The Court of Blood is one of the most dangerous of the Blessed courts. It’s ruled by King Aswan, but his son is hungry and ambitious, and his nieces no less so. They’re gifted in the art of poison, and it’s said that some of them mix torture with sex. Narcissa, one of Aswan’s nieces, was one of the potential brides summoned to the Court of Dreams three months ago, and although she died, I wouldn’t have liked to have crossed her.
Why would the Lord of Mistmark want to marry Belladonna?
Why would he want to marry any of the Court of Blood?
They’ve been passed over for centuries—one of the reasons Narcissa was so desperate to capture the Prince of Dreams’ attention—and if sweet little Belladonna is as poisonous as her sister, then it would be like bedding down with a viper.
If Mistmark caught a glimpse of my sister’s face, then he might be responsible for her disappearance. He’s definitely at the top of my suspect list, though certainly not the only one on there.
I need to get into the court to find answers.
But I don’t have an invitation to the wedding.
The Court of Blood will be locked down tighter than my sister’s heart. With so many of the Blessed courts in attendance, the guards will be thick and alert. Servants will be known and vetted. I could kidnap one and glamor myself to look like them for short periods of time, but that’s a dangerous route to take. One must have time to study one’s prey and their mannerisms.
But several princesses saw my face three months ago. They knew me as Merisel of Greenslieves, and while my skills of glamor are good, they’re not good enough to completely change my appearance. It’s a twist of the cheekbones here, a slip of the nose there…. You’re constantly working to hold the glamor in place, because different angles change perspective. Too many people would look at me and wonder why I seem familiar.
Who knows what kind of traps and glamors the Prince of Blood has laid over his court? He didn’t earn that moniker because he’s a kindly soul.
The answer to my dilemma is clear: I can’t get into the Court of Blood in disguise.
The only way to get in is if I’m invited.
Or more to the point, if Merisel is invited. And there’s one fae who isn’t invited, but will be welcomed all the same.
Pushing upright, I scowl.
Sometimes I hate the twists my mind takes.
Fate trails her icy fingertips down my spine.
I cross to the fireplace, pour myself a goblet of wine, and stare into the flames. I’ve never tried to contact Keir but I can feel the link between us, etched into my skin with his magic. Four hundred and thirteen days I owed him—a year and a day—and now roughly three hundred and fifty marks remain. They’re invisible to anyone other than myself and Keir. Each day a little tingle shivers through me as one of the runes vanishes.
“Hello?” I whisper, stroking the mark on the inside of my wrist. “Can you hear me?”
There’s a moment of silence and then a foreign awareness turns toward me. I don’t know how to describe it. One second the room is empty, and the next I can almost feel an enormous body brushing against mine, his breath whispering over the back of my neck.
The prince.
Keir’s not here, of course, but it feels like it.
“Zemira?” His whisper is intimate. “What happened? Where did you go?”
I swallow hard. “You want me to steal the horn? Fine. But I’ll need a little help to do so.”
There’s a long, drawn-out pause. “What do you need?”
“You.”
This is the second time I’ve planned to betray the Prince of Dreams.
I wait by an old castle’s ruins, right on the border of the Court of Blood. Trees sprawl over tumbled rock walls, vines snarling around broken towers. It’s as though the forest is trying to reclaim the castle, eating it inch by inch, year by year.
One day, there will be nothing here but trees and future fae will stub their toes on mossy stones and wonder why they’re rectangular.
The eastern road passes by here. It’s one of the least known entry points to the Court of Blood and lightly guarded. There’s no trade into the mountains, and the threat of the Forbidden are far to the north.
Or so the fae think.
Thousands of years ago, when the dragons lived they ruled the world. When the war forced them to treat with the fae, they returned their magic to the cauldron so that their kind could live, and yet a spark remained within their breasts.
The loss of their magic stripped them of their immortality too.
And when they died, it took years for the fae to understand that that spark of magic slowly bled into the world beneath a dragon’s bleached bones.
We call them barrows.
When their bones melded with the soil, they forced the earth around them to become different. Magic leached into stone, and roots, and trees. Old forests grew—the kind of forests that whisper of an ancient time. It slowly seeps outward, infecting the earth around it. Year by year, the barrows grow. They’re an Other World, a place cleaved from the real world in time and space, even though they look the same as the world around them. You can always tell when you enter a dragon’s barrow. It feels like walking through an invisible shock of lightning. It’s just enough to make your breath catch, and then the world around you is a little brighter, and there’s a faint hum like the far-off buzz of cicadas.
Nothing lives in a barrow beyond the trees and the grass. It’s an eerie, silent place. No wind blows. Nothing moves. And yet, there are eyes on you somehow. Invisible eyes watching and judging you. They even say the dragon’s spirit lives on, lost in dreams, and that
