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“I’ll let her go,” Goren said tightly, his voice like gravel, “after she lowers her knife.”

I tore my mask down, letting the fabric hang around my neck. “Perla. It’s all right.”

She jolted, now recognizing my voice. With Goren’s hand crushed against her mouth, keeping her head pinned, she could only flick that wide stare toward me, eyebrows slanting up in alarm.

“He won’t hurt you,” I insisted.

A startled sound hiccupped in her throat, and she gave me a look that said, Have you seen him?

Goren must have understood the sentiment, because his fist tightened around the pillow, his leather glove groaning.

“Let her go,” I repeated, hesitant to shove him away with my specter in case Perla’s blade nicked his skin. “Give her a reason to trust you.”

“The fact that I haven’t disarmed her by now should be reason enough.”

Perla bristled at that, and her next glance toward him was laced with cool anger. She pushed the blade closer in challenge, one hairsbreadth away from drawing blood.

Goren only huffed a dark laugh and leaned further over her, calling her bluff.

Clearly reluctant to make the cut, Perla folded her elbow down to accommodate his movement. She seemed to harden as he drew closer, defiantly meeting his stare, her heavy breaths slowing.

“That’s how you want to play this?” Goren’s eyes flicked between hers, the tension thickening. “Go ahead. Because I’d love to demonstrate one of the several different ways I can turn that blade against you without even try—” His last word broke off with the hitch of his breath, the slight flaring of his eyes.

I followed his gaze downward to the gleam of steel—to where Perla had wielded a second blade against him.

And was directing its sharp point right between his legs.

Relief crashed over me, so powerful that I exhaled a breathy chuckle. Because seeing that blade, I knew Perla was still exactly the person I believed her to be.

“On second thought,” I drawled, rocking back on my heels, “don’t let her go. I’d like to see how this plays out.”

Goren hesitated a moment longer. Then, with his narrowed eyes still fixed on her, he removed his hand from Perla’s mouth and drew upright, away from her blades.

Perla took a sharp inhale and bolted into a sitting position, one knife still clenched in her grip. “You shouldn’t be here.” Her voice was firm, pitched lower than it had been in the treasure hall. And though she hadn’t torn her gaze from Goren, I knew she was talking to me.

“I know.” I stepped forward. “I’m sorry we frightened you. But I had to see you alone.”

“Not here in my room.” She whipped her head toward me, and my breath caught at the intensity of her expression: sharp and shrewd and quietly powerful, framed by a tumbling mass of dark hair. A full return to her true self. “You shouldn’t be on this side of the sea,” she clarified. “You should be in Bormia, where I arranged for you to go.”

I faltered, realizing that her earlier flash of fury had stemmed from my ignoring the one task she’d given me after helping me escape.

“I couldn’t reach the coach in time,” I explained.

“Why not?”

“There were circumstances beyond my control.”

“So you couldn’t control your legs when they took you deeper into the palace after I freed you?” she demanded. “You couldn’t control the urge to stick a knife in Erik when you had the chance?”

I startled back a step. “You think I went back in for revenge?”

“I think we both know who really attacked Erik that night, Alissa.”

“That’s not what—”

“Enough.” Goren cast me a meaningful look, brows furrowed. “Unless you’re forgetting which way this interrogation is supposed to be going.”

Perla’s body tensed as though to run. But trapped between us on the bed, she had nowhere to flee.