“Rotten princess, rotten dice, rotten luck,” Seven muttered, cresting the final staircase to Emmet’s townhome with a wince. “Vork was right.”

  “Surviving your first two days was pretty lucky,” Pocket said, still perched in her…pocket. Had the name been a warning, or an omen? He practically hadn’t left her pocket since she’d taken him from Rook. Sighing, Seven shook his stubby little fingers from her shirt pocket, and he slipped back inside, protesting.

  “The only lucky thing about today was that there was plenty of dirt to bury me under if I’d met my damn end.” Seven’s skull still throbbed faintly with each step, and her hands stung even more viciously than the time she’d let horse reins slip from her grip. Granted, that had been a long time ago. Long before her family had practically locked her away inside the palace. Long before she’d begun the tired refrain of sneaking away from the palace to play in any gambling hall or Beggar’s Chance tournament she could find. It was so long ago that she barely remembered it at all. But she did remember the pain, searing and sharp.

  “You know,” Pocket said, popping back out. “You look like you feel pretty good for someone who had the day you did.”

  “I don’t feel good,” she snapped, climbing the last few steps to Emmet’s door. Behind her, a few children giggled—probably at her pitiful state. “I feel like death warmed—“

  She paused, one foot on the next step, then lowered it, stunned at the realization. She was in pain, yes, but she wasn’t hurt. Her legs shook, but it wasn’t with exhaustion—it was with energy. Like she could turn around and do the entire shift all over again. Like she hadn’t just had her head cracked against the nearest stone wall.

  It’s adrenaline, she told herself, flexing a bloodied hand to examine it. But it was hard to forget that night at the inn—and that same energy that had given her the strength to kick two men through a wall. She’d had so little time to think, to process, that it was easy to forget what had happened. To dismiss it as a terrible dream. Even met with mortal peril, her first instinct hadn’t been to kick, to lash out—it had been to think.

  Not the worst instinct, she mused, examining her hands. Still, she desperately needed to change her mindset. What if this power could save her life, given the chance? What if this…this Luck could give her what she needed to succeed in the mines? And maybe it already had. Maybe those close calls in the shaft today would have killed an ordinary person.

  She squinted at her hands again and swore there was something…glowing there. It almost looked like a shape—a glowing d20, perhaps, if she was creative enough with her imagination. She was still in the middle of staring at her bloodied hands in wonder when Emmet opened the door and swore colorfully.

  “What the hell happened to you?” he demanded.

  She looked up, and Emmet’s expression shifted from surprise to wonder to concern—then simply bafflement. She shook her head and pushed past him over the threshold. It was rude, but, well, royalty had to have some perks, didn’t it?

  “Bad day,” she said. “Not important. Do I smell coffee?”

  “Seven.” Emmet’s hand found her shoulder and stopped her onslaught of his threshold. Then he looked over her shoulder and seemed to remember the very public-facing front of his doorstep. He shut his mouth, ushering her inside.

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  “You could at least give a man a bit of warning,” he argued. He made a strange sort of show of cleaning up random things around his place while Seven tossed her shoes off and stood there caked in blood.

  “Are you embarrassed about your place?” She choked down her laughter as Emmet turned red, stuffing what looked like a pair of boxers into a nearby bin.

  “As it’s your family paying for it, yes, I am.”

  “I’m staying in a closet, Emmet.”

  “I offered you a place here—is that…is your head bleeding?”

  Seven touched her head gently and winced at the lancing pain that shot through it. Whatever this energy was, it did nothing for her pain. She drew back her hand, and fresh blood came away with it.

  Emmet dropped a pile of laundry into a basket, watching her, his face gone serious. “We should get you to a healer,” he said slowly. “And not one of LMC’s—those will send you away worse than you started.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Seven, maybe you’ve been stuck in Veilhome your whole life, but I’ve seen plenty of injuries before, and you are definitely not fine. Sit before you fall over. Or at least go wash the blood off. Luck above, Moore is going to kill me.”

  “She looked way worse an hour ago,” Pocket offered, bouncing onto her shoulder. “Blood everywhere. Very messy, very dramatic. I nearly had to file a claim on her mattress.”

  Emmet froze, cloth in hand. “An hour ago you looked worse than this?”

  Seven waved him off and padded over to the bathroom at the left side of the apartment. She whistled appreciatively; for all of Emmet’s embarrassment, the place was sparkling clean, and the basin was beautiful enough to be in one of the palace’s chambers—if a little utilitarian.

  She sighed with joy as she turned the tap on, and hot water flowed out. “You have hot water all the way out here?” she asked, her voice nearly breaking with emotion. “Luck above, I thought I’d be showering in the cold forever. How can anyone live like that? Actual animals.”

  “Are you going to explain what happened to you, or was your plan just to bleed all over my apartment without explanation?”

  Seven gave him a little mock pout from the mirror before examining her hands in the bloodied water. It was hard not to tease Emmet at least a little; the man was so handsome it was irritating, and besides that, she really did feel fine. And, frankly, Emmet’s baffled expression made her feel even better.

  “Can I use this, or what?” she asked, jerking her head at the towel nearby. She dabbed at the side of her bloodied face with a wince, waiting for the answer. Behind her, Emmet let out a kind of stunned nod, then sat down on his couch, looking dejected.

  “I just don’t get it,” he said from the living room. “Princess Seventra of House Veil walks into my own personal prison, offers to save me from it, then disappears into the mines for two days without another word—I assumed you were dead, by the way.”

  Seven rolled her eyes at that, dabbing at her head with the damp hand towel.

  “Then she shows up covered in blood,” Emmet went on, “not acting royal at all, and insisting that she’s fine—with a talking slime to boot.”

  “Don’t they all talk?” she asked, genuinely curious. Emmet looked at her like she’d lost her mind.

  “No, they don’t all talk, Seven. Unless you frequent the circus.”

  “It’s not a bad idea,” Pocket said. “I could use more cash.” His eyes narrowed over her shirt pocket. “They always offer pancakes half off on Sundays.”

  Seven shoved him back into her shirt and plopped down across from Emmet, who held a roll of bandages nearly forgotten in his hands. “I’m sorry for not being royal enough for you,” she said. “But did you expect anything less given what Moore said about me?”

  “He didn’t warn me about you at all,” Emmet said. “Client privacy and all that. I knew you were…different, but that was obviously the understatement of the century.” His eyes fell on her hands, still clutching the towel, bleeding faintly. “You should still let me take care of that.”

  She waved at him dismissively. “Do what you want, but I didn’t come here for first aid—I came here because I need you to teach me how to fight.”

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