Or maybe they lose the part of themselves that retains any sense of identity and become merely rage-driven beasts hungry for fae flesh, consumed with an unwitting fury for all of my mother’s kind.
Rule number twenty-six in the unwritten Codex of Thieves: Do not try to steal from a questing beast, unless there’s a knife to your throat.
“What’s it going to eat?” Mistmark murmurs.
“Hopefully the bride.”
They exchange a long, steady look.
“Unkind,” Mistmark says, his lips quirking in a smile. “I don’t want her dead.”
“Who? The questing beast? Or Belladonna?”
Mistmark laughs. “You’re in a rare foul mood, my friend.”
Falion pushes past him, running a hand through his hair. “My boots are ruined, I’ve lost my best knife, and I’m not allowed to kill Malechus. You promised this would be fun. So far, your description of the word doesn’t seem to match mine.”
“What’s not to enjoy?” Mistmark spreads his hands wide. “There are beautiful women everywhere you look, and weddings are prone to make them sentimental. You might get lucky and have someone take pity upon you.”
“Ha, ha.” Falion crosses his arms, flicking lint off his sleeve. “I’d laugh if I wasn’t so certain you were going to end up with your heart cut out of your chest.”
“Belladonna’s no more allowed to renege upon this bargain than I am—”
“I wasn’t talking about your intended,” Falion drawls.
That cuts through Mistmark’s smile. “Yes, well. Allow me to worry about that. First we have to find her. And my bridal tithe?”
“Safely guarded by that fire-breathing bitch.”
“Excellent.”
“I was talking about the beast, not the woman who’s going to cut your throat. Nobody’s getting near it until this ceremony is over, and I can retrieve it but—"
“Play nicely.” Mistmark taps the scroll against his lips. “We’re one step closer to getting this noose from around my throat and rescuing her. You can afford to smile for once in your life.”
“I wouldn’t want to steal all those ladies from their lords.”
Mistmark contains a laugh in his fist.
What noose?
A little quiver runs through me. This marriage has never made sense, but if Malechus is blackmailing Mistmark into joining his house….
But how?
Or rather, what?
And this bridal tithe…. I was right. It has to be the horn.
It’s always expected—when marriages are conducted between courts of unequal power—that the lesser of the courts is the one to provide a bridal tithe to the more powerful court.
But why would Mistmark give it to the questing beast to protect?
Is he planning to double cross Malechus?
I Sift closer, slipping from shadow to shadow. It’s easy here, where the hedges cast large banks of shade.
I can see their faces better now.
Mistmark is still gorgeous, his features cut from the mold of the Blessed courts. But I can’t stop my attention from shifting to Falion’s face. There’s something… ethereal about his features. Finer, sharper, more dangerous than any other fae I’ve ever met. His cheekbones are cliffs, and his mouth is as soft and full as mine. Light gleams off the angles of his face as if it suffuses him.
The thought sets off a slow-burning twist of anxiety deep within me.
He looks a little like me.
I turn and press my back to the oak I’m hiding behind as my heart erupts into a stampede. I can’t stop myself from grabbing a twist of my moonbeam-pale hair.
I have my mother’s eyes and hair.
It’s a rare combination among the fae courts. They’re comprised of all the colors of the rainbow, and I’ve always considered my pale skin to be a curse my father’s bloodline afflicted me with.
But what if it’s not from my father?
My fingers tremble. There’s a pearlescent glow beneath my skin if I let my glamor slip. I haven’t let it show through in years, indeed, keeping it locked away within me is more natural to me than breathing these days.
I steal another glance at this Falion, at the ripples of light playing over his features. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say his glamor was relaxed in the presence of his friend, and he wasn’t bothering to hide the gleam within him.
“Captured starlight,” my wet nurse once told me. Then her face had twisted in a rare moment of warning. “You shouldn’t let your father see it.”
I’ve never known who my mother was or where she came from.
“You could simply refuse to marry Belladonna,” Falion says. “Or I could cut her throat and end this before it’s begun.”
Mistmark turns toward his friend sharply. “You know what happens if I refuse the marriage. I will not let it happen. No. We bide our time. We make the exchange. And then we turn this all on its head and—”
The stranger suddenly looks up, and his head turns, as if he’s scenting the air.
“Falion?” Mistmark tenses in response. “What is it?”
“There’s someone here,” the stranger whispers, and his gaze locks right on me, as if he can penetrate my veil of shadows. “Someone watching us.”
“Who?” Mistmark draws steel, turning toward me.
I’ve seen enough.
I clench my fingers shut, obliterating that faint gleam, and vanish in a whirl of darkness. It takes a half dozen leaps before I feel there’s enough distance between me and the pair in the heart of the maze, but my heart keeps skittering like a rabbit’s.
He knew I was there.
He turned and looked right at me.
Falion.
I don’t know who he is. I don’t know his face. But I know him, deep in my heart.
I finally clear the maze, the landscape rushing by, and then I stumble out of the shadows just in time to snatch a glass of wine from a servant’s platter. I steal a little acorn cake from a different servant, and press close enough to a group of fae women that I might be considered part of the group if anyone was to look.
Just in time.
Two seconds later, Falion appears at the entrance to the maze, his hands in his pockets as he surveys the gathering on the lawns.
He cleared the maze impossibly fast.
I throw my head back and titter
