Tristan woke instantly when he heard the soft knock at the door. He ignored his body’s instinctive response—to yawn, stretch, or even ignore the sound altogether in favor of more sleep. Instead, he slid off the bed, sword in hand. He’d taught himself to sleep anywhere and to survive on catnaps. The knights had even had a sleep scientist come in to give a lecture on the science of sleeping in small intervals. It was based on sleep schedules developed for solo sailors who couldn’t risk sleeping for too long. It had taken some training, and the knights who’d served in the military were far better at it than he was, but Tristan had learned to sleep wherever, whenever, and to wake instantly.

He held his sword in his right hand, blade pointed out to the side. If the person knocking was a threat, having the blade pointed at the floor would mean losing the tactical advantage that the heavy blade afforded him. If he held it straight out at waist level, he could easily arch it into an upswing cut that would slice open an opponent from waist to opposite shoulder, or lower it if there was no threat.

He eased the door open with his left hand. Sophia stood on the other side, her eyes dark pools in the dim light of the hall.

“My father is here,” she murmured.

Tristan nodded and stepped out into the hall before sheathing his sword. He was fully dressed and ready to move.

James was not. When they knocked on his door, their husband was dead asleep, lying on his side. They had to let themselves into the tastefully decorated bedroom Sophia had assigned James yesterday. Had that only been yesterday? No, the day before.

Sophia spoke softly and touched James’s shoulder, but got no response.

“Let me.” Tristan took a step forward, but she waved him back.

Sophia pulled back her hand and slapped James’s ass.

He jerked awake, rolling onto his back and blinking furiously. Sophia let out a little laugh.

“Ouch,” James said.

“I’m sorry, but you wouldn’t wake up.” Sophia leaned forward and kissed his cheek.

Why didn’t I get a kiss?

Where had that unhelpful thought come from?

Stop being a fucking moron, Tristan told himself.

“What time is it?” James groaned and stretched.

“It’s nearly noon.”

Tristan checked his watch. “It’s eleven fifty-two a.m. We have one hour and eight minutes before Greta alerts the admirals at twelve p.m. Greenwich Mean Time.” Rome was one hour ahead of the Isle of Man.

James peered at Tristan. “One hour and eight minutes. Right.”

“My father is here.” Sophia pulled their attention with her simple words.

James nodded and then rubbed his face with his hands. “Give me a second.”

Tristan bit back his impatience.

“I have to get dressed,” Sophia said. “Meet me at my room. You know where it is, yes?”

James pushed off the bed, grimaced, and then did a few squats. “Yes.”

“We leave to meet with the admiral of Rome in eight minutes,” Tristan told both of them. “I need to call the admiral of England no later than eleven forty-five, English time.”

Sophia dismissed that with a little shrug. “A half an hour to speak to my father is more than enough. We don’t want more time than that. I will need at least fifteen minutes to get ready, so we won’t be leaving in eight minutes.” Sophia turned on her heel and walked out.

Tristan followed her. He could have stayed with James and hurried him along, but he wanted to stay with Sophia. It had been just over twelve hours since they’d landed. Since then, they’d driven from Rome back to the villa, eaten a hurried, quiet dinner, and then each gone to get some sleep.

There’d been an awkward moment when they rose from the dinner table last night. They’d looked at one another, each clearly wondering if they should stay together, share a bed. But exhaustion had outweighed anything, and James had smiled and headed for his room, which allowed Tristan and Sophia to do the same.

“James knows where your room is?” Tristan asked. Damn it, that was not what he’d meant to say.

Sophia arched a single dark brow as she led Tristan up to the third floor. “He escorted me to my room.”

Tristan looked around, taking in the elegant, expensive decor. “Of course.”

“Are you jealous?”

If the question had been serious, he wasn’t sure how he would have reacted. As it was, there was a teasing note. Or maybe it was hopeful.

He looked at her out of the corner of his eyes as they started down the hall. “Should I be?”

She shrugged in that very Italian way. “It could be interesting.”

“Interesting?”

“The jealous sex. It might be interesting.”

Tristan’s body hummed to life. When they’d gone to their rooms, he’d had to slip into the shower to deal with the pent-up frustration left over from their flight. He should have taken a cold shower, but it would have woken him up too much. Instead, he’d braced one hand against the wall, closed his eyes, and jerked off to the mental image of Sophia stripping off her clothes and teasing them.

“Interesting…” he repeated.

Sophia put her hand on a doorknob, pushing it open while keeping her attention on him. “I like you like this.”

“Like what?”

“When you forget you’re a knight.”

Tristan jerked as if he’d been shot. He snapped his gaze away from her face to the open door. He put his hand out to stop her from entering, careful not to touch her.

He slid his sword free, his jaw tight.

He was a knight.

Sliding into the room, he glanced around. He hadn’t forgotten what the Domino had said—that she was meant to die too. Maybe it was something he’d said only to try to scare them.

Or maybe the fact that the original bodies had been found less than a mile from her family’s home meant that there had originally been more planned. Perhaps when they’d headed to the Isle of Man, it had thrown off the Domino’s plans, forcing him to abandon whatever else he’d wanted to do here and go to Man.

But then why leave the clues?

Too many questions, not enough answers.

Sophia’s room was beautiful. He quickly checked what was behind the two doors—a closet the size of his London flat and a spacious bathroom. Then he opened the French doors that led onto a small third-floor balcony with a wrought iron railing and view of the Italian countryside. Unlike the balcony on the second floor, this one was not connected to anything else.

“It’s safe,” he called out.

He kept his back to the room, staring out at the landscape. He’d nearly forgotten about the cave, about the trinity who had suffered and died. The man had watched his spouses being murdered. Watched them suffer. Had they loved one another? Triads had to support and protect one another, but they were, after all, arranged marriages. There wasn’t always love.

Her footsteps were muted on the plush carpet, but not totally silent.

Sophia laid her hand on his back, and Tristan couldn’t hide his reaction. His whole body shivered in response to her touch.

“I upset you.” Now both her hands were on his back. “Can you tell me why?” She stepped closer, and he could feel the heat of her body against his back, a sharp contrast to the cool air washing over him through the balcony doors.

“I am a knight,” he said.

“Yes, you are.”

“I worked hard to become one. If at any time my behavior is not that of a knight, then I need to correct my behavior.”

Sophia pressed flush against his back, wrapping her arms around his waist. She didn’t speak.

Her touch did something to him. He relaxed, letting the point of his still-drawn sword rest against the flagstones of the balcony. “Who I was before I became a knight was not a good person.”

“I don’t believe that.”

He snorted and laid his left hand over hers, where it rested on his waist. “I was a thug. I grew up mostly on the streets.”

“You were homeless?”

He wondered if she was trying to sound neutral. It wasn’t working, because he could hear the horror in her voice. “Not exactly. My mum was a junkie. She had places she stayed—never hers, always a friend’s, or a boyfriend’s. I’d sleep on the couch or the floor.”

“When you were a child?” Now the horror was readily apparent, and she squeezed him…as if she could protect him from his past.

“I lived with my granny until I was eleven. She was poor as dirt, lived in the east end. She cleaned houses. But my life was normal, just poor. Until she died.”

“I’m so sorry.”

Tristan tried not to think about his grandmother. She’d been a hard woman, but loving. She’d taken him when he was only an infant and raised him on her own. He’d always called her “Granny,” but he’d said it the way other children said “Mum.” When she died—heart attack while cleaning an apartment less than a mile from home—Tristan had been lost.

He still remembered that day, as a series of painful moments. Walking home. Doing his after-school chores. Waiting for Granny. Looking at the clock. Wondering where she was. Making dinner—baked chips, which were his favorite, so he knew how to make them. Watching TV. An emotion he hadn’t known to call dread sitting heavy in his stomach. Looking out the window. Making her a plate of dinner, wrapping it in aluminum and putting it in the oven. Waiting. Worrying.

Late that night, after he’d put himself to bed, there’d been a knock at the door. The police were there, along with a woman. He could still picture her face—Mrs. Bagler had been his caseworker from that moment until he’d turned eighteen. She’d seemed old when he met her then, but as he aged, he’d realized she must have been in her mid-twenties when they met. She was beautiful, with dark skin and curly hair. She always wore a brightly patterned head scarf, and he’d liked to guess what color she’d have on the next time he saw her.

“What happened?” Sophia asked.

Tristan started. Had he said all that out loud? Maybe he was more tired than he realized.

“Mrs. Bagler did her best. She even helped my mom get custody of me. My mom was working at the time, had her own apartment. That lasted for about a year. I started hanging out with her friend’s kids. Petty crime, vandalism. Drugs.”

“They allowed you to stay with your mother?”

“I wanted to stay with her. I didn’t tell Mrs. Bagler what was going on. I didn’t want to end up with strangers. She eventually figured it out, of course, and she tried to get me into programs to keep me out of trouble.”

Sophia rubbed her cheek against his back between his shoulder blades.

“I like to read, thanks to Granny. And Mrs. Bagler and I would sometimes meet at the library. I started reading spy novels. True crime books. I would read them and root for the criminals. When I was sixteen, I came up with a plan to steal gold from this rich bloke in Kensington.”

“Steal gold?”

Tristan laughed a little at himself. “I thought I was the ringleader of some criminal empire.”

“What happened?”

“I tried to get my friends on board. Tried to have a meeting, like they do in the movies, to talk about our heist.” Tristan shook his head. “I couldn’t get anyone to listen for five minutes. So I decided to do it alone.”

She made a little noise of distress.

“I broke into this house, and my plan was working perfectly. I had my stethoscope so I could listen and crack the safe. It was a Tuesday night, which was perfect, because Tuesday nights the owners always went out to dinner and their chef stayed late prepping food for them, so the interior alarms were always off. I snuck in and hid until the chef left.”

“You did all this at sixteen?”

“Yes.”

“Impressive.” Her hand slid across his abdomen and the muscles of his stomach rippled in response. She made a pleased noise. “You would have made a very sexy burglar.”

He wanted to turn around and kiss her, taste that feminine power and pleasure. Instead, he decided to finish the story. She needed to know who he really was.

“I, uh, made it upstairs, and that’s when I heard it.”

Her hands stopped moving. “Heard what?”

“A drumming sound, then a sound like someone gagging. I should have turned around and run, but instead I headed for the sound. It was a bedroom, with a massive bed. The biggest bed I’d ever seen. There was a man lying on the floor beside the bed. His eyes were rolled back in his head, and he was shaking, hitting the floor with his heels.”

“My God.”

“I ran to help him. He was so hot. I called 9-9-9 from the phone by the bed. I stayed with him, did what the operator said. I grabbed glasses of water and dumped them on him. I threw wet towels over him. When the paramedics came, I let them in.” Tristan shook his head at the memory. “I ended up going with him. They asked who I was but I didn’t answer. They thought I was his kid and in shock, so they loaded me up too. I didn’t know what to do, so I just stayed with him. I was scared out of my mind that if I tried to get away, they’d figure out I had been trying to rob the place and arrest me.”

Sophia slid around to his front. “Who was he?”

“The husband of England’s security minister. When the minister showed up, she and her wife didn’t start shouting or say ‘who is this kid?’ They acted like everything was normal. And when they left the hospital the next day, I went with them.”

“Did you tell them why you’d been in the house?”

“No. Not at first. I tried to play it cool. Like I was still in a book or movie.” He chuckled softly, playing with the ends of her hair. She let him. He had the right to touch her, and she had the right to touch him.

My wife.

“What did they say?”

“They just asked the same questions over and over, until I exploded and told them. I remember feeling annoyed and freaked out. I was with them for nearly a full day. They didn’t lock me in or anything, but I knew I couldn’t leave. They were rich and powerful, and I was nothing, so I stayed. They fed me dinner and asked me questions while I ate. They gave me a room and asked me more questions while I brushed my teeth.”

“And what did they do, once they knew?”

“They told me about the Masters’ Admiralty, and they said I was destined to be a knight. Their son—in his thirties when I met them—was already a knight. I stayed with them for a week, until the husband came home from the hospital. Being there was better than being at my mom’s boyfriend’s place—she’d lost her flat by then—and I told myself that before I left, I’d steal that gold.”

“Did you?”

“No. They were…amazing people. I still don’t know what they saw in me, but they gave me the opportunity to change, and I took it.”

Tristan smiled down at her. “When their son came to the house, walked in wearing a sword as if that was totally normal, I was done.”

“You’re a romantic at heart.” Her eyes searched his face, as if she could see into his mind, his soul.

“A romantic?” He scoffed. Well, he tried to scoff, but he couldn’t. He was self-aware enough to acknowledge that there was some truth to what she said.

What he wouldn’t admit was that without the influence of his mentors and his training to become a knight, he might have become a very different man. A man like his mother’s “boyfriends.” Or worse, given the burning desire he’d had to be someone, he probably would have become a mid- to upper-level drug dealer.

“The moment I turned eighteen, I joined and became a squire the next day.”

“You’re still trying to prove yourself,” James said from behind him.

Tristan had heard the door open a few minutes ago and recognized the sound of James’s unique, uneven footsteps. Sophia, who was facing the door but whose view was blocked by his body, jumped in surprise. Tristan stroked her hair in an instinctive, comforting gesture.

She looked up and whispered, “Thank you for telling me your story.” Then she slid away from him.

Tristan sheathed his sword and turned. “Yes, I am.” James hadn’t asked if he was still trying to prove himself. It had been a statement, but Tristan felt compelled to respond.

“The son, is he still a knight?”

Tristan nodded once. James crossed his arms. “And is he still a dick to you?”

“How do you know he was a dick?”

“I know how the legacies are.”

Tristan raised a brow. “You’re a legacy.”

James grinned. “I barely count. We skipped a generation, and I’m not pure English.” James tapped his cheek, indicating either his skin color, his features, or both.

“You have nothing to prove,” Sophia shouted from the closet. “You’re a knight.”

She stepped out wearing a white gown. It was a one-shoulder dress, with a fitted bodice. The material looked both heavy and shiny. It cinched in tightly at the waist. Tristan had seen her naked, and he knew exactly how narrow her waist was, but the dress made it look like he could wrap both hands around her. The skirt flared out, short enough in the front that her legs up to just below her knees were exposed, but it brushed the floor behind her. She stepped into strappy silver shoes, then beckoned them over.

Without asking, Tristan dropped to his knees and fastened the ankle straps of each shoe, stroking her foot and ankle as he did so.

James grunted. “Are you wearing a corset?”

“Yes. I have to with this dress. I’m not, how do you say…” She paused as if thinking of a word, then said, “Skinny.”

Tristan sat back on his heels, looking up at her. “You cannot be serious.”

Now that he was close, he could see that her chest wasn’t expanding out, but up with each breath.

“This is a vintage Eleanora Garnett dress from 1963.” She was pressing her hands against her waist. Tristan rose and went around to help James, who was trying to zip it up. The zipper was tiny and stiff. He could see the stiff flesh-colored garment Sophia wore beneath. Tristan held the fabric together and James zipped it up.

James tapped him on the shoulder, then gestured at both of them, one brow raised. Tristan looked down at what they were wearing—he had on jeans and a slightly wrinkled white dress shirt, open at the throat. It was clean, but not formal. James wore slacks and a polo.

“Uh,” Tristan cleared his throat. “We don’t have tuxedos or anything.”

Sophia sat at a delicate vanity. “Don’t worry. It’s just me.”

“Just you what?”

Sophia twisted her hair up into a high bun and started pinning it in place. “My father named me Principessa. He likes me to look the part. It is easier to get him to listen when I am dressed the way he likes.”

James grunted. “I already hate this fucker.”

“This fucker is our father-in-law and the admiral of Rome,” Tristan reminded him.

James started cursing, a bit of Kiwi inflection creeping into the words.

Tristan checked his watch. “We’re running late. It’s twelve twenty.”

Anxiety balled in his stomach. In twenty-five minutes, he would call the admiral of England and tell him that the fleet admiral was dead, and that he’d been there when it had happened—the fleet admiral had died on his watch.

He knew it wasn’t his job to protect the fleet admiral, but he felt guilty for not doing more.

Before they left the Isle of Man, Greta said they could give their respective admirals—Rome and England—fifteen minutes of advanced notice as to what had happened. Any more than that and the other seven admirals would be upset. Normally, Greta wouldn’t have allowed them to say anything, and they would have been bound by the rules of their society to stay silent, but this was a concession to the fact that they’d been right about the Domino and his plans.

Twenty-five minutes until he spoke to his admiral. But first he had to face the admiral of Rome. Rome was historically one of the most powerful territories, and its admiral one of the most powerful among the nine.

And he’d just married that man’s daughter without his knowledge or consent. From what Sophia had said, Tristan was guessing the admiral of Rome was a bit of a control freak. As the admiral, he arranged the marriages among all the members of Rome. Like a feudal lord of old, he had the power to give his daughter, the principessa, in marriage to the people of his choosing.

Instead, the fleet admiral had usurped the admiral of Rome’s power, placed her in a trinity with men from a different territory, and then died.

Sophia rose smoothly, her back ramrod straight. Probably because she couldn’t bend at the waist.

Her dark hair was up, leaving the creamy expanse of her neck naked. Her shoulders and one arm were similarly naked.

She held out one hand, wrist soft, palm down. Tristan nodded to James, indicating he should go to Sophia. James bowed over her hand, kissing it.

“Principessa,” James murmured.

Tristan let James escort Sophia, while he opened doors and checked the hallway for potential threats. They didn’t see anyone on their brief walk from Sophia’s room. Together they started down the stairs, prepared to face the admiral of Rome.