8

Dinner is a quiet affair this First Wind.

Even as Eamon strolls in—wearing the faint aroma of purple plum wine on his stained lips and his shirt ruffled, as it often is—that makes only three of us.

Beside me, Aleana stirs milk syrup into her meaty broth. Her elbow digs into the polished blackwood.

Her sharp chin rests on the heel of her palm and the dim glaze of her blue eyes wears a distance in them.

She’s not the most thrilling company this phase, so I perk up a little as Eamon kicks aside the chair opposite me.

With a defeated sigh that tells of a weary day, Eamon sinks into the seat. He tugs the top button of his blouse undone. “Your father is in town.”

“Here?” I raise my brow. “To see me?”

Eamon runs the back of his hand over a scuff of scraped mud on his chin. He shakes his head, but he doesn’t get the chance to speak.

Daxeel strides through the doorway, his unfeeling expression as firm as his tone, “They are looking for Taroh.”

I hardly look his way, but rather I focus on his muscular frame passing through my peripherals. It’s enough to follow his movements through the dining hall and note the slithering shadows around his boots.

It’s enough to note that the look he throws my way is harder than stone. But that look is fleeting before he strides for the end of the table and drops into the high-backed chair with a thud of exhaustion—the same exhaustion that dims the ferocity of his eyes and keeps his lashes heavy.

Aleana frowns at the meat on her spoon. “Where’s he gone?”

Eamon’s smile is small, teasing. “Well if they knew that, they wouldn’t be looking for him, now, would they?”

She rolls her eyes back, then drops her spoon to the bowl.

“Taroh didn’t return home last phase,” Eamon adds with a glance at me, and I’m sure he’s not all that interested beyond merely informing me. “Some folk are out searching for him.”

I sit on it a moment. My mouth is puckered in thought, my tongue trapped between the bite of my teeth. Then, I scoop a hunk of ham from the broth, and lift it closer to my face as if to better inspect it.

The sear of Daxeel’s gaze on my cheek itches my skin.

I ignore it and wonder, maybe hope, if Taroh has vanished for good. But that’s a silly, indulgent thought that I shouldn’t waste my time entertaining.

I bite the chunk of ham as savagely as a wild fae would. I grin something fierce and wicked around the tear of meat. “Hope he was stolen by a water fae and drowned.”

Aleana snorts into her mug of honeyed thistle tea—one hell of an energy boost, so I figure she’s seeking health in anything but the tonics that are faster to waste her away.

“Likely passed out in a brothel down the coast,” Eamon mumbles, running the back of his hand over his brow. Looks like he’s had quite the phase himself.

I don’t need to wonder who he’s been with.

Since I nudged them together at the Gloaming, he and Ridge have been spending more and more time with each other, and maybe I regret it a little—because I wander the corridors of Hemlock alone for the most part.

“Would be nice if someone robbed him,” Aleana sighs.

“Gutted him.” Eamon’s grumbled correction tugs a smile onto my lips.

Our shared look is a fleeting embrace.

Taroh, gutted.

A dream, of course. The chances of anything of the sort ever happening to Taroh, what with his social standing in Licht, being a lordson, and here as a spectator and not as a competitor in the Sacrament, are slim. He isn’t exactly on the battle blocks, making enemies.

And being the son of a noble, some part a noble himself, well he’s likely to be protected by others, because he belongs to a certain network of connections, of advantages. A stranger would come to his aid before coming to mine. Always best to be in a noble’s favour, isn’t it?

So I don’t pin my dreams and futures on a fatal rowdy romp through the Midlands. Still, it would be a nice thing. And better yet, if that happened to him in Kithe, gutted, there’s not much anyone could do about it, since vigilante justice rules the Midlands. Here, they answer to no lordship of the courts. His father—his family —would have to take justice into their own hands.

That’s just a whole lot of bloodshed for one bitter, ugly male.

Aleana cuts through my thoughts as she mumbles, “This tea is putrid,” before she guzzles the last of it, down to the pulpy sludge at the bottom.

I hear every hard gulp down her throat.

I angle to face her. My cheek presses against the tall spine of the seat.

The burn of Daxeel’s flickering gaze finds me, like he aches to follow my every move.

I give him nothing in return, not so much a flittering glance.

I eye Aleana for a beat. She toys with her silver spoon, but doesn’t scoop it into the broth, just scowls at it as she turns it over and over.

“You’re energised this phase.” Well, less fatigued than usual in that she isn’t coughing blood or passed out in the chair. Still, “Should we go outside?”

I don’t say where outside.

For all anyone knows, I could mean the gardens, within the boundaries of the fencing that encases Hemlock House.

But I hope for beyond the fence…

I hope for beyond the imprisonment of this home that’s starting to itch my bones and stir my insides. Restless. I am becoming restless, I decide.

Daxeel lowers his lashes over his ocean-storm eyes.

I feel it, how he narrows his gaze on me.

Out the corner of my eye, shadows flicker, disturbed from their rest over his shoulders. They writhe now with a lazy fatigue, as though annoyed.

Before Daxeel can remind me of his command to stay within the confines of Hemlock House, Eamon suggests, “We could get a carriage to the shore.”

Aleana groans a drawn-out sound. “The shore, the shore. I’m sick of the shore.” She tosses down her spoon. It lands on the table with a clatter. “I would be content to never see another shore again. It’s the only place you ever take me.”

Eamon’s mouth flattens into a thin line.

Daxeel starts, “The healer said that seaside air—”

“Is a lie,” she snaps and turns her fierce, misty gaze to him. “Salt in the wind isn’t curing me. It isn’t helping me. But it is boring me.”

Fingers click in my mind. The phases that I was stuck at Comlar, and Eamon was nowhere around for me to find, that’s where he was. Escorting Aleana to the shore.

Some weeks ago, the thought of it would have burned my insides with a flare of envy. Jealousy, even. But I find now, I’m only a little sad for her, sad that she’s like me—confined. Confined by Daxeel, as I was confined by my father.

With a bored sigh, Aleana shakes her head. “What about dances?”

My mind flitters to the dancers at Comlar. It frowns my brow. The performances are for ceremonies only.

“The next one should be at the end of the Sacrament,” I say before I bite a spoonful of broth ham. I largely ignore the broth itself in favour of the fillings, the bits .

Aleana’s mouth puckers and she looks to Eamon for the answers she wants, the ones I don’t offer. “What about the bars in town?”

He deflates with a gentle sigh that has him reclining in his seat, the back of his shirt silking over the high blackwood spine. “None that are open until the start of the Quiet at least.”

I wonder if this is what they did when they weren’t at Comlar, but weren’t at the seaside either: at bars, watching dancers perform. Mostly, I wonder why .

Aleana’s shoulders sag. “Oh.”

That’s all she says.

For a moment, only the sounds of silver on copper and drinks pouring into mugs ebb at the silence.

Then she turns her cheek until it’s pressing against the back of the chair, and her crystal eyes glimmer behind the fog. “I’ve always wanted to dance.”

I fight the urge to raise my brow. Instead, I lure off the lentils from the spoon’s grooved edges. “What sort of dance?”

There are so many types, after all. Different events, different cultures, different songs.

My chosen genre is ceremonial. The lure of grace and power in each move, from the delicate flick of a hand and sway of a hip into the sudden flip and solid landing that, frankly, makes me feel—even if it’s just for a moment—like a formidable hunter of the old fae, the savage ones who hunted humans and beasts for meat.

Not a confession I’m willing to betray to just anyone.

Not even Eamon knows that I’m called to ceremonial dance to feel powerful.

Aleana fingers the stem of a chalice. “The dance that floats.” Her smile is small, full of dreams. “The one that glides. Does it feel like that?”

I shake my head. “I feel every landing in my knees and in my ankles and sometimes my back. My feet burn. And the whole time, you are focused on two things—everyone can see I don’t belong up here and don’t trip.”

If Daxeel’s eyes were hot on my cheek before, they are blazes now.

I almost smile at the predictability of it, how he hangs on every word I say.

Dare must know him well. One scrap of veiled advice and Daxeel won’t, can’t, steer his focus from me.

Aleana’s face crumples. “So it’s nothing like gliding?”

The smile I spare her is a sad one, pulled tight like the strings of a violin. “It’s a weighted feeling.”

She pauses on it a moment before she returns her attention to her bowl. A grunt catches in her throat.

Eamon hooks my gaze with a solemn one of his own, then shakes his head only slightly.

A flush of shame heats me.

Aleana has lived her life weighed down like her bones are lead and her muscles are molten silver. She’s always felt heavy—whether in her body or the burden she thinks she is.

And I just cut down her glimmer of hope at loftiness.

“There is something,” I tell her.

She pauses. The spoon she holds near her parted mouth, it stops.

I avoid the sear of Daxeel’s silent gaze.

I add, “A way that you can both glide and float.”

Slowly, she lowers her silver to the broth. She doesn’t yet look at me. “How?”

“It’s an activity.” A sport? I don’t know. “It’s in the human lands.” I give a one-shouldered shrug. But my feigned blasé attitude does little to dampen Daxeel’s sudden tension.

His flare of anger clutches my insides in an icy grip.

Whether it’s a chill air that lashes at me from across the table or it’s that thing inside of me again, that little tug of his energy within me, I do not know.

Even all the reading on evate I’ve done in my week here, I’ve only made it halfway through the soul bond collection, and feeling the other’s emotions isn’t something I’ve come across yet.

Though, most of the tomes are unreadable with age and centre a lot around how the bonds are severed in death and no other way—and so I suspect that little collection belongs to Melantha.

Daxeel keeps his narrowed gaze on me.

It pierces into the flushed flesh of my cheek from across the table.

I look up as a sudden scuff of bootsteps stomp their way up the stairs. Came out of nowhere, as though ghosts reached the steps beyond the dining hall door, became suddenly too excited, then started to race the rest of the way.

I watch the doorway.

Rune is first to appear with a silent snarl and a stumble, as though shoved. He makes it just over threshold before Dare comes pushing past him.

And I mean push , because Rune is thrown back a staggered step and he knocks into the doorframe. The flare of his eyes is enough to stiffen me.

Unfazed, Dare overtakes the blond fae. He flashes Aleana a grin-wink-combo, then sinks into the chair opposite her. “Looking fresh this phase, Aleana.”

She throws him a scowl, one crumpled enough to hike Dare’s brow and glitter his eyes, but then she turns to me, voice low, “The humans?” she prompts. “Is it a pretty thing?”

I look at her for a heartbeat before I catch up.

The stare and rage of Daxeel, the scuffle of Rune and Dare, it distracted me from our chat of humans and their dances.

Before I can answer, Rune scoffs a guttural sound that catches at the back of his throat. He drops into the chair at Daxeel’s right and stretches his arms above his head. I hear the pops and cracks of his joints.

“Humans,” he snarls the word. “Children running before they can walk.”

If Daxeel has taken his gaze off me, I haven’t felt the soothing loss of its burn. The growl of his voice matches the icy warning of his energy, “They murder their world.”

I ache to look at him—to throw him a frown because I know he’s speaking directly to me, he’s raising the memory of his visit to that realm, the one he blames me for.

I don’t give him the satisfaction, and instead I empty my mug’s tepid water into my mouth.

Tris has bustled her way to the table from the wall, where I honestly forgot she existed at all. She begins tending to Dare.

Dare’s gilded gaze slides to Tris’s hot face. “Oh, they aren’t so bad.”

The blush darkens her freckles, but I see the coy smile she fights, like she’s very much enjoying his attention.

He slumps in his seat, but even that gesture looks as elegant as a panther sliding onto its side. “Once they are kept where they belong.”

Those words wipe the smile clean off the slave’s face. Her mouth puckers tight, as though she bites down on the insides of her cheeks.

She smacks his freshly filled mug down beside his hand. Hot splashes escape the mug.

I bite back a smile.

But Dare doesn’t so much as hiss at the burn of pain he’s surely feeling. Entirely unflinching, he watches her draw away and make for Rune instead.

That familiar glint still glitters in his eyes, an insatiable hunger stirring within him. The better I know him, the more I understand that need he carries. It’s not lust. It’s not desire to bed every female he can.

It’s his sun. The search for her.

And he searches in all the females he can get his hands on, knowing he won’t find her in them, but chasing those flickering feelings all the same.

He’s a cave feeding on echoes.

The thought twists my heart for him, the bloom of pity in my chest.

At the end of the table, Daxeel stiffens. Eyes on me, his hand tightens on the handle of his knife.

Now, I know—when we are together, he feels me as I feel him. He just doesn’t know why I feel that ache in this moment.

I don’t tell him.

I turn to Aleana. “It’s called ice-skating,” I say. “It is gliding like nothing else I have ever seen.”

It’s no secret to anyone at this table that I’ve snuck off into the human realm from time to time. So no air of surprise comes at my words. But it’s plainly as obvious that I might be gently guiding Aleana towards a trip to the other realm.

If Aleana wants it, I have a better chance of going. I got Daxeel to come with me himself once upon a time, but those days are gone—there are no days now, just phases, and the phase we are in, Daxeel isn’t so forgiving with me.

Still, a new ache has bloomed in my chest, one for an ounce of freedom—and I feel freest sneaking around the human lands, doing all the things I’m not supposed to.

Eamon taps his long, brown finger on the edge of his glass chalice.

It’s all the gesture Tris needs before she abandons Rune’s full mug of cinnamon coffee for Eamon, and she fills his chalice with that ghastly plumwine.

The wine flashes Taroh in my mind, the taste of it on my flesh, the stink of it searing my nostrils as he tries to force himself on me in the gardens of the High Court.

I blink away the intrusive memory.

Eamon sips from the chalice. “I know of some bridges in the Midlands.”

Bridges to take us to the human lands.

And there it is.

The offer laid bare on the table, the possible trip that no one exactly specifies. Now those embers of thought, of possibility, lift into something of a tender flame.

Daxeel is quick to snuff it out. “No more talk of it.”

Aleana huffs and throws him a dark glare. “You forget brother, I do not need your permission. You have the power to stop Nari from being my companion,” and she sinks into her seat, a smirk curving over her pale, chapped lips, “but not to stop Eamon from escorting me. I am a free fae.”

It’s a difficult thing to watch Daxeel but not quite look at him. So I stare at the corner of the room, where he’s just in the edge of my sight, and I can see his eyes darkening into pots of ink.

His answer is a low grumble, a warning that chills my spine in slow, gradual prickles, “I very much have that power Aleana—and test me again, you’ll see how far I’ll go to stop you from leaving this house.”

My mouth puckers out in quiet annoyance.

But Aleana doesn’t back down. Her gaze is unyielding in its aim across the table. “As far as father goes to control mother?”

I stiffen.

Instinct bolts through me like a stray strand of lightning, and if I move, I’ll be noticed—noticed as an intruder on a private family matter I don’t belong in.

Eamon and Rune have similar ideas.

They don’t freeze as I do, but their movements are softer.

Rune’s mouthful of broth-soaked potato is a gentle chew.

Eamon hovers the chalice near his lips but doesn’t sip.

“Or,” Aleana adds with a vile smirk, “as far as you go to keep Nari trapped?”

She might as well point her finger at him and shout her accusation for all to hear, ‘Are you just like father?’

I don’t breathe.

My chest is swollen with a half-breath trapped inside of me. It aches to release, burns my insides, but I stay as still as a statue in the gardens of the High Court.

Dare surprises me.

Unlike the rest of us, he doesn’t pretend he’s not here, doesn’t avoid his intrusion. He drinks back the last of his coffee, then sets the mug down with an intentional thud—one that cracks the hooked stares of Daxeel and Aleana.

Dare sighs.

The sound is silk drifting over a tender breeze. “Let her venture.” He cuts his gleaming golden gaze to Daxeel’s smouldering one. “While she can.”

My eyes widen a touch.

‘ While she can .’

It’s not something we speak of so loudly, so blatantly. Especially not when Aleana is in the room with us.

Aleana’s worsening sickness is as taboo here as the topic of Daxeel is with my father. And if I had any doubts of her nearing death, then Dare just wiped them out of my head in a heartbeat.

Latching onto Dare’s announcement of her sickliness, of her death to come, Aleana flickers her stare to her silently smouldering brother across the table.

“Please, brother,” she says, and the sound of her voice is so delicate, like polished glass that wears too many cracks, so close to shattering.

I almost smile something proud at her manipulations.

Looking at the corner of the room, I see out the corner of my eye that Daxeel’s tattooed hand—fingers streaked with fine lines that gleam as darkly as fresh ink—tightens around the handle of his knife. Part of him must want to spear that knife through Dare’s throat, maybe Eamon’s… maybe mine.

I try to find his emotions stirring in me, somewhere, but I come up short. All I feel is my own twist of anticipation, something ugly like razor-winged moths fluttering in my chest.

He’s either realised that I feel him sometimes and is practicing shutting me out or I haven’t gotten the hang of this part of the bond yet.

He smacks the knife down on the table. The wood shudders beneath the plates and mugs and chalices.

Only Aleana and I flinch, but the males don’t so much as flutter a lash.

Shadows flick over his fisted hand, lash over his shoulders as though prepared to lunge at us.

“Fine,” he grits out, and the barbed word comes from his curled lips with such reluctance that I’m swept back to our time shared in the human lands together—when he marinated in a foul mood the entire trip.

I stay quiet.

He hasn’t said anything about me going. Only Aleana.

As the holder of my slave contract, he has the authority to decide where I go and with who. Everyone else knows it too, since we all sit in a thick quiet, waiting for him to answer this unspoken question.

The burn of his eyes makes me think of the sensation of ice pressed against the skin too long. It’s a scald that, if I were to scratch, would scrape searing pain down my cheek.

I don’t meet his gaze.

I know he considers me, considers letting me go with Aleana—and then I feel it. The storm of annoyance lifting through me, not so much an echo this time, more of a ghost that comes and goes.

A grin threatens to break my schooled expression.

Females , that feeling would have said to me if it could. The females in his life, agitating him to the bones. Yet he seems to make such effort for us in these small favours, because he finally answers that silent question—

“We will need Nari for glamour.”

The breath I suck in through my nostrils is a sharp one. I contain it as best as I can, though it aches to rush back out of me in an excited squeal.

Aleana makes no such restraints. Her hand snatches out for mine until my fingers are smooshed in her death-grip. “Let’s get ready!”

I spare no one a glance before I rush out of the dining hall with her, scared that if I’m a beat too slow in leaving, he will change his mind.

So I steer Aleana to my bedchamber, where I have some human fashions stowed away in my trunks.

As for the males, they will need to borrow some things of Eamon’s, if he has enough to go around.

My glamours only do so much.

‘We will need Nari for glamour.’

It’s a truth, sure.

An honest enough decision that if Daxeel were light fae, then he would have been able to speak it easily.

But it’s a half-truth, too.

A veil draped over the reality that he allows this trip, maybe for my contentment, maybe so I can be free with his sister for a short while, or even that he won’t let me out of his sight for too long.

Perhaps it’s a truth he doesn’t want to admit, that he is baiting my focus back to him; that he can’t stand that this phase, I look at everyone but him.

Now, in the foyer of Hemlock House, I have little choice but to look at him. I need to glamour him.

I took my time and some more with Aleana’s glamour. Just to avoid this moment—the moment I finally turn to face Daxeel.

Flexing my fingers, I reach out for the smooth sunkissed hue of his face. And I lift my gaze.

I look at him.

His ocean eyes fix on me. They swim beneath the shadows of his lashes.

Just like that, I’m sinking.

Hesitation steals me. I have that horrid sensation that’s not unlike an iron flail thrashing around in my chest.

I swallow back the ache that rises up through me. Steeling myself against the sudden urge to weep, I loosen a steadying breath and make to touch his face. My fingertips inch closer to the soft beige of his cheeks that I know are silk to the touch.

But then, as I make to glamour his fae-ness, I’m stopped in my tracks.

Daxeel does it himself.

My hands still in the air between us, fingertips just a breath’s touch from the smooth caramel tone of his complexion. His pools of deep blue eyes are fixed down on me—and I watch as he alters his own appearance without so much as lifting a finger.

Shapeshifting.

I know of the trait, but I haven’t seen it transfigure before me.

I’m stunned, silent in my amazement as he dims the brilliant shade of his eyes into something muted; the sharpness of his predator teeth blunt into a perfect row of what would make a dazzling smile on a human; the points of his ears soften, the sharpness of his nails flatten; even the kohl of his eyes fade away.

And, still, he makes one striking human, one so handsome that I might have danced with him—but certainly noticed.

Layers of wispy shadows drape over his shoulders. They curl around his arms, sweep into his tousled hair—then melt into him, until they are gone entirely.

I drop my hands to my sides with a faint slap.

Daxeel folds his arms over his chest and leans back against the wall. His eyes, though muted, are oceans aimed at me. Nothing kind about that gaze.

Still, I can’t fight the heat flaming my cheeks as I look him over, like I’m pretending to search for hints of fae on his appearance, but really I’m drinking him in. From the black sweater he wears, my favourite one with the little razored threads and the small hole at the collar, down to the black pants that are looser on the muscles of his legs than his combat trousers or leathers, then a pair of black boots. Plain. A plain fashion for any human, but so entirely enthralling on him.

Enthralled.

I decide that’s what I am.

It’s a fight to tear my gaze from him. But I manage when I hear a familiar snapping sound.

I look over at Aleana.

Hunched on the waiting chair by the door, she picks at the black tights layered over her legs with mild interest. Like stockings, they hide the bruises that mar her skin, but they are the sort of tights that pull up all the way over her backside—and she’s been baffled by them since she found them in one of my trunks, buried deep beneath a fur shawl that’s too crusty to wear.

She wrestled them on almost right away.

It’s not a lie to say it looks as though she dressed herself. The tips I had for her went ignored.

Over the black tights, she has on my favourite glitter skirt, a faint pinkish colour I don’t think suits her black blouse all too well, but she’s taken to it all the same, just as she’s taken to the silver glitter boots. She had to stuff on some socks to fit them, since my size is a tad bigger than hers, but she’s pleased with her human fashions—and intrigued by her human appearance.

I figure that when she abandons the tights, then finds her gaze in the mirror on the wall opposite and starts to assess herself for the dozenth time since I fixed the glamour on her.

She peels back her lips and inspects her blunt teeth; brushes her fingertips along the human curves of her ears; flattens her hands against the warmth of the foyer and studies her translucent nails.

Next to glamour is Dare as he comes jogging down the stairs. He moves for me, but his glittering gaze latches onto Aleana. His brow pinches as he takes in her appearance and I don’t quite know if he’s amused or offended.

He wears much the same as Daxeel, but his sweater is a cool grey and better suited to his pale skin and golden eyes; eyes that I darken into a muddy brown. The glamour is not terribly strong, the brown isn’t as dull as I aimed for, so there stays a golden hue to them. The result is an amber-speckled brown that’s passable.

Not everyone decides to come along.

Rune doesn’t join us, Samick—if he’s here at all—stays hidden from this little scandal of ours. But Eamon finds us after he sent out a crow for Ridge to meet us at the bridge, and I tend to his glamour in a way that compliments the contrast of his dark complexion with his plain white shirt. Like Dare, I tone down his goldenness. But like Dare, none of his beauty is erased, and I find we all make very attractive humans.

There’s only so much a glamour can do.

But it’s convincing enough to startle Kalice into a double take as we pile out of Hemlock House.

The carriage waits on the street.

Kalice’s wide gaze follows us the whole way.

Only Aleana and I offer her a smile before the carriage door closes on us.

Then we are gone.

In the carriage, the uneven stone of the roads has us swaying back and forth for the length of the town. The ride turns rocky when we reach the country roads packed with too much gravel and dirt. That’s when I grab the leather grip above my head and fight the stirs of nausea threatening to thrash too violently in my gut.

“How far away is this bridge?” Aleana asks, cradling a bottle of honeywine she’s supposed to be sharing with me, but hasn’t handed over yet.

I keep silent in the carriage. My breath is bated, as though just releasing it too strongly will trigger Daxeel and he’ll send me back to Hemlock.

“Another ten minutes or so,” Eamon says.

Wedged between Aleana and Eamon, I avoid the constant stare of Daxeel and, instead, I watch the toes of my black boots warp as I flex my toes. They better match the strappy black dress that is revealing enough to draw in the heat of his gaze.

Already, we have been in the carriage for too long. Just twenty minutes, but these hail-carriages are always too small, too cramped, too draughty, too hot.

Aleana swishes the bottle and groans, “Isn’t there one closer?”

In all my silence, I nod along with her complaint.

“A few.” Eamon reaches out to ruffle my loose waves. “But those bridges don’t lead to where we are going.”

Eamon knows the bridges better than I do, and he sure knows the human lands better than I ever will. It’s his duty to learn these details for his recruiter career. So I place my trust in him, because he would know for certain if the closer bridges to Kithe only took us to small villages or barren towns with no ice-skating for Aleana to enjoy.

The last time Eamon took me out to the human realm, I thought I was prepared. Maybe I was a little on the cocky side, as I was with Daxeel, who was clearly new to the world. But Eamon schooled me, fast, and he swept me into the heart of a town bigger than any I’d ever seen before.

I hated being on the outs.

This time, I’m a part of the in . I get to share this with Aleana. And it brings a smile to my face when the carriage finally starts to roll to a gradual stop.

She’s too quick to stumble out of the carriage.

Daxeel moves for her and snatches her forearm before she can go spilling all over the thick grass.

I shimmy out after him.

Carriage rides are the most perfect way to ruin a good dress, so not a moment after I’ve righted myself at the edge of the carriage, I swat at the short hem of my mine, attacking any wrinkles and creases in sight.

I glance up at the snap of a twig.

Ridge rounds a chopped tree stump across the clearing.

Guess he got himself ready much faster than we did.

But if he’s impatient about waiting for us, he doesn’t show it. His grin dazzles like moonlight. “I’ve never seen free humans before,” he says. “Can we eat them?”

Fleetingly, I wonder if he’s got a little wild fae somewhere in his bloodline.

Dare tucks a folded knife into his boot. The wolfish grin he flashes seems more deadly than that serrated blade. “Seduce them?”

I think it might be a better fate to be eaten by Ridge than seduced by Dare. I almost let the tease fall from my lips, but before I can say anything at all, the carriage skids over gravel and dirt, then the punishing sound of hooves smacking the ground goes off into the distance.

Daxeel slips away from Aleana as she downs the rest of the honeywine.

I eye the empty bottle with slitted eyes.

My jaw only clenches when she tosses it aside. I watch it roll over the dewy blades of grass, flattening each one until it stops with a sway.

Eamon claps his hands together and calls out, “This way!”

Movement ripples over us, and I’m acutely aware of Daxeel silently prowling behind me, some distance back, but a shadow all the same.

Ahead, the teasing purr of Dare’s voice moves like snakes over grass, “You want to hold my hand?”

I trace his gaze to Aleana.

Arms spread out as she side-steps the muddier patches of pearlescent white grass. “You can hold this,” she snaps and flips him off. The light of the grass reflects off her humanized fingernail, and it blunts the gesture. “I’m not scared.”

Dare grins a dazzling sight. “Who said it was for your benefit?”

Her shoulders jerk with a scoff.

Eamon stops ahead once he reaches the edge of a slight mushroom circle, the sort of mushrooms that are blackened with poison and drooped with age—and I know what it is without a moment’s hesitation.

This bridge is unlike the ones I’ve taken before.

I have slipped my way through holes in tree trunks, and a handful of times gotten a good rash up my backside to show for it, so of course my face crumples into a scowl at the sheer ease of this mushroom circle at the edge of a mossy boulder.

Seems he is more familiar with the gentler bridges.

“Step in, one at a time,” he tells us, and I have half a mind to stomp these mushrooms dead. “When you land on the other side, make way—someone is right behind you.”

Ridge doesn’t need telling twice. He’s first to move for the circle.

I shout for him. “Wait! I need to glamour you first.”

He angles his pointed chin my way, the pinkish hue of his soft hair gleaming as bright as the glitter skirt Aleana wears. He hums a curt sound of understanding, but not too thrilled, then moves for me.

“Dax,” Eamon calls his cousin for the mushroom circle.

Daxeel looks over his shoulder.

He frowns on me for a moment before his gaze drops to the thin strap that has fallen over my shoulder.

He blinks as if to tug out of a trance, then he’s prowling for the circle.

I don’t watch him go through the bridge.

I focus my attention on glamouring Ridge’s hair into a sawdust shade, his lilac eyes into a murky grey: I soften the glisten of his marble complexion, then get to work on those fangs of his.

But there’s little I can do about the ancient blouse he’s chosen to wear, strung together at the collar, and the leather trousers that glimmer down to his boots like a mud river.

By the time I’m done, everyone but me, Ridge and Eamon are on the other side.

I am next to step into the circle—and the moment my boots are flat on the foliage, the ground is swept out from under me.

I fall.