Prologue
In a very loathsome part of the city…
London, 1855
* * *
Finn had two choices. Which wasn’t dreadful, as he often had none.
Trust the word of the men waiting in the alley outside his lean-to. Or run. When he’d spent all nine years of his life running. Dodging misfortune, grasping hands, chaotic dreams, and thoughts not his own.
There’d been a life before. He had memories. A girl with flaxen hair clutching his hand as they raced through a field of some splendid purple flower, her smile wide, her gaze focused on him in a way no one’s had since. But those memories were as out of reach as Queen Victoria’s blooming crown, as murky as the rotten, throat-stinging stew hanging over the river outside his door.
Finn wiped his nose on his tattered sleeve and shivered, a frigid gust tearing inside his shack and sending the city’s stench into his nostrils. A reminder of how close to the bone he lived. All he didn’t have. Opportunities he couldn’t afford to miss.
The men, their promises, could be a good thing.
Against the better judgment of a world trying to beat that belief out of him, Finn hadn’t given up on good things.
He glanced around the dark, dank warren he’d constructed beneath the back staircase of the Cock and Bur with scraps of wood pilfered from the docks. It was a piss-poor rabbit hole in London’s most despicable parish, but it was his. His when he had nothing but what he’d managed to steal. A silver fork, a cheap paste brooch, a truly fine kid leather glove, a book, the stained pages nonetheless fascinating for what little he could read of the story.
Finn smiled, though it felt shaky around the edges. He was an incredibly good thief, of lots of things, and thank God for it, or he’d long ago be dead. Peering through a split in the timber, he inspected the two men conversing in low tones, their voices harmonizing with the howling wind. The posh bloke’s words from moments ago returned to him. Let me help you. I, too, have a supernatural gift I can’t control. You can trust me.
Trust.
Finn curled his hands into fists and slammed his eyes shut, tears pricking his lids. What he had—the ability to read minds—was no gift. It was a curse.
But he could use it. Would use it. Had used it every day to survive.
Calming himself, Finn let the men’s thoughts ruthlessly worm their way through the ragged wood of his battered abode and into his mind. He couldn’t always read a person without touching them…but sometimes, if they didn’t put up a mental fuss, he could. One of the men, a giant the size one rarely saw outside a fighting ring, oh, his thoughts were there for the taking, a clear match for the pity shining in his eyes. Humphrey. Well, nothing cross about Humphrey, even if he looked like he could smash you into the cobblestones with nothing more than a crook of his pinkie.
The fancy one, upon close inspection only a few years older than Finn, was a harder read. Troubled and angry, emotions Finn recognized right off. Slowing his breathing, Finn worked hard to grasp the man’s name, needing it for some reason. Needing the connection.
Julian.
He would love to tell the spit-polished Julian, who spoke with an upmarket accent no one got while living in this hellhole, that if Finn touched him, he’d unlock every secret. Twist Lord High-Class inside out with what he could see, no matter how hard a brain-battle the man waged.
Finn caught his reflection in the mirror shard balanced on a crate, and his heart sank. Another curse. Another limiter of choices. Prettiness that had so far been nothing but a disaster. Eyes so bleeding blue that once seen, they were never forgotten. An unfortunate circumstance for a pickpocket—being unable to slink away without being identified as that beautiful boy.
“Beau garçon,” he whispered, the words coming to him in French like they always did. A language he dreamed in for no reason he could figure. Part of his blank slate of a past, when all he truly knew was the name—Finn—scribbled on the foolscap delivered to the orphanage with him.
Through a serrated gash in the wood, he watched Julian place his hand on the lean-to and shudder with comprehension. The word immediately tripped from the posh bloke’s mind to his.
Family.
Finn’s deepest desire, and the one phrase with the power to break him when nothing else had. Not the edge of a blade dug beneath his chin, not a flaming cheroot extinguished on his wrist. Not rough handling of the worst kind.
Pitch-black, nightmare handling one never, ever forgot.
Remembering, Finn released a cry that sounded like it had come from a distressed animal and dropped to the filthy cobblestones, hugging his knees to his chest. The hulking giant tore the lean-to’s door aside and pulled Finn into his arms, making hushing sounds as if he were a babe. Finn sagged against the beast’s rough woolen coat, appalled by his weakness, embarrassed, ashamed, but unable to find the courage to turn away.
To run.
In the end, he let them lead him down the alley and to the waiting hackney cab. Lead him to an uncertain future. Of course, he wouldn’t have accepted the offer, any offer, without a fight if the men hadn’t already visited his twilight musings on more than one wretched night.
Because he only dreamed about those who mattered.
In a very enchanting part of the city…
Her father was outraged. Again.
Victoria pressed her back against the nursery door and scrubbed her face free of tears. No use trying to leave the chamber when they’d locked her in. After the last incident, she’d gone two days without food. Now, there were crackers in the top drawer of her chest, secreted beneath her badly-embroidered handkerchiefs, and a slice of cheese wrapped in a linen napkin hidden underneath her pillow. Agnes, her companion, and lady’s maid once Victoria was old enough to need one, always kept water in the room, just in case.
Victoria hadn’t meant to ruin her father’s party. She’d approached Lady Dane-Hawkins because the woman had whispered a rude comment about her to Lady Markem as they strolled from the dining room to the salon. Victoria was odd; she knew that. But she’d worked hard to appear normal, or as normal as a child could when they were, in fact, not normal. To have that gray-haired snipe say something that made her parents turn and look at her—as if to determine what precisely about their daughter was so strange—when Victoria tried valiantly to evaporate like morning mist when she was around them, was too much. Lady Dane-Hawkins had placed another crack in the cup that held their love, and Victoria felt it leaking away even faster.
She would have told them about her talent long ago if she wanted her parent’s affection to wither like an aster bloom in the winter.
She’d only slipped her fingers around Lady Dane-Hawkins’ wrist for one moment, long enough to erase whatever Victoria had done to make the woman think badly of her. A few minutes of the lady’s memory obliterated. Maybe the entire night, but with a crowded social calendar, who needed another of those? Unfortunately, Lady Dane-Hawkins had fainted dead away, dropped right to the Aubusson carpet her mother loved, her glass of sherry going with her in a rosy-red spill.
Victoria’s parlor trick, the ability to steal time, was one she’d been employing since forever. Although it never worked out well for anyone.