammering of her heart. The low rumble of his voice did nothing to help her. Neither did the fact he found the question on whether she lived or died interesting.

      ‘An important one, I think,’ she said.

      One brow raised. ‘Extremely, but most do not dare ask it.’

      The others he brought to his lair? Aliette shook herself to stop her errant thoughts. She wasn’t a child anymore, and this was daylight. Despite the warning hairs on her neck, he could be no more or less than a mere man with a child. Mud, blood and gold aside, he was human and not the most important one in her life. Gabriel, Helewise and Vernon were above such fears. She needed to, she must, return to them. Whatever this man wanted, she wanted it over. She’d been gone long enough. Gabriel might leave the house and search for her. If so, Ido could snatch him for gaol.

      ‘Whatever it is you want of me, tell me now and have done with it.’

      ‘So much haste.’

      ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but not for my death.’

      A quirk to his lips. ‘Most of us aren’t hasty for death.’

      Us. He wasn’t Darkness. Of course he wasn’t. But he was dangerous. He had enough wealth and power to drag her here with no interference.

      ‘Why am I here?’ she repeated.

      He adjusted the child in his arms. She saw tiny fingers curl, but little else. For a child, it was unnaturally quiet.

      ‘Do you have a family?’

      She couldn’t answer that and remain safe.

      His brow rose at her silence. ‘Do you have a father? And a mother?’

      This was personal. ‘Why do you ask?’

      ‘You keep asking me questions...thief.’

      She couldn’t have heard him correctly. Surely this wasn’t about something so trivial as the baker. ‘Were those your loaves of bread?’

      ‘Parents. Answer me.’

      She shook her head. ‘No parents. Is this over the bread? Did you watch me take it?’

      ‘I watched you being caught.’

      Relief that he hadn’t seen Gabriel steal gave her courage to ask more questions. ‘And that had you bring me here.’

      ‘You know what would have happened to you if that watch guard took you away?’

      ‘Do I look a fool?’

      ‘You’re the one caught for mere bread—perhaps you didn’t know the consequences.’

      Living the way she had all her life, she always knew the consequences. ‘It’s not mere bread when it means life and death.’

      ‘Ah, yes, the important question. I don’t want your death.’

      ‘Rape, then.’

      A curl to his lips as if she insulted him.

      ‘I’m a woman. You’re a man. Why else did you force me here?’

      ‘Not. That.’

      His answer was short, curt, the tone as if he found her question distasteful.

      Aliette refused to be embarrassed. She was poor, street born and bred, her clothes barely serviceable. But some of it she purposefully created. She needed to smell, to grind dirt into her skin and clothes to deflect leers and lust. Life would have been easier if she was a boy. When she’d become old enough she’d thought to disguise herself, but by then she was all too easily recognised. So a girl, now a woman, she remained.

      She should be pleased her filthy appearance worked as it had all her life. He didn’t want her death, or her body, and he purposefully saved her from gaol and losing her hand.

      ‘In truth, what—?’ he began to ask.

      ‘Why are you holding the child?’ she interrupted.