Six years ago, Marlowe Kestrel drowned in the Duskhaven canals, or at least that is what the obituary said, what the empty coffin implied, and what every ruling House in the city has believed ever since.
In reality she swam two streets over, bribed a mortician with a forged signature, and built herself a new, gloriously unremarkable life as a small time magical forger who fixes other people's problems for coin and never, ever asks about bloodlines. It was a good plan.
It worked for six entire years, which is roughly five years and eleven months longer than anyone expected a Kestrel to survive in hiding. Then Jonas, the only man alive who knew her real name, turns up dead in his own workshop with a mark burned into his palm that Marlowe has spent her whole life trying to forget she carries too, and the only lead worth following belongs to Cassian Draven, heir to the most feared criminal House in the city, a man with a smile like a drawn blade and a family reputation built on making problems disappear as thoroughly as Marlowe once did herself.
Cassian recognizes her in under a minute, does not turn her in, and instead offers a deal she has no good reason to accept and every practical reason to take, pose as his fiancée at the season's summit of ruling Houses, help him smoke out whoever is hunting them both, and maybe, if she is very lucky and very careful, walk away with her second fake death arranged before anyone notices the first one was fake too.
The trouble is, the longer she spends pretending to love a Draven, the harder it gets to remember that hating him was ever supposed to be the easy part.
