Page 29 of The Thief and the Traitor Bride

She braced herself on the wall, gritted her teeth, and got him standing. The ship lurched, nearly sending her sprawling again—but Nore held fast to Caspian and the wall, and she did not go down.

“You have to come with me,” she said. “I need you to move.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Caspian said.

Nore half carried him out of the room, keeping to the wall to try and counteract the sickening movements of the ship. By some miracle, she managed to get him to her room without either of them toppling over. Nore shut the door and threw the latch, then let Caspian sag onto her bed. He immediately curled into a ball on his side. Nore took time to lock the door fully and hung the key on a chain around her neck.

With that secured, Nore pulled off Caspian’s boots and took away his sweaty blankets. He wore the same clothes as a few days ago, and Nore looked guiltily at the cases along the far wall.

She crawled over to the bowl and pitcher, refilled every day by one of the crew. Nore dragged both over, kneeling on the floor by the bed.

Nore pulled at his clothes, stripping them away. Barely conscious, he did not fight back, even when his skin was exposed to the chilled air.

Nore dipped the cloth in the water, wiping gently at his brow.

Caspian’s hand came up, quick as venom, despite his fever. He grasped Nore’s wrist. His eyes were barely open, so she could only see the darkness of his irises beyond his long eyelashes.

“I’m not saving you,” Nore said, steely.

The edge of Caspian’s mouth turned up, and she kept her mind as blank as possible to forget every other time he’d looked at her like that. “Your employer,” he said, his voice creaky from illness and disuse, “calls you Finch.”

Nore turned her face away. “Yes.”

“It’s your alias.”

There was no point in denying it. “Yes.”

Caspian made a low sound in his throat, his hand going slack on her wrist. His eyes slipped shut, and it took Nore a moment to realize he was well and truly unconscious.

Vulnerable.

Nore sat back on her heels. If she was in Caspian’s position, she did not think she’d let herself be so vulnerable with only him to care for her.

She dipped the cloth and resumed her task, cleaning him up. When that was done, she covered him in blankets, hoping that he would sweat out the fever overnight.

Nore climbed into the other side of the bed, sitting stiffly next to Caspian’s sleeping form with her dagger on one knee. She watched his face as he slept, and recalled every night she imagined cracking the wax and reading of his death, every time he had hurt her.

She carefully armored herself, once again, with every single reason she wanted him dead.

before

IN THE MIDDLE OF Nore’s second year of employment at Miller & Sons, Edith went on a client visit, leaving Nore to run the company with two clerks.

She was sitting in Edith’s large office, at the tiny desk set up for her to the side of Edith’s large one, when the duchess appeared. There was no true word for it—though everyone else knocked, Celestine did not, and Nore could not quite be certain where she’d come from. Between one moment and the next, she was just there, sitting in the chair at the corner, peering at Nore as she carried out her work.

“Elinore Gordon,” Celestine said, sitting straight in her chair. “It has a nice ring to it.”

Nore jumped, dropping her pen, splattering ink across the letter she was working on. She looked up—though Celestine did pop in every now and then to check on her, Nore hadn’t seen her for months. Not since one of their client’s large Winterfast parties, where Nore had drunk so much sweet hot chocolate she’d been sick the next day.

“It does,” Nore agreed. “I thank you for it.”

Celestine only shrugged. “It is not fully my doing.” She looked at Nore with those blue-violet eyes, and now, Nore felt she saw her aunt’s canniness unmasked. “If I asked you to run an errand for me, would you?”

Nore blinked at her. As far as she knew, Celestine had enough pages and servants and errand boys to rival the queen. She could not imagine there was anything Celestine could truly want from her, but…

“Of course,” Nore said. She owed Celestine her name, her position, her new room and trunk of clothes, and her life.

Celestine leaned forward. There was a perfectly folded letter in her hand, sealed with wax. “Can you deliver this for me, little bird?” she asked.