“Of all the people I expected to rescue me, you were last on the list.” Rami threw St. Silas a broken grin, his teeth bloodied. “Can’t say I’m not pleased to see you, though.”

  “Can’t say the feeling is mutual. How many men are there?”

  “Two,” Rami said, and he winced when Leena pressed on his chest. “Mackenzie Crane and his new favorite, a boy named Burr.”

  St. Silas seemed to recognize both names.

  Leena clawed at the ropes, but they would not give. “Your sword, Rami. Where is it?”

  Silence. A heaviness in his voice. “They’ve taken it.”

  Baba had traded his wedding band for that sword, which had become an extension of Rami, like a limb that existed outside of his body. By taking it, they had effectively amputated him again.

  “I want to kill them.” Leena’s angry breaths came out in white swirls of frost.

  A small dagger was thrust into her hands. She turned to see St. Silas. “Direct that anger and make it useful.”

  She grasped the knife and slashed through the ropes. Rami stumbled forward, collapsing onto his knees. She took his arm and attempted to drag him up, but he was too heavy for her.

  Watching them struggle for a minute, St. Silas sighed and put his arms around Rami, supporting him through the door and onto the overgrown lawn outside the cottage.

  They halted at the sound of approaching footsteps on the path leading from the woods.

  “Our hosts have rejoined the party.” St. Silas dropped Rami unceremoniously on the ground before steadying his revolver. “Stay behind me.”

  Not daring to breathe, Leena held the dagger tightly in shaky hands.

  St. Silas reached into his pocket and threw Rami his spare pistol, and her brother took it in a firm hand.

  Stepping into the clearing were two figures. One was a large man whose rough skin told of years of fast living, his fingers sparkling with jeweled rings. The other was a reedy boy whose growth looked to have been stunted by hunger. They both wore coats of the darkest fabric. Mackenzie and Burr, presumably. The boy was already holding a revolver pointed directly at St. Silas, and Rami’s sword was buckled about his waist.

  “Ah, what a welcome,” the older one, Mackenzie, said. When he smiled, his mouth was crammed with gold teeth, terribly done, the canines crooked, the central incisors slightly too long. Leena suddenly remembered what Rami had once told her about Mackenzie, that he pried the gold fillings from the people he’d been hired to intimidate. “ ’Pon my soul, has the Saint of Silence come to visit us?”

  “What soul?” Leena snapped from behind St. Silas.

  Burr unlocked the pistol, the noise deafening in the still forest.

  “Put it down,” St. Silas ordered, his lazy command spearing through the frosty night air.

  Burr didn’t respond, but his pointed face had paled.

  “Keep steady,” Mackenzie warned Burr, his tone somehow managing to be both oily and inflamed. “No honor among thieves, eh, Saint?”

  St. Silas cocked his own pistol. “Oh, there is certainly honor among thieves. I, however, am not one, so I do not need to trouble myself with such trivial things.”

  Rami spat blood on the grass. His own weapon shook. “Shoot ’em and let’s end this, Saint.”

  Burr jerked his head at Rami, his pointed face twisting into a bitter snarl in the moonlight. “If we don’t deliver him beaten and bloody to the tradesman, we don’t get paid, and neither does Mr. Orley.”

  “And a growing boy needs to eat,” Mackenzie added, placing a hand on Burr’s shoulder.

  “This has all begun to bore me,” St. Silas said, his posture unwavering. “Tell us who the tradesman is, and perhaps I’ll consider avoiding all necessary organs when I shoot.”

  “How generous,” Mackenzie drawled. Then his eyes fell on Leena and his smile widened once more to reveal his stolen teeth.

  She didn’t understand the reason behind that smile, didn’t hear the silent figure creeping up behind her until she felt the hands wrap around her throat.

  A gasping scream tore from her.

  Leena clawed at the hands holding her in a stone-cold vise. Distantly, she heard her brother shouting. Black dots clouded her vision. Her lungs ached.

  She couldn’t breathe she couldn’t breathe she couldn’t breathe—

  She was going to die.

  Tortured animal panic took hold of her, and she jammed the dagger into the soft flesh of the intruder’s abdomen. She heard a grunt, but her captor’s fingers didn’t loosen. She was sinking…deeper…until a voice cut through the waves threatening to drown her.

  “Tilt your head to the left,” St. Silas’s voice ordered calmly. “There’s a girl.”

  As she obeyed, a shot whizzed by her ear. If she’d turned her cheek a fraction of an inch at the wrong moment, the bullet would have sliced her flesh into ribbons. The clasping hands released her, then the dull thud of a body hitting the floor could be heard across the clearing.

  She gasped for oxygen. Yet again, blood was everywhere. On her hands. In her hair. On her shoes.

  “Very close shot, Saint,” Rami yelled furiously, gun still pointing toward his captors. “You could’ve easily killed her!”

  “Yet I didn’t,” St. Silas responded curtly. “Do not lose your focus, Al-Sayer.” The barrel of his own revolver instantly returned to the two Black Coats. “Are you hurt, Leena?” he called back, keeping his eyes locked on the two bruisers.

  Her voice came out raspy from her raw throat. “No.”

  There was a split-second silence, as if St. Silas wanted to turn around and check for himself, but he refrained. “Did you not know of a third?”

  Leena wasn’t sure whom he was speaking to until Rami responded. “I didn’t see him.”

  St. Silas continued, now addressing Mackenzie. “The only reason you aren’t shot within an inch of your life, Mackenzie, is because I want you to reveal the identity of the tradesman who hired you. I would be willing to let you live when I am content that I have received no lies.”

  Mackenzie’s smile had vanished. Anger flashed in his eyes.

  “You killed Adam,” Burr said with bewilderment. A muffled sob broke Burr’s voice, his large eyes wild in his young face. “They killed Adam, Mackenzie.”

  “Shoot, boy,” Mackenzie yelled savagely.

  At his order, another shot rang out, and Leena ducked her head.

  A choked scream.

  When Leena dared to look, it was Mackenzie on his knees, his right hand held before his face as if to block the shot. It had not. The bullet had torn through the tendons and fascia of his palm, a gaping bloodied hole now in the center of it. More gruesome still, the bullet had sliced his ear, only a torn lobe hanging by a thin thread of skin.

  Mackenzie’s agonized screams filled the night air.

  St. Silas looked at Mackenzie as if assessing his own aim. “I would have preferred to see your full ear on the ground, but my angle was slightly off-center. Apologies.” The Saint sounded almost contrite.

  Burr, whose horrified eyes ricocheted between the Saint’s gun and his bleeding master, was very aware that two guns were still pointed at him. Without any further show of bravery, he dropped his own pistol and turned his palms up in surrender.

  “Who hired you?” St. Silas asked unhurriedly, as if he was having a pleasant conversation with an old friend. He walked toward the revolver on the ground and pocketed it.

  Burr’s lips barely moved in response. “M-Mr. Martin.”

  “How uninspired.” Although this revelation astonished Leena, St. Silas seemed unsurprised. Were they speaking of the very same tradesman who now owned Weavingshaw?

  “Yes, sir. That’s all we know, I swear,” Burr stuttered.

  St. Silas assessed the boy and the moaning Mackenzie dispassionately. “Leave, before I fancy shooting your remaining hand. Or practicing on the other ear.”

  Mackenzie, still clutching his gaping palm, staggered to his feet. But just as he and Burr turned to leave, St. Silas stopped them. “The sword. Give it back.”

  Both Al-Sayer siblings jolted.

  His chin quivering beneath the glare of moonlight, Burr unsheathed the sword from his hip and threw it toward them on the grass. No one spoke as they watched the two Black Coats disappear through the winding woods.

  “Thank you,” Rami said haltingly. His head swayed, and he grimaced as he attempted to stand on his own.

  Leena could not look away from the body that lay unmoving by her feet, the blood staining the grass a midnight black. She still held the dagger in her hands, and she had to consciously uncurl her stiff fingers to let it go. In the span of less than a month, two Black Coats had lain dead at her feet. But this time, she’d had a direct hand in it.

  She brought a fist to her forehead to block out her panic.

  “Leena, are you all right?” Rami tried to make his way to her, but collapsed. She turned to the sound of her brother falling, eyes swimming, landscape blurring. She wanted to ask if he was well, but the words lodged in her throat painfully.

  Leena staggered toward her brother just as St. Silas pocketed Rami’s pistol before hoisting her brother up with a hand below his shoulder, guiding him along the path back toward the carriage.

  Leena picked up Rami’s sword and walked closely behind them, the moonlight now starker than ever.

  She could finally admit that a part of her was not sure that she or Rami would have survived the night, and they certainly wouldn’t have done so without the Saint. It was a bitter truth to carry—far heavier than the sword in her hand.

  They returned to the carriage. Arthur, who drove St. Silas’s team, was discreet, and he wasted no time in helping St. Silas lift Rami into the carriage. He didn’t remark on Rami’s battered appearance nor the blood that soaked Leena’s sleeves. Within minutes of settling him in, Rami had fallen into the deep sleep that follows a shock, his breathing coming fast and short in his chest.

  “We must bury the body,” Leena whispered, turning to view the clearing. It hurt to speak.

  She felt St. Silas still.

  When she turned to look at him in question, his eyes were made darker by the filtered moonlight. “Leave it. The Black Coats will find him in the morning.”

  Leena remembered how the Black Coat’s flesh had felt as her knife serrated it, like cutting through silk.

  The frayed control she held over herself was unraveling. The Saint did not understand; she must bury the body tonight. If her hand did not mold itself over the handle of a shovel now, it would forevermore carry the feeling of the knife instead.

  “Tonight.” She did not recognize the near-hysteria in her own voice; very rarely had she ever felt so undone. “Tonight.” She swallowed again. “You can leave. I will go back.”

  “He is dead.” St. Silas’s voice was flat. “It will keep.” She knew that tone well; there would be no arguments that would sway him. Nothing that would shift his forceful eyes.

  For the second time that night, without waiting for his permission, Leena jumped down from the carriage.

  His iron grip held her steady. “What if I forbid you?” His eyes were hard, but there was a crack in his voice.

  Her own voice was unsteady. “Then I will return, even if you drag me back and lock me in my room. I will force my way back to bury him.”

  “Your misplaced sentiments are foolish,” he gritted out.

  She put her hand over his clasped fingers. “Let me go.”

  “Or else?”

  “Or else I will never speak of Lord Avon again, contract or no.” She was unwavering, her brows drawn and set on her face. “Some things are worth the sacrifice.”

  They stared at each other for a searing moment.

  “The burial—” he began, before cutting himself off harshly, abruptly releasing her.

  Finally, St. Silas let out a staggered breath before dragging his hand through his hair. It was such an uncharacteristically human gesture it made Leena pause. If she had not known better, she would have said he was angry. No, not angry—agitated.

  The only reply she got was an imperceptible nod of his head. Without waiting for her, he headed back toward the clearing.

  With one final worried glance at her brother, who still lay deeply asleep, Leena followed.

  * * *

  —

  The bullet had hit the corpse in the middle of his forehead, an unsurprisingly perfect shot, and the river of blood and brain matter concealed his face from view.

  Leena preferred it that way.

  “Is his ghost with you?” St. Silas broke her heavy thoughts, his voice oddly quiet.

  “No,” Leena whispered, making another careful search. “Thank the Saints.”

  They found a wooden shed with an assortment of garden tools, including two rusted shovels. The rain had softened the soil. St. Silas rolled up his sleeves and began digging without prelude, the hard muscles of his back coiling with every mound of soil he lifted. Exhausted, Leena worked beside him—albeit at a slower pace, in spite of her best efforts to keep up.

  A few times she glanced over at St. Silas. He worked almost mechanically, a distant look in his eyes. Even in her haze of misery, she could not account for his strange behavior.

  The task was long and arduous. The earth beneath them was not meant to be a burial ground, and it opposed their unsaintly digging.

  “Speak.” So focused was Leena on her task that she thought she had imagined St. Silas’s voice. She paused and turned to him, but he did not stop, hard eyes fixed on the earth before him.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Speak. Say anything. I cannot abide the silence.”

  Leena’s mouth parted, both weariness and confusion making her slow to react to his words. But as her focus cleared, she regarded the rigidity of his expression and understood his unsaid meaning—I cannot abide the silence while I am creating this grave.

  After another long, searching moment, Leena murmured, picking up her own shovel again: “Chapter Seven: The Rosethorn. The Rosethorn is native to colder climates, found most notably in the meadows of the Aksari Mountains, blooming in early spring and thriving until midwinter. Its petals are a curious mixture of red and orange, giving it a sunset glow, which helps keep insects active through the winter…”

  Leena could see the text as if A Guide to Botany was open before her. She was sitting reading to her mother, legs swinging beneath her on the crooked chair, the soft breeze bringing in the smells of salt and cooking. There was warmth. And there was love. And she had not been cold or afraid or heartsick.

  “Will I never hear the end of that blasted book?” St. Silas finally replied when she took a pause, but when she glanced at him the tightness around his eyes had abated a little. Leena was glad, without knowing why, that he did not look, for a moment, like a ghost himself.

  “It is customary for the people of the Aksari Mountains to plant Rosethorns over the graves of loved ones,” Leena continued, “symbolizing that if such a flower can endure the harsh winter of the mountains, so can the spirit find peace in the coldness of the earth.”

  This time St. Silas did not comment.

  They continued—Leena reciting, both shoveling—until they’d dug a rectangular hole deep into the ground. Streaks of sun began lightening the sky and birdsong filtered through gaps in the trees—which seemed an odd contrast to the grimness of grave digging.

  “Enough.” St. Silas finally put his shovel down. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, leaving a streak of mud by his left brow.

  St. Silas dragged the heavy body across the grass, a trail of blood behind him. With one final push, the body fell into the grave like a disjointed rag doll. The corpse’s head hit the ground first, with a sickening thud.

  “Wait,” Leena cried. “We are the only witnesses to his funeral. We must say something.”

  “I caused his death, Miss Al-Sayer,” St. Silas said, with another twist of his mouth. “I do not think this man’s main concern would be whether or not his killer says a few kind words over his grave.”

  She flinched at the word killer. Taking a deep breath, she said a phrase in her father’s language—a common saying to send off the departed.

  May your soul no longer crave the soil.

  “That sounds similar to what you said in the prison.” St. Silas’s voice held guarded curiosity. “Is it a prayer?”

  Leena looked at him, surprise on her face. “You remember what I said?”

  “I did not understand it. Both sounded…final.”

  Turning back to the grave with stinging eyes, she whispered, “Of sorts. Both are goodbyes.”

  That distant expression returned to St. Silas’s face. When he looked back at the dead man, it seemed to Leena as if he was not quite seeing him. Then he picked up the shovel and started throwing dirt over the grave. “You’re shivering. Let’s finish.”

  She was shivering, but she was not surprised that he had noticed. As always, very little escaped him.

  They began to make their way back after the last drop of soil fell onto the heap. Just as they crossed the clearing, Leena turned to have one final look at the grave.

  She halted, sweat breaking out on her forehead.

  A ghost stood over the mound. An Algaraan, barely older than Rami. Blood pooled from his forehead, and his abdomen bore the mark of Leena’s dagger.

  “Miss Al-Sayer, what is it?” St. Silas was beside her, his sharp tone silencing the birds.

  She brought a trembling hand to her eyes. “The boy we killed—” She could barely speak over her own heartbeat. “He looks like Rami. He’s half starved, he’s young—”

  St. Silas’s eyes flickered to where Leena’s gaze was trained, but he clearly saw nothing. “Look away from the dead.” His own voice sounded suspended between concentrated control…and a fiercely buried lack of it. “We had no choice—”