_*]:min-w-0 !gap-3.5" style="border:0px solid">Nathaniel found his mother sitting at the workbench, staring at his father's tools id out in neat rows. She didn't look up when he entered.

  "Lord Keller's men are out front," he said quietly.

  "I know." Her voice was hollow. "They've been there for an hour. They're waiting for a decision."

  "A decision?"

  Eleanor finally looked at him, her face a mask of controlled desperation. "They've made an offer for the shop and all its contents. Barely a quarter of what it's worth, but enough to clear the debt."

  Nathaniel withdrew Lady Emmeline's purse from his boot. "I have this. Lady Harrington was generous."

  Hope flickered briefly in Eleanor's eyes as she counted the coins, but soon faded. "It's not enough, Nate. Not nearly enough."

  "Then we accept Lord Keller's offer," Nathaniel said firmly. "We clear the debt and find work elsewhere. I could apprentice with another binder, or—"

  "There's more." Eleanor cut him off, turning away to cough violently into her handkerchief. When she faced him again, her lips were stained red. "They've made it clear that if we don't accept by sunset, they'll take everything anyway. And they'll take you, too."

  "Take me? What do you mean?"

  "Lord Keller runs more than just money-lending operations," Eleanor said bitterly. "He's always looking for young boys to work in his... other establishments."

  Understanding dawned slowly, horribly. Nathaniel had heard whispers about certain houses in the lower city where wealthy men went for entertainment that couldn't be found in respectable establishments.

  "They can't do that," he whispered, though he knew they could. In this city, power made its own rules.

  "No, they can't," Eleanor agreed with sudden fierceness. "Because I won't let them."

  She rose from the bench and moved to the small trunk in the corner. From it, she withdrew a small wooden box inid with mother-of-pearl.

  "This was my keepsake box from when I worked at the pace," she expined, returning to sit beside Nathaniel.

  "You worked at the pace?" Nathaniel asked, momentarily distracted from his fear. His mother rarely spoke of her life before she met his father.

  "For three years. I was a dy's maid to Lady Willoughby, one of the Empress's dies-in-waiting." She opened the box to reveal a few modest treasures: a silver hair pin, a scrap of fine ce, a folded letter on cream-colored paper sealed with blue wax. "I left when I married your father."

  Eleanor removed the letter and broke the seal with trembling fingers. "Henrietta Bckwood. She's the Head of Household Staff now, if my sources are correct. She was my friend, once."

  She unfolded the letter, scanning its contents. "Just as I thought. The pace is recruiting. Young girls for the housekeeping staff. They prefer them young so they can be trained properly."

  Nathaniel stared at her, uncomprehending at first. Then understanding dawned, and with it, disbelief.

  "You want me to... pretend to be a girl? To work at the pace?" The idea was so absurd he almost ughed, but the seriousness in his mother's eyes stopped him.

  "I want you to survive," Eleanor said firmly. "The creditors will take everything. And two Foster men have died this year from this same fever. If Lord Keller's men get their hands on you..." She didn't finish the sentence. She didn't need to.

  "The pace is protected," Eleanor continued. "The work is hard but clean. There's food, shelter, safety. And if you're clever—which you are, my son—there's opportunity."

  Nathaniel looked around the workshop that had been his entire world. The tools his father had taught him to use. The leather and paper and glue that had been the medium of their shared craft.

  "Father would hate this," he whispered.

  "Your father would want you to live," Eleanor replied, her voice softening. "Even if it meant wearing a dress."

  Outside, voices grew louder. Lord Keller's men were getting impatient.

  "How would we even do this?" Nathaniel asked, not quite believing he was considering it.

  Eleanor's lips curved into a small, sad smile. From the box, she withdrew a silver hairpin and a small pot of rouge.

  "Thankfully, your hair is perfect as it is," she said, reaching out to touch his dark brown locks that fell past his shoulders. "Most girls at the pace wear their hair long. We'll simply style it differently."

  Nathaniel's hand moved instinctively to his hair. His father had never insisted he cut it, saying it made him look like a proper artist's apprentice. Now, that same feature would help him become someone else entirely.

  As if reading his thoughts, Eleanor added gently, "Your father named you after Nathaniel Bowman, the greatest bookbinder in the capital's history. He believed you would surpass even him someday." She took Nathaniel's hand in hers. "But to become that person, you must first survive. And to survive..."

  "I need to become someone else," Nathaniel finished for her, his voice barely audible.

  Eleanor nodded. "Just for a while."

  Nathaniel took a deep breath and gnced toward the workshop door, beyond which y the men who represented one possible future—a dark one. Then he turned back to his mother and gave a single, decisive nod.

  "Then call me Natalie," he said.

  Eleanor smiled through her tears and began to weave his hair into a simple braid more suitable for a young girl. Her fingers, though weakened by illness, still remembered the patterns and twists from her days at court. With each turn of the braid, Nathaniel felt himself transforming, the boy he had been gradually giving way to the girl he would become.

  As twilight gathered outside and Lord Keller's men pounded on the door, mother and son—now mother and daughter—slipped out the back window and disappeared into the gathering darkness of the capital's winding streets.

  And so begins the tale of the boy who would one day stand beside an emperor.