I felt a sick disappointment.

“But”—his smiled widened—“I happen to have an extra passport heliograph of her. I took two images when she asked for one a while ago. I thought it might be useful someday, though I wasn’t sure how. It felt like a bit of insurance against her.”

“Against her?”

His light eyes blinked in surprise. He spoke as if he were saying something everyone knew. “She can be ruthless.”

“But she does so much good for the Ward.”

“Yes,” he said, “in her way.”

“She is good to me.”

His gaze roamed over my face. He seemed to consider a response and then abandon it to say, “Well, she would be good to you.”

I started to ask him what exactly that meant, when he brushed loose hair out of my eyes and tucked it fondly behind my ear. “It’s easy to be good to you.” His hand trailed down my neck and brushed over my collarbone, not quite touching my breast, but almost. “But you must be careful around Raven.”

It was true: she was easily angered by me. But didn’t I deserve it? Look how careless I’d been with the heliograph.

“Ask Morah,” Aden said. “She knows better than anyone.”

“Morah has never liked her.”

“Of course she doesn’t.” Holding up a flat hand that asked me to stay where I was, Aden left the room. I heard rummaging sounds and then his heavy, approaching tread as he returned. He offered a small tin square. “It’s not exactly the same as the one I gave you a few days ago, but she won’t know the difference, will she, since she never saw the one you lost?”

I was awash with dizzying gratitude. I took the heliograph. Its sharp edges felt like salvation.

Aden took my hand and gently pulled me close. My gaze was level with his tanned neck. I saw him swallow. His breath brushed my brow as he said, “I have missed you.”

His hands slid down my back.

I knew what he wanted, though he didn’t ask for it, and it seemed like something he deserved, so I gave it to him.

* * *

On the walk home through the Ward, I kept my hand in my pocket, my fingers on Raven’s image, tracing the sharp-edged square. Though I had rinsed my face and mouth and hands, I felt coated with something sticky. Sometimes people want things so badly you feel like it’s your obligation to give it. I knew that was wrong, yet I had gone to bed with Aden anyway, as if I had built my own trap. Now he would expect more from me. A sick, worried feeling settled in my stomach. I blamed Aden. I blamed myself. I wasn’t sure who really was to blame.

A snake spun itself out of a crack in the pavement. Viridian green, it looked as though woven from grass, it was aware of me, but it was the kind of snake that hides, not bites, and it trickled quickly away. I envied it. A snake will not stay to please you. It will do nothing it does not want to do.

I pity who I was then: a girl riven by her mistake, beholden to the needs of others, and trained to diminish her own. I was a snake that had not yet learned to strike.

* * *

Yet Raven merely nodded when I gave her the heliograph. “It’s a good thing you found it,” she said.

It worried me, how secrets were beginning to pile up. The heliograph. That I didn’t share Aden’s feelings. The dead militiaman. My passport. Going beyond the wall. Sid.

Surely, at some point, one of these secrets would slip into full view. It would be seen.

I would be seen.

But Raven barely glanced at the heliograph, and accepted without question that I had overlooked it the night I had retrieved the others from the cistern.

I touched the red Elysium feather hidden below my shirt. I was safe for now.

“Go to the kitchen,” Raven said. “You’re late for the bread. Annin had to start the rising without you and serve an early customer, an important one at that. I need to be able to rely on you, Nirrim.”

I felt ashamed that I had just tricked her and strangely grateful that she was still not pleased with me. If she had shown me kindness I would have felt worse in my deceit. I promised myself that I wouldn’t let her down again.

In the kitchen, Annin’s eyes widened into blue mirrors when she saw me. “Someone came to be served breakfast. And so early!”

“Yes, I know. I’m—”

“I have never served someone like this. I was so nervous.”

Annin was easily made nervous, especially under Raven’s watchful eye, so I didn’t think anything of this. Then Annin said, “She was High.”

“Really?” My pulse fluttered in my throat. “Who was she?”

“Raven tried to act unfazed, but even she was impressed, I could tell. High Kith almost never come into the Ward. Of course you know that. You know how they are: too good for us. But this one was nice. I spilled the tea, and she didn’t reprimand me but”—her voice dropped to an astonished whisper—“helped me clean it up. Can you believe it? Thank the gods Raven didn’t see.”

I hated to feel so hopeful, yet I was. “What did she look like?”

“You must know.” Annin’s expression turned conspiratorial and inquisitive. “She asked for you.”

“She did?”

“How do you know her? Did you sell something to her? Do you think she might hire you to be a lady’s maid? Maybe you will receive a special writ to work in the upper quarters. Is that possible? Maybe so. Maybe she is connected to someone on the Council. I wouldn’t doubt it. She was so self-assured. Her clothes were so rich! Garnet silk and jeweled sandals and a pocket watch like a little sun. Nirrim, you could leave the tavern. You could go beyond the wall! Will you leave us altogether?”

“Please, you’re going too fast. You’re not answering my question.”

She withdrew a folded note from her gray skirts. It had a black seal stamped with an insignia I didn’t recognize: a pair of closed eyes with a little round mark where its forehead would be.

“I said, why don’t you give this to my mistress to give to Nirrim, but she seemed not to like that idea. She said she trusted me, and that it was our secret.”

With eager fingers, I cracked the note open along its seal. My darting eyes fell upon the first line of writing.

I hear you are looking for me, it said.