She nodded, but otherwise, she didn’t move. He stepped forward until they were mere inches apart. His hands came to rest on her shoulders. The heat from his body melted the hold that had been on her from the… spirits. She sank into his touch, pressing herself into his chest and clutching her still-frigid hands to his shirt.She felt him tense all over at her abrupt embrace. Then his hand came down around her and held her against him.“It’s all right. We’ve both had a long couple of days.”“Thank you for coming with me,” she whispered. “I know I… accused you of having ulterior motives last night, but…”“It’s fine,” he said.“It’s not. If I don’t want people to judge me for being a half-Fae, I shouldn’t judge people for things they can’t control.”She tilted her head up to look into those big gray eyes. His flicked between her eyes and then her mouth and back. Her heart stuttered in her chest for a whole new reason. She watched the calculation in his mind. The pull that she could no lon

“We should go,” Fordham said, reading her mood.“Yes, I think so.”Darkness had truly fallen in the village, but no one would be the wiser. Street performers had come out to dance and sing and play music. Taverns were open, and customers sprawled out onto the steps. A dance had started in the intersection to Painters Row. Merriment was had all around.“I never knew anything like this existed,” Fordham admitted as they passed row after row of dancers.“Is the House of Shadows so different? No dancing? No music?”His eyes grew distant. “There is music and dancing, but it’s not like this. We have been closed off in our world for a thousand years. No one leaves, and only humans dare to cross our borders—and most do it by accident. We have made our own city our own realm.”“That sounds isolating,” she admitted. Though she did not ask the question she wanted to know—how exactly had he gotten out?“It likely helps that the majority of us do not know any different,” he admitted. “They have no

In fact, the home was very easy to find once they were heading in the correct direction. There were many homes set into the hillside, but most of the them followed the pattern of the city, sprawling one-story stone mansions. Ellerby’s home was large, but it went straight up four stories with wide-set windows and enormous gardens. How he ever accomplished true gardens here in this rocky land, she would never know.Maya debated on going around to the back. He had seemed afraid in his letter, but it hadn’t been tampered with. No one would suspect they would borrow a dragon and fly south in the middle of the night.She opened the gate leading up to his mansion, surprised to find it wasn’t locked, and then Fordham followed her to the front door. No lights were on inside. It was the middle of the night. She was not looking forward to breaking in to his home.With a sigh, she knocked on the front door anyway.“Everyone is asleep,” Fordham whispered.“I know, but common courtesy.”They waited

Fordham, Theo, and Amber entered behind them, and the lot of them moved off into the shadows.Fordham irritably messed with his own mask. “Is this really necessary?”“Shush, you. Enjoy the espionage. If I can dress like this,” Theo said, gesturing to the gold gown instead of her normal shirt and trousers, “then you can suffer wearing blue.”Aurora snorted. Maya grinned. Amber just rolled her eyes. She was the only one deliberately dressed to draw attention. Her navy Bryonican dress was in the fashion of Sonali’s household, and she even wore the lady’s crest. Her mask was a shimmery gold lace strip that just covered her eyes.Fordham assessed them all critically. “I see why you are all Maya’s friends.”“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked, unable to keep the smile from her lips or the challenge out of her eyes.“They’re nearly as insufferable as you are.”“And what does that make you, princeling?”He arched an eyebrow. “Suffering.”“Okay, you two, break it up,” Theo said. “Let’s g

Tears blurred her eyes, and she ripped off the mask in the garden. She could hardly see where she was going, only that her past had caught up with her and she wanted to forget any of this had ever happened. That it all had the ability to make her cry at all.A figure blocked her path. She hardly saw him and nearly careened into him.“Sorry,” she gasped, stepping around him to try to find an empty space to grieve her old life.But the man caught her elbow. “Maya?”She stilled, her eyes drifting up to meet blue. The last person she wanted to meet tonight. “Kivrin.”He looked around the gardens. No one had yet noticed them. “What are you doing here? How did you even get into my party?” He fingered a lock of her tresses. “What have you done to your hair?”Maya tugged her arm out of his grasp. “Don’t touch me.”“This is unacceptable,” Kivrin said with fury in his tone. “You were not invited to this event. You should not be attending parties.”“And why not? Are you ashamed of me?” she hisse