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Deep down, I must have always known that I would choose her.

But just as my hand drifted toward my thigh, I glimpsed Holden in my periphery, his heavy gaze trained on my leg.

On the slice of skin that the slitted skirt revealed.

With new inspiration, I met Erik’s eyes. Where I’d thought he would be icy with wrath tonight, he’d instead straddled that line between cruelty and kindness more delicately than ever, being both lover and captor at once. So, preying on the side of him that still carried the echo of our courtship into every threat, I laid my palms on the hard planes of his chest. And I took a risk.

“The prince believes you have treated me like a puppet in dressing me up,” I murmured. “And the general has already invited me into an affair, as though I am just a body to warm his bed.”

Erik’s hand contracted around my waist, and his narrowed eyes slid briefly toward Holden, seeing the evidence for himself.

“So you’re not going to force me to relinquish the compass to you right here,” I continued. “It would make me appear weak in front of these men, and I doubt you want them to see me as anything but a future queen.”

“Is that your decision, then?” he asked quietly, his expression dark with what I knew to be fury at Holden’s offer. “You will leave me the lady and take the compass out with you?”

“No.” I drew my hands up his chest, and his pupils dilated. “You wouldn’t have entered this tent without ensuring that your guards had eyes all over the Crater. Which means there is nowhere I can go that they will not find me if I run.”

“That doesn’t mean you will not try.”

“Then I give you my word.” I reached further up, around the back of his neck, hoping to play on his desire just enough to destabilize him. “I promise I will return to you with Perla and the compass. I promise I will not use our separation now as an opportunity to get away.” I was careful with my phrasing, making no promises that I planned to break later in the night.

I didn’t know if Erik was humoring me by pretending he didn’t notice, or if he was genuinely too swept up in the feel of me pressed against him. But at last, he sighed around a yielding smile. “You are too lovely to deny,” he said, and relief washed over me. He extracted my right hand from behind his head and drew it toward his lips. “But if you do run,” he added, planting a kiss on my knuckles, “I will ensure that there is blood on your hands before the night is out.”

It was only as I turned away that I realized there had been no time frame attached to his phrasing.

And the moment I escaped, he would seek to make good on his vow.

Perla and I weaved through the beating heart of the Crater, walking so close together that our knuckles brushed. Guards had been stationed around the nightstone-pitted grounds during our dinner, and they eyed us as we passed.

“Daradonian uniforms,” Perla murmured over the pounding music. Indeed, a faint rose pattern embroidered their shoulders, the indigo thread glistening under the canopy lights.

My stomach rolled as we marched into our neighboring tents, and I instantly peeled Erik’s dress off my body.

“Can you still make the dive?” I asked, with just enough volume that she would hear me through the gap between the tents.

“No.” Perla’s voice was firm, if slightly breathless. “I’m not leaving you with him.”

“You have to.” I removed my thigh pouch, slipped into the riding trousers I’d hung here earlier, then buttoned a white blouse on top. “I can’t make a move against him while you’re here, and he knows that. Get to Lye. He’ll have the copied key by now, and he’s probably moving into position as we speak. Tell him everything and find a way to stop the others from walking into whatever trap Erik has planted for their return.”

If he didn’t already ambush them while they were searching for the sword, I added silently, the thought filling my mouth with bile.

As I traded my sandals for sturdy riding boots, I realized this was the first time I’d acknowledged to Perla that the others weren’t here at the fete—that they were off on another mission, and we were painfully alone.

But she must have guessed as much already because she only hissed back, “And what about you? How will you get away from him?”

I hesitated, both because I couldn’t answer her question, and because I had the thigh pouch in my hand now, the compass within.

Once Perla made the dive, I would be free to escape. Which meant I could deposit the compass here and return for it afterward.

But what if I couldn’t come back here amid the chaos? What if Erik’s guards searched this tent the moment I departed? Too much could go wrong, and separating myself from the compass right now felt foolish.

So, as I’d promised Erik, I slid the compass into my trouser pocket. “I don’t know how I’ll get away,” I said honestly, slipping my mother’s coin in beside it. On further thought, I retrieved the backup key-copying mold from my first dress and pocketed that, too; better to conceal it on my person in case Perla’s drowning came into question. “But when I do,” I continued, “I’ll meet you and Lye at the safety point.”

When Perla remained silent, I pressed close to the tent wall, my blood humming with the need for her to be safe. And not just because her being here was my fault. But because regardless of how we’d been thrown together—in suffering rather than joy—I now considered Perla my friend. And I would protect my friends in any way I could.

But apparently, so would she.

“Please,” I said. “This is the only way either of us can be free of him.”