The White Kingdom was ruled by a powerful sorceress, descended from kings and warriors. She had taken as her consort her best general and from him had five children, all golden eyed and golden haired. The Black Kingdom was ruled by a ruthless warlock. He had but one child, a son as black in hair and eyes as his name.…

—From The Black Prince and the Golden Falcon

The urchin gave Iris Daniels, Lady Jordan an impudent wink as he strutted from the room. She stared after him, her brow knitted. Something about the way the boy walked was… odd. She shook her head and looked at Hugh.

He had his hands outstretched to her, his diplomat’s smile firmly on his lips, as he said, “Good morning, my lady.”

She took his hands, cocking an eyebrow at his formality. “Good morning, darling Hugh.”

He bent over her knuckles in greeting and rose again, which was when she noticed the ugly wound above his left eye.

Her own eyes widened in concern. “Your head—what happened?”

His mouth tightened in what looked like irritation, and she felt a familiar twinge of hurt. Was it so horrible to want to know what things affected a friend?

“It’s nothing, I assure you,” he said to her as if she were a girl of six and not a woman of seven and twenty. “Come. I know you wish to visit with the boys. Shall we go up and see if they’ve breakfasted yet?”

She pressed her lips together and nodded, remembering to smile brightly at the last, for they were friends—or at least she thought they were. The trouble was that it so hard to tell sometimes. Hugh Fitzroy was such a secretive man in many ways. He kept his thoughts and his emotions very close to the vest, and though they had something of an understanding that would lead one day in the vague future to marriage, it was at times like these that she wondered if she was perhaps making a mistake.

James, her late husband, had also kept his emotions and thoughts under tight control and entirely apart from her, his wife.

Theirs had not been a happy marriage.

But James and Hugh were not the same man, and it was not fair to either to compare them, Iris reminded herself as Hugh led her up the grand staircase to the upper floors of Kyle House. Though both men had been army officers, James had been more than twenty years her senior, and she his third wife. James had been a brooding, quiet man, more comfortable, she’d always suspected, in the company of other gentlemen than that of the fairer sex.

Hugh seemed to enjoy the society of both sexes. She’d seen him smile and tell amusing stories and, of course, when he’d courted Katherine he’d been dashing and intent on her. Despite that, though, he’d always seemed to keep some piece of himself aloof. As if he’d watched and studied and took note of those around him even when he’d been in the midst of passionately pursuing Katherine.

Perhaps that was because of his parentage. For he wasn’t truly like any of them, was he?

“Blast,” Hugh said, drawing Iris out of her musings as they made the third floor.

She glanced at him and saw his heavy brows were drawn together just as a crash and a scream sounded from the nursery farther down the hallway.

Iris picked up her skirts at the same time that Hugh dropped her arm and strode down the hall to the nursery room door.

She hurried after, catching up as he opened the door and snapped, “Peter.”

Inside the nursery the little boy was lying on the floor, red-faced, his fists clenched, his heels beating the wooden boards, as he screamed at the top of his lungs. One of the nursemaids stood over him slapping him repeatedly on any limb she could reach.

Iris gasped. “Stop that at once!” She couldn’t hear her own voice above the commotion in the room.

Christopher sat against the wall, his hands clapped over his ears, his face scrunched up, yelling over and over, “Shut! Up! Shut! Up!”

The younger nursemaid quailed at the far corner of the room, her hair half-down about her face.

Hugh grasped the older nursemaid by the arm and thrust her into the corridor. “You. You are dismissed.”

He closed the door on the woman’s protesting face.

He crossed to Christopher and picked him up, ignoring the boy’s struggles, and took him into the adjoining bedroom, passing Iris on the way. “Come.”

“But Peter—”

“I will take care of him. Once he starts screaming like this he continues for quite some time. I need you to see to Kit.”

She trotted after him, as obediently as a terrier called to heel. One part of her brain thought that this must be the voice he used with his men, his voice of command, for it certainly was most effective.

He set poor Christopher on one of the boys’ beds, gave Iris a single intent look, and turned back to the nursery, shutting the door between the rooms.

Iris sat on the bed beside the boy and took a deep breath. She was trembling. She’d known that Peter had thrown terrible tantrums since Katherine’s death, but to actually witness one… Hearing such sounds from a beloved child was very distressing.

She looked at Christopher.

He’d stopped yelling, but he was sitting on the bed, his arms wrapped around his knees, silently weeping.

She drew his slim form into her arms.

He held himself stiff for a moment and then all at once he came undone, his limbs relaxing and falling apart as he tumbled into her lap.

She laid her cheek against his dark curls and simply held him, eyes closed. She didn’t know what to do. No one, it seemed, knew what to do.

None of them had been prepared for Katherine’s death.

Katherine had been her greatest friend ever since they’d been girls of ten. They’d lived near each other as children, and though Katherine had been vivacious and always surrounded by beaux while Iris was quiet, much preferring a book to a party, they’d stayed friends as they’d grown up and married.

And found their respective marriages not entirely happy.

She’d loved Katherine. Loved her quick, sometimes cutting wit. Loved the way she’d thrown her head back in private and laughed, full throated and overly exuberant. Loved that she knew Iris’s sad weakness for soft licorice sweets—knew and pandered to her weakness by supplying said soft licorice sweets.

Iris swallowed against the choking thickness in her throat.

No one knew or cared that she liked soft licorice sweets now.

Katherine had had faults. She knew that. How could such a star shine so brightly and not have faults? It simply wasn’t possible. But Katherine had adored her sons.

That had never, ever been in doubt.

And because of her love, and because Iris had loved Katherine, she would care for Christopher and Peter to the best of her ability for as long as they needed her.

The screaming from the nursery suddenly stopped, the cessation of sound leaving an odd, almost ringing sensation in her ears.

Iris breathed a sigh of relief.

Christopher stirred. “I hate him.”

Her heart constricted. “Don’t say that. I don’t think he can help it, dear. He misses her so. I know you do, too.”

“No.” He yawned, pulling away from her, and lay down on his bed, his eyes closing sleepily. “Not Peter. Him.”

And his cherry-red lips puffed out on the next breath as he fell asleep just like that.

She stared at the boy. Stunned. Horrified, if truth be told. How could he hate his father? Hugh had never done anything to earn such rejection, surely?

Except he’d not been there for most of the boys’ lives. He’d been away on the Continent and in the army for three years.

And they couldn’t comprehend why.

She raised her hand, wanting to comfort, but fearful of waking the child. Uncertain.

Not for the first time she felt her acute inferiority: she was a poor, dull substitute for the radiant mother they’d lost.

In the end she let her hand drop to the side of the bed, and as she did so, she felt an odd hardness under the coverlet.

She pulled the edge of the coverlet back, careful not to disturb Christopher, and looked. Under the boy’s mattress, stuck between it and the bed frame, was the corner of a book, bound in red leather. She drew it out. The book was thin, hardly bigger than her hand. She turned it over, but found no mark.

But when she opened it, she saw familiar handwriting:

Katherine, Duchess of Kyle

Her Diary

May 1741

HUGH TOOK PETER into his arms, grasping at a kicking leg, winced as a flailing hand caught his still-tender ribs, and ignored the blow to his cheek. He picked up his son bodily and turned and sat on a chair in the corner as the child continued to scream, loud and awful. He paid no heed to the sound and kept himself contained, showing neither the frustration nor the anger he felt. He was the adult, Peter the child.

He could outlast the boy.

The little boy’s wails were growing quieter.

Hugh tucked Peter’s sweaty head under his chin and held the boy. He could almost admire his son’s determination to make his rage known to all.

Peter gasped, choking wetly, and the screaming stopped simply because he couldn’t draw breath.

Hugh took a handkerchief out of his pocket and gently wiped Peter’s face.

“No!” The child started struggling again, although weakly, as he’d worn himself out. “No! Go away.”

“No. I won’t,” Hugh said, calm. He held the handkerchief to Peter’s nose. “Can you blow?”

His son responded noisily.

Hugh finished wiping the boy’s face and wadded the handkerchief, then placed it in his pocket.

Peter had gone limp, sagging in exhaustion against him.

Hugh wrapped one arm across the boy’s belly and stroked his hand over Peter’s forehead, brushing back his sweaty hair, and felt the first sharp stab of a headache beginning behind his right eye.

He closed his eyes and wondered if his sons would ever recover from their mother’s death.

From his own absence in their life.

He’d met Katherine eight years ago when he’d been four and twenty and she a dashing, beautiful nineteen. She’d been the daughter of the Earl of Barlowe, the acknowledged swan of the season, and the first sight of her had lit a madness inside him. It was as if he were drunk on her, on her wit, her spark, the way she teased and made him hard. And she, she was equally intoxicated with him, his title, and his uniform. They’d been a terrible brew, the two of them, though at the time he’d not known it.

All he’d been aware of was the most intense joy and excitement he’d ever experienced in his life. A feeling of freedom and hope that would have made him immediately suspicious had he been thinking with his brain instead of his heart and his cock.

After all, he knew well enough that love didn’t lead to happiness.

But he’d disregarded his own past and the counsel of what few close friends he had and had married Katherine within months. That first year they’d fought and loved, and it was as if they lived locked inside an iron prison, their passion heating the walls to burning, neither of them able to get out, each unable to let the other go.

She’d become pregnant with Kit almost right away.

His birth, delighting them both, had cooled their fiery arguments slightly, but only for a little time. When Peter was born, his sweet, golden son, Hugh suspected that Katherine had been taking lovers for over a year.

By the time Peter was two she was no longer bothering to hide her liaisons from him and Hugh no longer bothered to rage.

He could’ve beaten her. Could’ve taken to drink or shot himself. Could’ve banished her to the country to rot in obscurity. Could’ve called out her lovers one after another and killed them in illegal duels until he was killed himself. He could’ve tried to ignore her and taken a mistress. Pretended he didn’t hear the barely hidden laughter from other men who knew him for a cuckold.

He could have gone insane.

He did none of those things. Instead he left. He’d already been discreetly working for His Majesty—doing the sort of undertakings that couldn’t be done through official channels—and his type of work would be quite useful on the Continent. So he’d gone abroad, traveling as an officer assigned to various army regiments, but engaged in much more sensitive matters. Once on the Continent, he contacted his men of business and through them informed Katherine of his terms: He would, of course, continue to support her and his sons. He asked only that she attempt to be discreet and, more importantly, not have any children while he was out of the country. He requested that she keep him apprised of their son’s lives with regular letters, and in turn read his missives to them.

As it turned out, she was a much better mother than wife, or possibly they simply got on more civilly with his solicitors as intermediaries. Katherine had faithfully sent him long letters about Kit and Peter, and Hugh had spent three years tramping all over the Continent, both in the battlefield and in ballrooms.

The only thing he’d had to give up for such peace was his sons.

His. Sons.

He tightened his arm around Peter and bent to kiss the boy’s forehead. Hugh had walked back into Kyle House after those three years a stranger to his sons. Peter hadn’t recognized him. Kit had known him only from a miniature Katherine kept. The younger boy had been confused and fearful, the older had stared at him with frank hatred.

His sons.

Never again. He’d lost far, far too much because of a witless passion two parts lust and one part heady stupidity. When he married a second time, to the calm, gentle woman who even now was comforting Kit, it would be for friendship and companionship. A mother for his children and a mistress for his home.

Peter stirred sleepily in his arms. “Papa?”

Hugh opened his eyes. “Yes?”

“When’re you leavin’ again?”

Peter had asked him this question before. He gave the boy the same answer he always gave. “I’m not leaving.”

Peter clutched Hugh’s waistcoat, his face bent downward, playing with one of the buttons. “Kit says you’re gonna leave.”

He tried to think of the words to say to make a little boy believe in him. A little boy who had already lost a mother and still didn’t really know him.

In the end he said the only thing he could, inadequate though it was. “I won’t. I promise.”

“YOU’RE GETTING SLOW, old man.” Alf grinned that evening as she skipped back quickly, like a bird in flight.

Godric St. John didn’t even crack a smile. St. John wasn’t much for smiles—not unless it was at the sight of his lady wife or his little girl babe—but his ice-gray eyes narrowed and he lunged at her with his sword and if she didn’t know any better she’d think he was bent on gutting her on the spot.

Good thing she did know better, then.

She brought her own practice sword up and parried his attack pretty as you please, then slipped under his arm, turning in a cunning move to drive her sword up into his exposed armpit.

Or it would’ve been a cunning move if St. John’s sword weren’t pressed into the padding at her throat.

Alf wrinkled her nose at the sword tip as she dropped her practice sword in surrender. The long room they dueled in was at the top of Saint House, the wooden floor bare, the only ornaments the swords and protective padding hanging on the wall. As far as Alf knew, the sole thing the room was used for was dueling.

“What,” said St. John, not breathing fast at all, which was a bit of an insult, considering the man was practically old enough to be her father, “was your mistake?”

“I-did-not-anticipate-my-enemy’s-movement-and-furthermore-underestimated-’is-intelligence,” she said all in one breath, because really every one of her so-called mistakes was pretty much the same. “But seems to me that unless I meet you in a St Giles alley one night I’m not going to ’ave this ’ere mistake with any other opponent.”

St. John sighed and lowered his sword. “This isn’t a game. I only agreed to help you learn to fight with the swords so that you could better defend yourself, but if you continue to go out there, full of foolish arrogance, it’s only a matter of time before you’re injured or killed.”

Alf scowled at St. John’s harsh words, spoken in his usual maddeningly even tone. Two years ago she might’ve shown him a rude finger, cursed him for a thick swell, and stomped out of the room.

But this man had been the former Ghost of St Giles. He was the one who had helped her save Hannah from the lassie snatchers. Had sought her out over weeks and months and patiently talked to her, even when she’d rebuffed him again and again. Until, in a fit of frustration, she’d finally demanded he teach how her to use the swords so that she could become the Ghost of St Giles herself now that he’d retired.

She’d figured he’d refuse and that’d be the end of it.

He hadn’t.

Instead he’d let her into his own home and taught her how to hold a sword. How to thrust and parry. How to angle her hips and slide her legs. When she was ready he’d introduced her to an elderly woman who had sewn her Ghost costume, and helped her purchase her swords. And he’d done all that knowing she was a woman. A woman with no name, no money, no family, a woman who came from the dung heap that was St Giles.

He’d asked nothing at all in return—not money or sex or anything else.

Alf had never met anyone like St. John in all her life.

She might be a little in love with him.

Not love love, mind. But love like the way she loved the sky and Hannah and the rooftops.

He was special and wonderfully strange, was Godric St. John.

So when he gave her that stare and raised his sword again, she picked up her sword and looked chastened.

Or at least tried.

But then there was a commotion belowstairs, and though nothing changed in St. John’s face, something lit within him, and she knew their sparring was over for the day.

His lady wife was home.

“I beg your pardon,” he murmured, sounding absentminded already.

She sighed, trying not to feel resentful of the woman she’d never met, and went to hang her sword on the wall and untie the padded waistcoat she wore for practice.

“Would you like to stay for dinner?”

She looked up at his invitation because he’d never asked that before. Not when his wife was about.

“And what would you tell ’er?” She couldn’t help it. She felt herself scowl like a child. After all, if his wife hadn’t come home, they’d still be practicing.

His eyebrows rose. “I’d introduce you, of course. Megs does know who you are.”

She stiffened. “You told ’er.”

“I don’t keep secrets from my wife,” he said, sounding so reasonable. “Alf, don’t look like that. Megs would never tell anyone, she promised me. She knows how important your disguise is.”

She shook her head, moving away. It didn’t matter what he said. What promises had been made. What mattered was that he’d told her.

That he’d trusted her secret to his wife.

That she, Alf, wasn’t anyone special to him.

That shouldn’t hurt, she knew, but it did. It did.

She turned and went to the window.

“Alf.”

But she didn’t feel like replying. She threw her leg over the sill, found a toehold below, and swarmed up the side of the house and onto the roof, without looking back.

It was dark already, the moon hidden by clouds, but she ran over the roof. Jumped down onto the next building and then climbed down to the ground. Saint House was by the river, and she stuck her hands into her pockets, bent her head, and headed north into London and back to St Giles. She wouldn’t think about St. John. Wouldn’t think about him in his warm house with his wife and baby.

She could take care of herself by herself, and that was all that mattered.

So. She’d think about business instead. She’d buy her supper at the One Horned Goat and nose about there. Maybe talk to Archer and the regulars and see if anyone knew who had hired the Scarlet Throat gang to attack Kyle last night. She was a bit wary of alerting the Scarlet Throats themselves, so she was going about her information gathering in a roundabout sort of way. She’d already talked to the pickpocket gang, to a couple of the shadier pawnbrokers, and to the linkboy who’d been with Kyle. She had a bit of news, but not enough to earn that second purse yet.

And some of her best sources came out only at night.

She was nearly to St Giles, the streets getting darker because the shopkeepers didn’t bother putting lanterns outside their shops to light the way, when she twigged that she was being followed. The streets weren’t empty—there were people going home to St Giles—so it wasn’t obvious at first.

But then she noticed that the lanky fellow in the battered tricorne had been across the street, in step with her, since Covent Garden.

And he was wearing a red neckcloth.

Alf pretended to step in something nasty, and made a show of bending and scraping her shoe against the cobblestones as she took a quick look behind her. There were two men just steps away. They might not be following her.

And the sun might not come up in the east tomorrow.

She straightened and kept her stride the same, her shoulders still hunched against the cold, her head still bent as she hurried past more shops.

At the next alley she darted inside and legged it.

Footsteps pounded behind her, so close she could almost feel the hot breath on the back of her neck. If she could get a little bit of a lead she could go up and over the roofs and lose them in a trice.

But on the street…

This was how they’d caught Kyle last night, she thought as she ducked to the right into another lane. They’d herded him like a ram to slaughter.

Best not let herself be cornered, then.

She deliberately didn’t take the next, smaller lane. Instead she headed west and back into the better parts of London.

Someone cursed behind her and then she felt fingers catch at her coat.

She staggered, off balance.

Shoved her hand into her coat pocket and palmed the dagger.

Whirled and stabbed blindly at the attacker. High, up under his face.

She didn’t hit anything, but he swore and let go of her coat, raising his hands to protect his throat.

Alf turned and ran again, panting now, the dagger still clutched in her hand. The lane opened up into a bigger street, and she was so relieved she nearly didn’t see the tough coming from the left.

He barreled right into her without stopping, knocking her clean off her feet, and slammed her to the ground. Her knife clattered away into the dark street as she felt the first blow to her back. The second to her thigh.

Curl into a ball. Cover your head and eyes, throat and belly. All the soft bits. All the parts that could be gouged and hurt the worst.

That was the first thing you learned in St Giles. It was practically a lullaby taught to the babes at their mothers’ paps.

But if she curled up they wouldn’t stop with a blow or two. They’d kick her until her ribs broke, until her skull caved, until she lost sense and uncurled and they could get at her soft bits.

And then they’d kill her.

So she kept moving. On hands and knees. Scrambling to right herself, though she knew it was near hopeless. Even as someone kicked her in the side, again and again. She got her hand into her waistcoat pocket as she crawled, and when the next kick came, she caught that leg and stuck it with her second dagger.

The man howled and fell against one of the others. And that was all she needed. Just a second’s breath of time.

She was up and on her legs again, running. Limping, to be honest. Her arm and side were all afire, and something in the right side of her face was just numb, no pain or feeling at all.

But she jumped and caught the lower rail of a balcony. Swung and brought her legs up just before one of the toughs swiped at her feet. She clambered onto the balcony, scaled the window and the next and thence to the roof.

And once there? She took flight. Spreading her wings over the rooftops of London.

Running from the dark woods and the monsters.