Three Weeks Earlier
AT LADY GUINEVERE’S SHOP
Fucking Jupiter, the fire was going to shred him. It was a snarling, hungry beast, and if Bran got out of this inferno alive, he’d—
The ceiling collapsed, and he jumped back to avoid raining timber and glowing coals. All around him, potion bottles exploded in violent bursts.
The guards pouring buckets of flame dousing potion were doing no good. A misty purple and green fog mixed with the smoke, making the air an unbreathable mess.
Bran breathed into the cravat he held against his nose and mouth. Not much more he could do. No use dying for some glass and plants and timber. Guin could build another place. Or perhaps this simply meant…
It was time for her to return to her husband.
It was certainly time for Bran to leave this sinking ship.
He didn’t even get three creaky steps toward the exit when the ceiling collapsed.
A-fucking-gain. He dove out of the way, but a beam hit his leg, pinned him.
He screamed and wrenched at the leg, but more bone and muscle moved inside his body than from under the beam.
The fire clawed at him, the weight of the beam was crushing.
Holy Jupiter, he was taking his last breaths.
Here. Now. Before he’d done what he meant to. Not how he wanted it to be.
Guin was outside at least. Safe. At least. She’d better not cry. He didn’t want to see single fucking tear. He almost laughed. He’d be dead. Wouldn’t have to see anything.
Not how he’d wanted to go.
He grit his teeth against the searing pain, his lungs wailing from the smoke and potion fumes. He was drenched in potion, too, amber and pink stuff mixed with ash to muddy the shirt and trousers he’d thrown on when he smelled smoke. The world was blinking out of existence.
But he still saw the man walking into the fire.
“Get out!” Bran screamed. Screamed? It felt more like a raw tearing against his throat, and it produced almost no sound.
The man moved like a shadow through the smoke, right into the flames, his body glowing. Every patch of dancing fire he passed seemed to… seep into his body.
Impossible.
The man opened his mouth and seemed to… breath in the flames. As the dancing, hungry heat flickered out in the shop, the man’s skin grew brighter. First he’d been a dim moon’s glow, but now he was sun hot.
And recognizable.
Apollo Chester, that poor besotted fool. He’d been following the Grant girl around for days. Couldn’t blame the man. Following a beautiful woman about was what Bran did from sunrise to sunset. Most days.
Other days…
The last flame died, consumed by the fire eater, and the glowing Chester turned and walked out of the ruined shop as if it were a ballroom.
Bran coughed into his cravat.
He would live.
If he could just get the damned beam off his leg!
Above him, he could see past two ruined ceilings to the scorched third. It groaned. It cracked. Ashen plaster floated through the smoke and fumes to sprinkle across his eyes.
“Fuck.” Panic pushed him upward, and he grasped the beam, groaning as every muscle in his body screamed trying to lift the cursed thing. Nothing, nothing.
Nothing!
Then an inch! Two!
He dragged his leg free and struggled to his feet. Foot. One was… not working as it should. Crushing another curse between his teeth, he limped toward the back exit.
And the third ceiling fell.
He plastered himself against a wall as debris flew far and wide, slashing at the arms he threw up to cover his face, and nicking his thighs and hips and ribs easily through his insufficient clothing.
When quiet rang, he took off again, sending up a prayer to Jupiter for yet another miraculous moment. How many damn times would he face death and survive? Exhausting just thinking about it.
The back door was broken, hanging from the hinges at an awkward angle, and he pushed past it into the alley.
Nick, one of the shop’s regular guards was keeping people away from the buildings, and he looked up, alert and suspicious as Bran stumbled toward him.
Bran slapped his shoulder. “Good work. I don’t think anyone else is inside.”
“Who the fuck are you?” Nick growled.
“Who am… Is this a joke? It’s not funny, Nick. Is your brain addled by all the smoke and potion fumes?”
Nick wrapped a large fist up in Bran’s shirt and jerked him close. “I don’t joke about Lady G’s safety, or the safety of her girls. Where the hell’d you come from? Who are you?”
Bran pushed him away, falling to his arse in the wet alley. “Bran! I’m Bran, what the hell are you talking about?”
Nick reached behind his back, no doubt for one of those wicked blades Bran had taught him how to use. “I’m talking about a fire starting and a strange man hanging around at the same time.”
Something was wrong. Terribly fucking wrong.
Nick grabbed Bran beneath the arm and wrenched him to his feet. “You’re comin’ with me.”
Bran did, stumbling forward at Nick’s brutal pace. They rounded the corner and on the small side street that opened up into Finsbury Square.
A woman’s wail rose into the air, lifting his name to the heavens.
“Guin.” Bran jerked free of his goaler and ran. He couldn’t feel the bottom half of his damned leg, but as long as it got him where he needed to be, he didn’t care. Behind him, Nick yelled, his footsteps surer and faster than Bran’s.
But Bran made it to the square first, saw, first, Lady Guinevere melted to a puddle in the street, wearing nothing but a shift and wrapper, her shoulders heaving. Jupiter.
He dragged his useless leg toward her, and when the tip of his boot brushed against the pool of her skirts, she looked up, her bright hair a wild tangle around her face and down her back.
Shock first in her violet eyes.
Then horror, disgust.
She rose, shaking, to her feet, her lips twisting into a sneer. “Braxton. You did this.”
“What? Guin, no. Braxton? Why would you—”
She slapped him.
And when he lifted a hand to his burning cheek, he saw it—he wasn’t wearing a shirt any longer. He was fully dressed in a perfectly tailored suit, complete with waistcoat, cravat, and jacket.
He traced the bones of his face in the moonlight. It felt like him. But his arm, shaking and outstretched—well, that his too. But not here. Never here. He didn’t remember putting the glamour on, but he must have. He couldn’t snap it away here, now, in front of everyone.
He stepped away from her, looking instinctively for someplace to hide.
“I thought,” Guin said, marching toward him with trembling rage, “you were willing to let me go.”
“I… I am. I-I was. I—”
“Leave. Leave or I tell every newspaper in London who set the fire in Finsbury Square.”
“I didn’t. I would never—”
“Goodbye, Braxton.” She turned, her face an emotionless mask as she peered at him over her shoulder. “I do hope to never see you again.”
He surged forward. One step only because he couldn’t go after her. Not like this, damnit. He had to let her go. Alone. Unprotected. After someone had set bloody fire to her shop.
No. Not alone. There was Nick and the other guards. They’d protect her. He’d trained them, and now he had to trust them.
While every muscle in his body screamed not to, he left her, left Finsbury Square, and hailed a hackney.
“To Mayfair,” he said, climbing up. The hack smelled like piss, but he didn’t smell much better.
At least the driver didn’t question his appearance.
At the edges of Mayfair, the driver stopped and Bran disembarked, threw the man a coin.
He walked the rest of the way, down well-manicured, marble edged streets and pristine wrought iron fences.
He trudged up the stairs of a mansion in a square occupied by other such buildings, all of them encircled with the glittering glamours of the titled transcendents.
The entry hall of his home was quiet as a mausoleum. Black and white marble floors, a glittering chandelier above, paintings and wallpaper and all that fine frippery he’d inherited after the old duke’s death.
He faced the large gilt mirror opposite the stairs.
Faced himself. Tall, willowy, and handsome.
Blonde with a sharp nose and high, aristocratic cheekbones.
His clothes were immaculate, no trace of smoke.
Every scar he’d ever accumulated in his life gone, hidden beneath the Duke of Braxton’s traditional glamour.
Bran’s glamour. Only his eyes looked the same—black and hard and tired.
He needed to bathe and change and get back to Guin. He closed his eyes and shook off the glamour, opened them.
“What the hell? His reflection hadn’t changed. The blonde-haired duke still stood haughty and untouchable in his entry way.
He tried again to push away the glamour, to force it to dissolve, but the threads and tendrils he usually pulled on and released to put the glamour on and take it off… were gone. The glamour seemed hard everywhere, a shell he couldn’t break out of.
Something rose within him. Panic. More pressing than when the fire had surrounded him, higher pitched than when the beam had held him down. He took deep breaths, pushed the fear down, and dragged his busted leg up the stairs. He’d sleep. He’d be fine in the morning.
He had to be.
Because if he couldn’t get rid of this glamour, he wouldn’t be able to watch after Lady Guinevere. He wouldn’t be able to protect his wife.