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“What happened in there—” he started.

“Nothing happened,” I interrupted.

“Lily—”

“Nothing happened, August. We looked at some old books. That's all.”

I could feel him behind me. Could practically hear the argument he wanted to make.

“We can't,” I said to the door. “Whatever you're thinking. Whatever you want. We can't.”

“Why not?”

“Because you don't know me.” I turned to face him, my control hanging by a thread. “You think you do. But if you really knew what I was⁠—”

“What you were?” He stepped closer. “Or what you are?”

The question hung between us, dangerous and pointed.

“Go inside, Lily,” he said finally, when I didn't answer. “Before one of us says something we cannot take back.”

I fled.

Took the stairs two at a time, threw myself into my room, and pressed my back against the closed door.

CHAPTER 26

AUGUST

What had I been thinking?

I stood outside the iron gates of the house I grew up in, staring at the gray stone facade without really seeing it. My mind was still back in that library. Still watching Lily trace her fingers over ancient manuscripts with reverent care. Still feeling the warmth of her standing close enough to touch.

Instead of questioning her about her appearance last night, I’d found myself just wanting to make her happy.

The realization sat wrong in my chest, like something broken shifting out of place. I was a hunter. I didn't bring suspected Weavers or time travelers to restricted libraries and watch them light up over old Latin texts. I didn't care whether they smiled or softened or looked at me like I was something other than a threat.

And yet, when she'd realized I'd chosen the Bodleian specifically for her—when that careful guardedness had cracked and she'd thanked me—something in me had. . . shifted.

Dangerous. That was dangerous thinking.

Even if she was telling the truth—even if she really was from 2025, really had traveled through time—what future could there be? She'd said electricity was coming, that the world would change in ways I couldn't imagine. She'd talked about her time like it was home, like she belonged there and not here.

If she wasn't a Weaver, if she was exactly what she claimed, then eventually she'd want to go back. Would find a way to return to her own time, to her own life, where she didn't need men's permission to access libraries.

And I would be. . . what? A historical curiosity? Someone she'd known once, in a time she'd been trapped in?

The thought shouldn't have bothered me as much as it did.

But if she was a Weaver—if this time travel story was an elaborate cover for something darker—then I was a fool for wanting her at all. For hesitating when my father had asked if I still believed in our work. For standing in that library and coming within a breath of kissing a woman who might be exactly the thing I'd sworn to destroy.

Either way, this ended badly.

I should never have taken her there. Should have kept my distance, maintained my objectivity, done my job instead of trying to earn smiles from a woman who looked at me like I was redeemable.

My fingers curled around the cold iron of the gate. My father's estate. The place I'd spent my childhood learning that duty mattered more than affection, that sentiment was weakness, that the only approval worth having was earned through absolute loyalty to the cause.

I pushed through the gate, my boots crunching on gravel, and tried to shove thoughts of Lily back into whatever corner of my mind they'd escaped from. I couldn't afford to be distracted. Not here. Not when I was about to face the man who'd see through any weakness in my armor.