Page 47 of Forgery, Love, and Other Lies
Lysander craned his neck left and right, up and down, bending his body, a low hum emanating from his throat.
A horse’s whinny, as if disturbed.
They jerked toward the noise.
The slash of reins whipping through air and the slap of their leather upon horse backs. Then the rumble of wheels across gravel.
“Her!” they said together, giving chase. Their legs pumped into motion at the same time, running toward the front of the carriage line.
But not fast enough. Lysander stopped first as the carriage pulled away, faster on the empty night streets than they could follow.
Fiona folded in half, her hands slamming into her knees as she gasped for breath.
Lysander’s hand rested on her back. “I’ll take you home when you’re ready.”
She straightened, shaking her head. “No. Back to the gardens. Perhaps that was not the dowager. She could be hiding still.”
“Unlikely.”
“We must try!” She stomped toward the garden gate. She’d let herself forget their purpose this night, losing herself in his touch and his gaze and unabashed regard. Near him, her crimes did not feel so heavy, the unknown pitch of her future did not seem so dark. She’d allowed herself to loosen and to forget, and she’d lost the answers as soon as they’d appeared. “Perhaps there’s someone else inside who will have information.”
“You know the dowager is our best chance, Fiona.” He followed her, though she only knew so by the heavy crunch of his feet on the gravel of the garden path behind her.
She would not look around, would not let moonlight on his face distract her. She set her steps down a dark garden path, shaking the bushes.
“What are you doing?” he asked, a chuckle on the edges of his voice.
“Trying to scare her out.”
“The dowager is not a bird or rat to be shook from a bush.” He did laugh then.
She whirled on him, took two pressing steps toward him until she could shove her finger at his hard chest. “Do not laugh at me.”
“Do not amuse me so.”
“Will you laugh when I swing from the end of a noose?”
“You won’t.” A dagger had slipped between his words. A promise to anyone who thought to harm her?
“You’ve lost your originals, Lysander, but the copies I’ve made are lost, too. You own the originals. Your family’s coffers and comfort may be at stake, but my life is forfeit if… if…” She pressed her heels into her eyes. “I’llnothang.” Then more softly. “It’s my own fault.”
“You won’t hang.” His arms slipped around her. “But running about making noise is not the way to save yourself, little dragon. Breathe less fire. Hoard more treasures.”
She laughed, a startling thing that cracked open the shadows around them. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
He led her deeper into the shadows beneath a tree with small white blooms. He sat and patted the hard marble beside him, imitating her earlier gesture in the alcove. Like him then, she did not sit now. She paced back and forth before him in short bursts of three steps, turn, three steps, turn, dislodging blooms from low-hanging branches. She clasped her hands behind her back, the weight of her mask pressing, pressing,cuttinginto her face. She tugged at the ribbons at the back of her head and cried out, an angry rumble of frustration, when they did not give.
A hand at her waist, a quick, hard tug, then she was falling, but not far, and not onto the ground or hard marble, but into the warm lap and strong arms of the one who had tugged her.
“Zander,” she breathed.
He swatted her hands away from her head and with slow, careful fingers against her skull, loosed the mask, dropped it to the ground at his feet. His feet. Not hers. Because hers could not reach perched as she was atop him, a little bird with a lovely nest.
“Thank you,” she said. “That’s better.”
He rested his chin atop her head. “Listen, you dragon. The dowager is back in town. If she ever left. We know that now, and we must focus there instead of running about lighting the entire town aflame. Since we met, you’ve been spouting flames at danger, thinking to burn it to ash, but douse the flames and save your family, yourself, in one violent fit of defiance. Sometimes rescue plans take more nuance, though.”
“Did yours? Does yours? For your family?”
