The room is empty.
The curtains are thrown open, moonlight spilling across the room. My heart hammers as I place my first foot on the floor and pause, expecting blazing wards to ignite and alarms to scream.
There is nothing.
Exhaling hard, I slip into the room, and Thiago follows me like a thief in the night.
His gaze rakes over the sumptuous furnishings and elegant silks. From the sudden arch of his brow, I can tell it’s not what he expected.
The wall is papered in a forest print, with little creatures peeking from behind the trees. The ceiling is a night sky, with dozens of sparkling little stars pulsating light. And the bed is scrolled gold, curling up into an enormous canopy, from which hangs delicate white silk.
“This way,” I tell him, crossing to the door at the furthest end of the room.
A tower adjoins my mother’s chambers, and it’s here where her most precious items are kept. There’s a viewing platform at the top where she sometimes stares at the stars, but the room below it is locked and warded with the most dangerous spells she can summon. Only someone who shares her blood can enter that little treasury.
She used to invite me in there when I was a child, to view all her magical objects and curios. I would play with her necklaces and jewels, and she’d smile and drape one of her tiaras on my head.
I don’t know where it all went wrong.
Slipping up the stairs, I nearly leap out of my skin when a riot of noise echoes through the night. Fireworks. They shatter in the night sky, casting a burst of light over our passage before plunging us into the shadows again.
The crown is always kept at the top of the tower.
I place my palm against the solid gold door, every inch of me shaking. “Know my blood,” I whisper. “Let me in.”
Heat wells against my skin, but it doesn’t burn. It merely tastes me.
And then the door swings open.
She hasn’t changed the wards. A tremble runs through me. I wasn’t sure.
The treasury is just as I remember it. A dozen nooks are carved into the stone walls, and within each one rests a golden head. They have no faces, only slight indentations where the eyes and mouths should be, and I’ve always wondered if my mother knows how creepy they look. Sitting atop them is her collection of crowns and tiaras.
But it’s the deepest nook at the far corner of the room that captures my attention.
I’ve never touched it.
This was the one crown Mother never let us near.
She wears it on her head every day, and I’ve even seen her sleeping with it in her bed sometimes, like a child clutching its most precious toy.
I never, ever suspected.
“Don’t touch it directly,” Thiago warns, pacing toward it.
“I didn’t intend to,” I mutter, pulling on a set of thin leather gloves that I’d tucked behind my belt.
“Vi.” There’s something about his voice that warns me.
“What?”
I wave the faelight closer, and its then that I realize what’s wrong.
A gold, faceless head sits within the nook, but there’s nothing on its head. No crown. No wards. Merely an empty space where the crown should lie.
No. No! Where is it?
“A little thief,” something whispers behind us. “Come in the night for a crown. How extraordinary.”
Both of us freeze.
“I wonder…, should I alert the guards?” It’s the doorknob that speaks. “Or should I call for my queen?”
“Run,” Thiago says, shoving me toward the door.
It slams in my face, and I hammer at the beaten gold, before turning around with a frustrated hiss. Curse it. My heart rabbits in my chest as I face the inevitable truth. “It’s a trap.”
And the only one who knew we were coming was my sister.
The doorknob chuckles and then it starts screaming.
I shove Thiago in the chest. “Leave!”
I’ve seen him turn as insubstantial as shadow and know he can pass through solid stone if he has a mind.
“Do you honestly think I’m going to leave you behind? I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t you come with me?”
I gesture to the door.
Thiago merely smiles. “I thought I’d make my own.”
And then he turns and presses his fingers to the wall, and with a punch of raw power, stone explodes through the night.
“What part of ‘do not use your magic’ do you not understand?”
He can’t face her. Not here. Not now.
Not with Mother’s curse twisting him on edge.
We steal from the castle just as the guards sprint toward the tower behind us. Yells echo through the night and the portcullis slams down.
Too late.
We’re already in the woods.
And while the ripple of our presence is clearly spreading through the castle, nobody in the woods seems to be aware of it.
“We can’t run,” I tell him, swallowing hard. “They’ll be looking for someone who’s running.”
He could fly out of here, but can he carry me?
Or will there be archers in the trees?
Thiago slows, his hand sliding through mine. He tugs me into a crowd of laughing fae and steals a glass of elderberry wine from a servant’s platter for me. “Then we don’t run,” he murmurs in my ear as he tugs me into his arms.
With the mask in place, he looks like the Lord of Darkness, breathed into fae form.
“What do we do?” Failure makes my breath catch. This was our one chance, and we lost it and….
“We dance,” he tells me, his hand stroking my spine, “and we focus on getting out of here safely. Tomorrow, we will deal with the consequences.”
I rest my head against his chest, dizzy with disappointment.
“This way,” he says as he takes my hand and spins me into a dance.
There’s a nonchalance to his actions, but I can see his eyes roving the night. A pair of guards come together at the edge of the clearing, but we are merely another couple in a sea of dancing fae.
The guard’s jerk a couple apart, tugging their
