candles and standing outside, waiting for the first snows to fall.”
They were silent for several moments, and then Ramson spoke. “Back at home, we don’t worship your Deities. We have three gods: the Sea, the Sky, and the Land.” There was a rawness to his voice that she had never heard before, a quiet honesty that felt intimate.
Three gods. It all came to her then. She recalled hundreds of pages from old tomes she’d studied, of the Bregonians and their gods and values and their Navy. The Bregonian surname he had chosen for their invite letter. The slightest accent to his words, so subtle that she hadn’t been able to place it. Until now.
Ana whirled toward him. “You’re Bregonian.” The realization felt like another puzzle piece falling into place.
Ramson’s mask hung in his hands. He met her gaze, his eyes darting between hers with something like uncertainty. How could she have not guessed? She thought of the calluses on his hands, of the long scars on his back, of the way he wielded a sword better than any guard she’d seen. “You were in the Bregonian Royal Navy, weren’t you?”
“I was training for it,” he said quietly.
It all made sense. Bregonians lived on honor and courage; no matter who he’d become and what his history was, she’d seen glimmers of both in him. Perhaps…perhaps he could still be brave and honorable. Perhaps he could still change.
She stared at him, outlined in sharp-cut edges against the starless night, half-shrouded in shadows. He was a man in a mask, an enigma that she had been trying to decipher since the first day she had met him. There was still so much she didn’t know about him—so much she would never know. “How did a Royal Navy recruit become a Cyrilian crime lord?”
He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.” A weight seemed to settle into the lines of his shoulders, and his eyes clouded as he turned to her. “So, you know the plan. The carriage will be waiting outside the passageway for you at the tenth hour. One moment past ten, and it’ll be gone.”
“I know,” Ana said.
Ramson dug something from the pockets of his black suit and slipped it into her hands.
A silver pocket watch. Ana almost smiled at how practical his gift was.
But his next sentence thudded like the strike of a gavel. “There isn’t much time left, Ana. I suppose this is good-bye.”
Ana stared at him, a sudden feeling of apprehension tightening in her stomach. She’d thought this part of the plan had been clear to her: get Tetsyev, return to her brother, sort everything out. And then, once all that was over, she would fulfill her end of the bargain.
She hadn’t expected good-bye this fast.
Her carefully constructed world of possibilities and future scenarios dissolved into haze. “But—our Trade,” she found herself saying, against all odds. “You haven’t asked me for my end of it.”
He huffed, his breath forming a whorl of mist in the air. “I don’t need anything from you anymore. It all ends tonight.”
Something about that phrase didn’t sit right, and she struggled for a moment, trying to figure out what to say. But he was already turning, reaching to put his mask back on.
Her hands shot out. Clasped his wrists.
Ramson’s gaze snapped to her; his lips parted. “What—”
“Come with me,” Ana said before he could speak. “You could be good.” The words tumbled from her mouth, jumbled and rushed, and she could think of nothing else to say after.
Something shifted in Ramson’s expression, and it was like the fog had cleared and she was looking straight at him for the first time. There was an earnestness to his bright hazel eyes that she had never seen before when he spoke again. “When I was small, my father told me that there was no pure good or pure evil in the world. He said that humans only exist in different shades of gray.” He shifted, and his fingers slid around her wrists, his touch raising gooseflesh on her arms even through her gloves. “I believed that, until I met you, Ana. So…thank you.”
Shades of gray. Why did that ring another bell within her? Humans only existed in different shades of gray—
What defines you is how you choose to wield it. A gentle wind kissed her cheeks and brought her brother’s voice back to her.
“You’re right,” she said quietly, holding Ramson’s gaze. “The world doesn’t exist in black and white. But I would like to believe that