My career was over. I had walked away from it willingly, and with no intention of going back. “That’s tempting, Adrian, but—”

“The other three dancers from your season are already on board. We can punt and go to the girl eliminated in the number five position, but wouldn’t it be better to bring back the dream team? Come on, sweetheart, be a peach and do it for me. Even if you don’t need this, I do.”

I hesitated. My career was over . . . but that didn’t mean I couldn’t have one last hurrah. “Can I call you back in an hour? I need to check my schedule and have a word with my boyfriend.”

Dominic’s expression darkened at the word “boyfriend.” He held up his left hand, looking exaggeratedly from me to his wedding ring and back again. I mouthed the word “sorry” at him. He scowled.

“Just don’t leave us hanging any longer than that, all right, darling? I need to get this locked down. Talk to you soon.” Adrian hung up. I lowered the phone.

Dominic was still scowling. “Boyfriend? Was there a demotion in the night that I was unaware of? Because I didn’t allow myself to be lectured by a woman in a skin-tight sequined jumpsuit just to be bumped back to ‘boyfriend’ as soon as—Verity?” His scowl faded, replaced by concern. “What’s wrong?”

I must have looked pretty distraught if he was having that reaction. I put the phone down and thought about standing, but I wasn’t sure my legs would work. Better not to risk it until I had a bit more confidence. “That was Adrian Crier, the producer of Dance or Die. It’s his baby. He has a real thing for dance education, and he basically went into reality television so he could have a dance show one day.”

“Dance or Die—that’s the show you were on.” Dominic and I had spent a comfortable night curled up in a motel room in Colorado watching all my dance routines and solos on YouTube, with me explaining how each number had gone right—or wrong. I’d been more brutal to myself than the judging panel had ever been, but when I was done, Dominic had been there to kiss me and ask for more videos. It had been therapeutic in the extreme, and at the time, it had felt like a fitting funeral for my dance career.

Apparently not. Or maybe not, anyway; I still had to talk to some people, starting with the man in front of me.

“Yeah, that’s the show I was on,” I said. “He wants to do an all-star season, with the top four dancers from the past five seasons. I was number two in my season.” Me and Lyra, the only female top two in the show’s history. We’d promised to keep in touch after the show was over. I hadn’t heard from her since she’d won.

Dominic’s scowl lifted. “He wants you to be on television again?”

“Yeah.”

“Wouldn’t that be dangerous, after . . . everything?”

“Maybe,” I admitted. Dominic and I had left New York—and he’d left the Covenant of St. George—after a Covenant strike team had arrived with the intention of checking his work and starting their purge. They’d found out about me, and hence that my family line hadn’t died out after all; they’d learned that Dominic was keeping secrets, including my existence, from the organization he was supposed to be loyal to.

In the end, the only way we’d been able to escape with our lives was by having my telepathic cousin Sarah rewrite their memories, turning me into a Price imposter and Dominic into a power-mad traitor. As far as the Covenant team was concerned, both Dominic and his self-made “Price” had died in the gunfight that ended their assignment in the States.

(It had been a neat solution, but it wasn’t without its costs. Sarah had never used her telepathy that way before, and the backlash hurt her. Badly. She’s been recovering with my grandparents in Ohio ever since. For a while, we’d been afraid she was never going to be fully herself again. That fear had proved unfounded—she’s definitely still Sarah, if less cocky and confident in her own abilities than she used to be—but it was a terrifying experience, and not one that I’m in any hurry to repeat.)

“What would the benefits be?” asked Dominic. “If you danced again, and won, would it make you restart your dance career?”

I blew out a slow breath. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “I thought I was done with that part of my life, but I also feel like . . . if I don’t do this, I’ll always be asking myself ‘what if,’ you know? What if I’d gone back? What if I’d danced so well that they gave me a second chance at the big stage?”