"This man admitted to ordering the assassination of Sergey Grigoriev," Gemma said, staring into the tsarina's cold, expressionless face as they were all dragged into the ballroom by the Imperial Ravens

Her heart raced, and she could barely control her breathing. The second Balfour injected Obsidian with Black Vein, she’d been so certain she’d lost him.

She still might lose him.

He must have swallowed Ava’s antidote before Balfour attacked, and while bloodied froth burst on his lips and black veins began to run beneath his skin, he hadn’t died.

The black in his veins had begun to subside after thirty seconds. His heart pounded fast enough to shatter his ribs, but then the Ravens were there and both Gemma and Balfour were apprehended as persons of interest to the tsarina.

She’d been forced to leave her heart, her love, with Byrnes, who’d assured her he’d make sure Obsidian survived. Ingrid and Barrons had joined her.

"She's lying," Balfour said, kneeling with his head bowed. "They're English agents here to ruin the succession. They murdered Sergey. I have proof."

Focus.

They couldn’t afford to lose this chance.

Obsidian had played his part and she had to have faith in Ava’s medical knowledge. It was time to do her bit. Ingrid squeezed her hand, as if sensing Gemma’s scattered thoughts.

"Do you?" Barrons gave his old nemesis a tight smile. "Well so, it seems, do we. Lady Hollis? Would you care to do the honors?"

"We heard everything." Gemma plucked the small device from her pocket with a shuddering breath. "Obsidian was wearing a listening device when he entered Vladimir Feodorevna's study. Vladimir admitted to plotting to assassinate the Prince of Tsaritsyn…."

She continued on, repeating word for word what Balfour had said, leaving out the part about proof of Obsidian’s identity.

"As I said, lying," Balfour said with a sneer when she’d finally finished. "Who do you believe? The man who has faithfully served this court for the past three years, or an English agent?"

The court broke into whispers, and Balfour gave her a very small smile.

"Please," he murmured, "continue. Perhaps you can bring up that very delightful letter my wife found in her study?"

She’d thought Tatiana a puppet, but the woman was clearly involved in this treachery.

But… why?

All her intelligence said Tatiana adored her cousin, Elisabeta, and wanted to see her on the throne.

Her intelligence….

Luther.

With everything Lark revealed and the rush of the day's work, they hadn’t pursued the concept of a mole. But someone had been giving Balfour information. Someone had fed the Company of Rogues false leads.

Gemma circled Balfour, her fingers curling into a fist. No wonder he was so smug. He’d been ahead of them at every step. How she hated this man. Time to play her trump card. "There was one more witness who listened to every word you said in that study. Someone who has no reason to lie."

"I hope it is a good witness, my dear," Balfour murmured in English.

Gemma finally allowed herself to smile. "Oh, yes. I think he’s very credible."

"Me."

The voice rang through the throne room.

People gasped and heads turned as a man appeared in the shadows of the hallway, his heels clipping the marble floors. Resting his hand upon the hilt of the ceremonial sword at his side, he paused at the very top of the stairs.

There was no mistaking his identity.

"Saints’ blood," a woman whispered at her side. "What sorcery is this?"

"No sorcery," Sergey Grigoriev said with a shark's smile as he locked eyes upon Balfour. "But a trap all the same. The only problem, Vladimir, is you thought you were the one setting it."

For the rest of her life, Gemma would recall the look upon Balfour's face as he watched Sergey Grigoriev come back from the dead.

"Check. And mate," she whispered, crossing directly in front of her most hated enemy.

"Sergey?" His wife stepped forward with a hesitant frown. "What is this? You were shot. You... you died. We all saw you die."

Balfour tried to push forward, but the two guards who'd dragged Obsidian into the throne room slammed him to his knees.

Sergey sauntered down the stairs. "This English delegation you claim tried to kill me came to me yesterday with news of an assassination you'd intended. Of course, I didn't know whether to believe them. I thought you my friend, Vladimir. What an outlandish claim of blackmail and assassination. There was no proof, so how could I call you traitor when you had been so good to me all these years?"

She saw the muscle in Balfour’s jaw twitch as Sergey taunted him.

Clearly, whatever tension existed between the two men was significant.

"And then they told me they could give me proof. I could hear your treachery with my own ears. So I set a trap." Sergey patted his chest. "I wore a bladder filled with chicken's blood and challenged Dmitri Zhukov to a duel. When I fell, my friend, Paul, injected me with a concoction of poisons that would slow my heart rate enough to consider me dead. As soon as I was whisked away to my room, he revived me with blood.

"I was there, Vladimir, listening through the English delegation's device when you told Zhukov you wanted my death to look like an accident. You did not want it to happen in front of the court.

"You said you were the next thing to a god. You said princes knelt at your feet, and then you spoke of even the tsarina herself dancing to your tune. Or her replacement. Were you planning to murder our tsarina too?" Sergey drew his sword with a steely rasp.

Balfour glared bloody murder at Gemma as the court erupted in cries of horror and rage. "This is a lie."

"And just to be certain you could not snake your way out of this one," Sergey hissed, "I brought several friends with me." He gestured to Valentin Kosova, the Captain of the Imperial Ravens, who guarded the tsarina. "We all know the captain is incorruptible, and favors me not. He heard everything I heard. You are done, Vladimir."

"You are done, Balfour," Gemma whispered.

"You are done," Barrons murmured.

"You think you have won?" He bared his teeth at them and switched to English. "You're too late. The order has already gone out. Malloryn dies within the hour, and you will never see him alive again." He strained beneath the grip of the guards pinning him to the floor. "Jelena will send you his head in a box."

Gemma rested her hands on her thighs. "Ah, yes, your message. Your red smoke. It seems you've been distracted in the past few hours, Balfour. You haven't looked to the skies. If you had, you would have seen a column of red smoke rising over Saint Petersburg. It is the signal from my team, telling me Malloryn has been retrieved safely. You've lost. You've lost everything."

And soon he would lose his head.

Rage filled his eyes.

"Traitor!" Sergey called in Russian, striding forward with his sword held high. "You scheme against Her Imperial Majesty! And you shall pay."

Balfour glanced down, as if in thought.

He seemed far too composed for a man who’d recently had all his schemes blow up in his face.

"Let the new dawn rise," he called in Russian, his voice ringing through the court.

"And the sun set on the old regime!" came another yell from somewhere in the crowd.

Gemma spun around, but men were surging through the crowd, drawing swords and attacking the congregation of Blood. Barrons grabbed her arm, drawing the rapier at his side as he and Ingrid pressed into a tight formation around her.

The Imperial Ravens swarmed around the tsarina, several of them lifting their mech arms and pointing arm cannons at the crowd.

There was a flash of pale hair out of the corner of Gemma's vision, and she caught a glimpse of Dido casting off her brown wig and throwing something to the floor.

Acrid smoke erupted, filling the throne room.

Gemma couldn't see a damned thing.

Her eyes stung and she could barely stop coughing.

"We have to stop him from escaping!" Gemma snapped, drawing the knife from her sleeve as she rubbed her eyes. "He's going to use the distraction to get away!"

"Wait!" Barrons warned. "We cannot afford to be separated."

Not with so many dissidents suddenly attacking the Blood. Ingrid turned as one of them rushed at her, grabbing him by the wrist as he lunged to skewer her and driving the full force of her verwulfen strength into a punch that hurled him off his feet.

"Barrons is right," Ingrid gasped, bronze eyes flaming to life in the thinning smoke. "It's too dangerous."

Damn it. Gemma surged forward and paused in the wreathe of smoke, looking for him.

"Gemma!" Ingrid cried.

But she caught a glimpse of Balfour across the ballroom, separated from her by too many dueling blue bloods. Dido crouched by his side, her knuckles slick with blood as she cut down any who approached them.

Balfour smiled darkly and saluted her as if to an old foe. "Until we meet again, Miss Townsend."

He vanished in the smoke and the clash of weapons, and Gemma cursed to herself as she was forced to fall back.

"Ava! Ava?"

"Liam?" Ava pushed to her feet in the cold stone cell and rushed to the bars. She pressed her face between them, trying to see up the cellar stairs.

Kincaid’s burly form thundered down the steps, the lantern in his hand sweeping light across the room.

Joy burst within her. Relief. She wanted to weep.

"Oh, my God," she whispered. "I knew you would come."

He rushed to the bars, sliding his arm through and curling her in a one-armed hug—or as much of a hug as he could give with the bars between them. "I’ve been trying to find you—"

The words burst out of him in a rush; apologies, explanations, all things he didn’t need to give her.

"I know you did your best," she whispered, cupping his face. "I never doubted you were out there looking for me, not even for a second." Pressing her lips to his, she felt the cold iron bars burning her skin.

Kincaid stepped back, rattling the bars. "I’ll get you out of here."

"Liam." She captured his hand. "There’s something you need to know."

He’d been examining the bars, his jaw heavily lined with stubble, but at that, he looked down. "What? What’s wrong?"

"Nothing’s wrong." A smile burst over her face. "We’re going to have a baby."

He almost ripped the bars down with his bare hands.

Lark retreated up the stairs, giving Kincaid and Ava some privacy as the pair of them reunited in a sudden flurry of tears and hugging.

Exhilaration still ran through her veins, leaving her body on edge and her heart racing, despite the win. They'd survived. They'd managed to pull it off. She couldn't wait to throw herself into Charlie's arms, and let him spin her in the air.

They'd won, which meant she could finally let herself relax.

A masked wolf hovered at the top of the stairs, and Lark nodded to him as they both turned to the side to pass each other.

She was one step clear of him when a prickling sensation chased its way down her spine. She'd spent years listening to that sensation, and running when it told her to run. The knife slipped into her hand, Lark turning to face him—

Something sharp slid into her side.

Lark slapped at the wolf's grip, but it was too late. Numbness flooded through her, the taunting chill of hemlock sweeping through her veins. All she could hear was the clatter of her knife hitting the stairs and tumbling back down them.

The wolf caught her and swept her up into his arms before she could hit the floor. "Apologies, Your Highness. But it seems there is someone who is very interested in meeting you."

Your Highness.

Lark snatched at his mask with the last ounce of her strength. It came away, revealing his dark features. "L...thr...."

"Indeed," said the man who'd been feeding the Company of Rogues information. "Though I fear my loyalty no longer belongs to the Duke of Malloryn."