Gradually, by asking lots of light, indirect questions and shrugging a great deal, he began to build up a picture of what had happened between Ellini and Robin. He knew some of it already, but he didn't know how it had started.

The upper levels of the palace, beyond the kitchens and the armoury where Jack spent all his time, were filled with ballrooms and state bedrooms, the inhabitants wearing evening-dress at all hours, and pining for the decadence of Versailles before the Revolution. Myrrha, Robin's wife, was one of these glittering, skinny, sharp-toothed socialites.

She sat at the card-tables and held court, summoning and dismissing people with a wave of her fan, shuffling the cards as though she couldn't bear to be idle.

It was a very shabby deck, he saw, when she dismissed her cronies and summoned him. It was as if she'd worn it down it with her ceaseless shuffling. The Queen of Hearts had a corner missing.

When he sat down opposite her, she spread the cards into a kind of arch and then swept them up again, as if she was waving at him.

"Your highness," she said, inclining her head.

Jack dipped his head slightly lower, as he had been taught. "Your grace."

She was half-smiling, as if she thought the ceremony just as ridiculous as he did, but she wasn't going to be the first one to laugh.

"My husband says you are very promising."

Jack gaped at her. "He's never said that to me."

"Well, he wouldn't. He likes you, though. Don't be fooled by the death-threats."

She shuffled the cards again—briskly, as if she had a purpose in mind—but she didn't speak. There was something petulant about her energy. It put him in mind of a little girl desperately trying to convince her parents that she wasn't tired.

"Has he trained many people?" Jack asked.

"A fair few," she said, tapping the deck expertly against the table.

"What about the girl in the kitchens?"

Her mouth turned up at the corners. "Shall we stop pretending you don't know her name?"

Jack smiled, unabashed. "I thought you might not, since she's so far beneath you."

"I know all her names," said Myrrha tonelessly. "What do you want to know about her?"

He shrugged, though he suspected he had passed the point of seeming casual.

"Whether Robin ever trained her?"

"I suppose he did, in a way. He—" She paused and tightened her lips. "—became enamoured of her when she was very young."

"How young?"

"Sixteen. She was surrounded by friends and family and moral guardians, so it wasn't easy for him to be alone with her. She was sewn into a respectable community, and Robin lacked the patience to unpick the stitches one by one."

Myrrha put down the ace of hearts, stark and red and gruesome in the candlelight.

"What did he do?" asked Jack.

"He tore it all up."

The ace of hearts just lay there, suggesting things to his imagination. And Myrrha was frowning up at the ceiling, as if trying to recall some tricky point of grammar.

"He killed her parents, her sister, a few friends and acquaintances, her priest, her cat—numerically speaking, not more than fifteen people." But she laid down two tens, for no apparent reason, on the tabletop. "Knowing him as you do, all this can hardly surprise you."

Jack managed a queasy smile. It didn't surprise him, but he wished she would stop talking now. He loved this place, and he wanted to know about everyone, but he didn't want to stop liking Robin, and this story was bringing him dangerously close.

"She joined the local convent after her parents were killed—the only people who would take her in, because it was well known by then that her presence brought death. But when Robin saw her dressed as a novice, he lost patience with the game and abducted her."

Jack nodded, his eyes still fixed on the cards. It chimed in with what he already knew about Robin—how innocence and respectability brought his demons out.

He looked up at Myrrha, and realized she was giving him a sharp, pitying smile.

"Do you want to hear more?"

"Yes," Jack lied.

"At any rate," said Myrrha, cutting the deck and interleaving the cards, like the most experienced card-sharp. "Robin kept her. He couldn't bear to see her with anyone else, even when he met me."

She laid down the Queen of Hearts, with its missing corner.

"And Ellini is free, in a way—free of his attentions, even if she isn't allowed to go anywhere, or love anyone else. Most of the people here think she got off lightly. Robin is not known for his mature attitude to parting company. And, besides, she has nowhere to go. All her family is dead, and surely her experiences with Robin have soured her on the idea of men altogether. Robin keeps her safe from other would-be abductors, and keeps his hands off her. For a woman of Ellini's unfortunate gifts, it's probably as close as one can get to heaven."

"What do you mean by 'her unfortunate gifts'?" said Jack.

Myrrha fanned herself, as if all the talk of scandal had made her hot.

"Oh, didn't you know? That's her demonic symptom. I suppose you could call it Helen of Troy syndrome. Men fall wildly in love with her. Just by going near them, she re-awakens their earliest experiences of love. They see her as their first paramour, their long-lost sweetheart. It's rather nice before they start to get possessive."

He must have let the surprise show on his face because Myrrha gave him a knowing smile and said, "Did you think it was special? Did you think you were the only one?"

Jack didn't blink. He had thought it was special, but he had definitely not thought he was the only one.

Still, he didn't say anything. He had to be as guarded with Myrrha as he was with Robin. It had occurred to him once or twice during this conversation that he was probably looking at the brains behind Robin.

***

Jack absorbed all this information about his two favourite people without too much distress. It hadn't stopped him from liking either of them. He couldn't stop liking Ellini, and Robin was just so... so Robin. He did everything with a brilliant mania that was both terrifying and endearing.

For now, he was happy. Cautiously happy, on account of Robin, and selectively happy, on account of the nature of love.

It seemed to Jack that love entailed not only realizing what an idiot you'd been before but also what an idiot you were now. He had been quite prepared to realize that he'd never been in love before. What he hadn't been expecting was the realization that he'd never felt pain, fear, or even lust before. He had thought he was an expert in those areas.

All this gave his first few months at Pandemonium a savour of erotic agony. He supposed it was his punishment for the way he'd treated women in the past. And yet it couldn't be—because he was so ridiculously happy. Pandemonium was amazing. Robin was amazing. And Ellini liked him. She really did. She looked up from her books twice as often when he was in the room.

There was a kind of unspoken agreement between them—or maybe it was just something he'd dreamed up and clung to out of sheer desperation—that it would be him as soon as she was ready for a man. Her history with Robin would take a lot of getting over, and Jack had caught her unawares by stumbling into her life, half-dead, while she was still adjusting. But she liked him. Even Robin could see that. Perhaps that was part of the reason why he found so many little excuses to dodge Myrrha and come down to the kitchens to spend time with them.

But Ellini was impossible—good god, she was impossible sometimes! When she was bent over a book, or determined to be quiet and miserable, no amount of poking or prodding or cheerful conversation could get a word out of her. She would just close up and clamp down, like an oyster.

Even at the balls—which Myrrha allowed her to attend because she knew she had nothing suitable to wear—she would crawl into a corner, away from the dance floor and the buffet tables, with an open book on her lap and a glazed expression on her face.

Jack had tried talking to her on one of these occasions. It had been one of those evenings where even the constant wanting, even the knowledge of how ridiculous love made him, couldn't wipe the smile off his face.

He had danced with the most glamorous women in the Palace—stunning dresses, flawless faces, cleavage you could have lost an ocean-liner in—and laughed that the only woman he wanted was dressed in rags in the corner with a smudge of ash across her cheek.

Somehow, he wanted to share the joke with her, even though he obviously couldn't tell her what was so funny. He made his way to her table, disappointing a dozen debutantes in the process, and sank into the chair beside her, slowly enough that she wouldn't flinch.

"Little cricket," he whispered. He was always trying to find a new, innocuous term of endearment for her—something that could express what she was to him without making Robin insane. "Little cricket, you're missing it."

"Missing what?" she said, without looking up from her book.

"Just—everything. A million little things. Myrrha keeps patting Robin on the cheek with her fan, and he has to keep tolerating it. And Lady Vassago's got some kind of caged fire hanging on a girdle from her waist. It's like a tiny birdcage, but with blue flames inside. She says she's trained it not to set her skirts on fire, but nobody should poke their fingers through the bars because it's still a bit feral."

"Extraordinary," said Ellini, turning a page.

"Oh, and you know that man with the feathers who mostly keeps to his room? The Abominable Crowman?"

"Don't call him that."

Jack hesitated, wondering whether he could legitimately be jealous of the Abominable Crowman. He decided he couldn't. "Well, it turns out he's the only man here who knows the mazurka. Women are queuing up to dance with him!" He paused and added, without much hope, "Not quite as many women as are queuing up to dance with me, but..."

"It sounds lovely," said Ellini.

Jack sighed. On any other night, he might have considered sidling off to be heartbroken at this point. But he couldn't, not now. He was too happy, and she was too beautiful, even with that smudge of ash across her cheek.

"Look, I know how it is," he said reasonably. "I know. There are so many people here, and you don't want them looking at you. But really, cricket, you're better hidden here than you would be on a deserted island fifty miles out to sea. No one's going to look twice at you in this room of towering hairstyles, voluminous dresses, and low-cut necklines. If they happen to glance in your direction, do you know what they'll see? A better class of servant. A governess or lady's-maid who's been allowed to join the party as a treat."

A slight frown creased her forehead, but she didn't look up. Still, it was a good sign. Anything was a good sign when she was bent over a book. He'd even be happy if she picked it up and threw it at him.

"You're invisible," he said, inching his chair closer to hers. "Little Jane Eyre, little mustard seed—you're invisible. Come and dance with me."

He wouldn't have thought it possible, but she was blushing, her breathing was fast. She seemed to be aware of his closeness and was something more than afraid. Although afraid too, of course. How could she not be, after everything she'd been through?

She closed the book and looked up at him, her cheeks flushed with amusement or exasperation. He couldn't tell which.

Jack's grin grew broader the higher her eyes got. He tingled all over when she looked at him.

"Well?" she said coolly. "What is there to see?"

He held out his hand and waited, heart thudding, until she took it. "I'll show you," he said.