Page 31 of Stealing Tink

I hadn’t thought so, but still. My hope had been that if we were going to frame this man, he wouldn’t be able to figure out it was us who had done it. My guess is that he’s already labeled us as “most likely to frame me” in his mind.

This is never going to work.

Even if he wouldn’t automatically figure it out, he also looks like the type that values honor enough that he wouldn’t work for us anyway, even if he was a disgraced member of society with nowhere else to go. You don’t get into that kind of position without being trustworthy, especially when your employer has already lost her husband to an assassination attempt. Being the queen’s right-hand man, Acel doubles as both her bodyguard and cupbearer—though why you would want to waste your best man on potential poison is beyond me.

But Acel won’t be wasted. Not with the poison we’re using. The Nomad paid some apothecary a heavy sum of money to formulate the poison so that it would only affect women. When I asked the Nomad where he had gotten the idea, he had been rather opaque about it.

The music shifts. Guests pour out onto the dance floor. Shades of red whirl in cascades of satin and silk, the long trains of the women’s fashionable gowns twirling around them.

“I’m afraid I must choose between asking you to dance and garnering unwanted attention.” The Nomad is holding a hand out. I stare at it for a moment. Take in the twin scars that run up the back of his hand, separating it into threes, reminiscent of a crack in a mirror, a crack in the ice.

I glance around the room, hoping for any excuse not to dance with him, but there’s no excuse to be found. The Nomad is correct; everyone else is dancing. Where there might usually be a hedge of people unwilling or unable to dance on the outskirts of the dance floor, there is empty space.

“Here it is considered offensive not to participate in a dance,” explains the Nomad. “It implies the ball is not to your fancy, and more importantly, that the hosts have poor taste in music.”

I glance up at the queen, who is scanning the room. I take the Nomad’s hand before her assessing gaze can land on me. His skin is smoother than his scars would indicate.

But of course, I already knew that.

They’ve caressed not just my hand, but my neck, coaxing the air out of my throat one too many a time for me ever to forget the feel of them.

Nonetheless, I steel myself through the shiver that runs through me and the nausea that crawls its way under my abdomen.

The Nomad leads me out onto the dance floor, and though the music grows more lively, it’s drowned out by the roaring in my ears, by the sound of rushing water and its gentle spray.

“I have something I’d like to show you,” he’s saying, but not here, not in this ballroom. My body is here, but my mind is elsewhere, transported to a dream. One of the recurring ones.

He’s leading me to a waterfall, then pulls me through, my laughter manic as the press of the cold water soaks my dress and shocks my system. Later, I’ll regret this. I already woke up with chills early this morning. Mother didn’t want me to come to the dance, fearful I was falling ill. But I’d promised my friend. And besides, I can survive a little sickness.

So that’s not the reason I’ll regret this.

I’ve only just met this man, at a dance a village friend’s parents threw for her birthday. I’d been in another man’s arms when I’d first seen him standing on the edge of the dance floor, his eyes glittering as he watched me.

“Are you going to ask me to dance or not?” I’d asked after the fourth suitor had disappointed me with the question.

“Not,” he’d said, to which I’d bristled. “At least, not in here.”

When I’d raised a questioning brow, he’d nodded his head ever so slightly to the side, beckoning me outside of the barn.

“This feels suspiciously like being lured,” I’d said, the cold brushing my bare shoulders as the moon peeked over my friend’s farm.

“That’s the intention,” he’d winked. “If we’d stayed in there, I’d have to pass you off at the end of the song. This way, I don’t have to share you.”

“You speak as if I’m yours,” I’d said, running my hand along the knobby fencepost.

He hadn’t answered that.

But now he’s pulled me behind this waterfall and is kissing me like he knows the curve of my lips by heart. Warmth fills my chest as he slips his hands up my neck to cup my jawline.

My heart flutters, but he deepens the kiss.

And his grip on my neck.

“Ouch,” I say playfully. “Is this how you…”

He presses his fingers into my throat harder.

My heart pounds in my chest. My lips search for his name, only to realize he never told me.