Chapter Five
Tonight.
You’re sure?
I don’t remember asking you to second-guess me.
We need another few days, at least.
Get creative. I know you have it in you.
—Text message exchange between two prepaid mobiles, 1 February 2024
When I step inside the flat thirty minutes later, after a car ride that took me and my PPOs through half of Oxford trying to shake any possible tail, Singh is perched on the edge of the dining table in his standard charcoal suit, looking annoyingly comfortable as he sips from my favorite pink mug.
“I hear you went on a little adventure,” he says the moment I close the door.
“Nothing gets past MI5,” I say, pulling off my sweaty layers before flopping down on the sofa, painfully aware that my deodorant isn’t holding up its end of our bargain. “Where—”
“What do you mean, an adventure?” Kit steps out of our bedroom in a button-down and dark jeans, a pen tucked behind his ear and a paper map in hand. It might be the adrenaline still coursing through me, but he has never looked hotter. “Is everything all right? What did Tibby want?”
“My dad’s waking up,” I say as Singh takes a sip of whatever he’s drinking. “She warned me that we don’t have much time left. Why do you have a—”
“It seems Miss Bright believes she had an encounter with the man who calls himself Guy Fawkes,” interrupts Singh, though he’s already reaching for his mobile. “Did Lady Tabitha mention a specific timeline—”
“What?” Kit kneels beside me and cups my cheek. “You saw Guy? Are you all right? Did he say anything? Did he hurt—”
“I’m fine,” I promise, ignoring Singh’s question. “He didn’t do anything. Just tried to look menacing. I have no idea how he found me, though.”
“Your meeting place with Lady Tabitha is close enough to Lord Clarence’s lectures that I expect the Abr is keeping tabs on the location,” says Singh, typing into his phone. “You’re certain it was him?”
I nod. “I recognized his scarf, and he was just…staring at me. I tried to chase him down, but he ran before—”
“You tried to chase him?” says Kit in a strangled voice. “Ev…”
“I had to do something,” I say, but now, looking at the fear and distress written plainly on his face, I start to regret it. “My protection officers were nearby. They wouldn’t have let anything happen—”
Kit clasps my hand between his and bows his head.
He isn’t religious, as far as I know, beyond the god and pony show required of everyone even remotely adjacent to the crown, but it almost looks like he’s praying.
“Evan,” he says as he once again meets my gaze, his voice so low that I can barely hear him over the tap-tap-tap of Singh’s phone.
“I am begging you. Please stop putting yourself in unnecessary danger. Chasing him down…running after him…” He shakes his head, and his eyes shine with unshed tears. “If something happens to you…”
“Nothing’s going to happen to me,” I say gently. “Kit, I swear, I wasn’t in any danger—”
“You don’t know that, Ev. Not for sure,” he says, barely able to force the words out. “Every time something like this happens, all I can think is that this is really it, that I’m about to lose you forever, and I can’t breathe—”
“Miss Bright is safe and sound, for now,” says Singh, in a tone that makes it clear he has no patience for either Kit’s panic or my shenanigans. “And with the timeline moving up, I’m afraid you have no choice but to go tonight, Lord Clarence. There’s simply no way around it.”
I snap my head up, confused. “Go where?”
Kit’s jaw works for a moment before he sighs. “Dylan texted again,” he admits. “He wants to meet me. He didn’t say why, but he did offer to meet at a time and place of my choosing. Hence the map.”
“We’ve narrowed it down to three pubs in the area,” adds Singh. “I’ll have agents on all of them, and we won’t make a decision until Lord Clarence returns Mr. Baxter’s text.”
“Which will be no more than thirty minutes ahead of time,” says Kit quickly, no doubt in response to the look on my face.
“Even if Dylan or the Abr are planning something, they won’t have a chance to implement it.
Not with agents and PPOs swarming the place.
It’s not foolproof, but we don’t have a choice.
Not if we want to find that list before your father is fully conscious. ”
My heart drops, which is a feat, considering it’s beating so fast it’s on the verge of taking flight. “I don’t want you to go,” I blurt as Tibby’s warning once again echoes in my mind. “Whatever Dylan has to say—”
“Is the king waking up or not?” says Singh pointedly. “We’ve no time to waste waiting for the perfect opportunity. I would not approve this if I thought it posed any real threat to Lord Clarence—”
“Kit,” I snap. “His name is Kit. And of course it poses a threat. Dylan almost killed us less than two months ago, and neither of us ever saw him coming. How do you know this isn’t some kind of setup?”
“If Dylan or the Abr wanted to kill me, they would have done it already,” says Kit quietly. “They know where I am most days, after all.”
“We’ll be doing a thorough sweep of the premises before the meeting place goes live,” adds Singh, “and the rooftops and nearby buildings will also be secured. If anyone lifts a finger against Lord Clarence—Kit,” he adds hastily at my deadly look, “they’ll immediately be taken into custody. I assure you, Miss Bright—”
“If you do this,” I say, looking straight at Kit, “then I’m going with you.”
He blinks. “I—” begins Kit, but Singh cuts him off.
“Out of the question,” he says, and Kit and I turn to him as one, my face heating with anger.
“I know what Guy looks like,” I argue. “None of your agents or our PPOs do. I’m not saying I want to sit down at a table with Kit and Dylan—I want to be at the pub so I can watch his back—”
“Out,” says Singh, slower this time, “of the question.”
I stare at him, the edge of my vision red with fury. But Singh doesn’t waver, and I sit up straight on the sofa, my feet hitting the floor.
“What am I even here for?” I snarl. “What’s the point? I haven’t done anything useful. I’m not allowed to go anywhere. No one even knew I was here until today—”
“Exactly,” says Singh. “As far as we knew, Guy Fawkes had no idea you were even in the country. But now that we know for certain he does,” he adds, bulldozing straight over my protest, “I refuse to put myself in a position where I have to explain to His Majesty why his daughter is dead.”
I scoff, even as tears of frustration prickle my eyes. “I’m not quitting, if that’s what you want. Not until we find the list.” And proof that Ben is part of the Abr.
“On the contrary, I’d very much like for you to continue as part of this team, Miss Bright,” says Singh. “Which is why I am asking you to trust that my agents will take every possible step to ensure Kit’s safety tonight, and that includes ensuring yours so he can focus on the job at hand.”
Once again, I look at Kit and thread my fingers through his, and his grimace deepens.
“If I do this, I’ll only go for a quick drink.
No more than ten minutes,” he says quietly.
“Whatever Dylan wants, if he can’t spit it out by then, I’m leaving.
And I’ll only go if you want me to, Ev,” he adds.
“Say the word, and I’ll stay, all right? ”
Our eyes meet again, and I can see everything he’s thinking.
All those horrors he’s witnessed, all those times he’s had to wait to find out if he’d ever see me again—he doesn’t want to put me through even a moment of that.
And somehow, despite my frustration and fury, I love him a little more than I did a heartbeat ago.
Singh sighs. “This may very well be our last chance with Mr. Baxter, particularly if His Majesty is well enough to demand your return,” he says. And while his manipulation isn’t subtle, his point is valid, and I chew on my lower lip.
“I need a shower. And a minute to think about this,” I say, my gaze still on Kit’s. But we both know what my answer will be. Whatever Dylan has to say, it could be the key to finding the list. To figuring out who Guy Fawkes is and taking down the Army of the British Republic.
It could be the key to finally unearthing the piece of the puzzle that proves beyond a doubt that Prince Benedict of York has been in on it the entire time, and that he, too, deserves to rot in prison for the rest of his miserable life.
“Very well,” says Singh, and he continues to type furiously into his phone. “Lord Clarence—Kit, bring the map over here, and we’ll sort out our final location.”
Kit lingers beside me for a moment longer, his thumb stroking the back of my hand.
“Do you want to talk about it?” he says, and I shake my head.
If I speak now, I’m sure I’ll ask him to stay, even though I know he can’t.
But after a beat, the words tumble out of me before I can stop them, my voice crackling.
“If something happens to you…” I clear my throat, tears leaking from the corners of my eyes. It’s supposed to be me, not him. I’m the one who’s supposed to be taking chances, and I can’t stand the thought of him paying the price for my mistakes.
“It won’t,” he promises with good intentions, but it isn’t a promise at all. Just hope. “I love you too much to ever leave you.”
I want to believe him, but after the bombing, after seeing my father’s broken body in the hospital bed and my mother sitting at his side day and night, waiting for him to return to her, I know that love and willpower alone aren’t enough.
He would never leave her, either, not if he had anything to say about it. But he didn’t.
“Everything I am to you…you are to me,” I whisper. And that’s all I manage as I finally extract myself from him, our gazes locked until I pass into our bedroom.
I shower quickly, feeling like I’m racing against time.
I wash the sweat away, but the helplessness remains no matter how hot the water is, and when I reemerge into the living room in my coziest sweats, my damp hair braided and thick socks over my cold feet, I feel like a ghost. But I know what I have to do—what we both have to do—and I glance around, searching the small space for Kit.
The lights are on, and the curtains are closed against the darkening sky. But the hook by the door, where Kit usually hangs his coat and keys, is bare, and Singh is nowhere in sight.
The flat is empty.
Kit left without saying goodbye.
I instinctively know why he did it—to spare me the burden of guilt and responsibility for whatever happens at this meeting—but that does nothing to take the edge off as I pace through the flat in a haze of fury and anxiety, itching to throttle something with my bare hands.
I text him fourteen times before I finally decide he’s ignoring me on purpose. Or that something has gone horrifically wrong, and he’s lying in the middle of the road outside a pub, bleeding from a bullet wound or a knife to the throat or—
I shove away that mental image and inhale deeply.
He’ll be okay. Singh will make sure of it.
Except if they pushed the meeting up this quickly, did MI5 even have time to sweep the area?
Do they know what Kit’s walking into? What if the Abr planted someone in every pub within a two-mile radius of Christ Church, or—
Yet again, I stop that runaway train of thought with a sharp intake of breath.
The PPOs stationed outside the flat would know if something bad was going down.
They’d tell me. Except deep in my gut, I’m sure they wouldn’t, because they know exactly what I would do—run right into danger as fast as I could, because that’s what Kit would do for me.
And because maybe, maybe there would be some way I could help him.
But if I follow him now, I’ll only be putting him in more danger, especially if the Abr expects me to be there. If this is a trap, and Kit is the bait…
Have you considered the possibility that they might bring him back into the fold, only to silence him for good?
My phone vibrates in my hand, and I nearly drop it. A text. My heart thuds against my ribs, and I tap the icon so aggressively that I have to try again. Finally my messages open, and—
It’s not from Kit.
Instead, it’s from an unknown number, one I texted with back in January. Ben—I thought it was Ben at the time, but it can’t be now, can it? Frowning, I open the new message and suddenly feel like I’ve plunged straight into an icy lake.
It’s a picture of Kit sitting alone in a cozy pub, taken through what looks like a long lens. Of a paparazzo’s camera? From a phone zoomed in?
But then I see the thin black cross, and I know exactly what it is.
The scope of a rifle.