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“Let’s go and play coroner then.” Lucais glanced at me over his shoulder. “Coming?”

Blythe’s heir.

Court of Darkness.

Faerie father with questionable allegiances.

“Sure,” I agreed, dropping his hand as I rose to my feet. He slipped it back into his pocket. “Does anyone want to tell me how you ended up in the fight with a locust?”

He made a face. “Not really.”

“Ask Wren,” Morgoya muttered, trailing behind us as we left my bedroom.

Lucais glanced back at her with mock horror. “Whose side are you on?”

“Aura’s. Thanks to you, I have a lot of grovelling to do.”

“Mmm,” he mused as we marched towards the staircase. “Well, to aid the process, I should probably tell you that my High Lady was violently opposed to my scheme. But I pulled rank on her. She still found a way to interfere, though.” He glanced up at her as we descended the stairs. “The gold dress? Brilliant. Evil, but brilliant.”

“I wasn’t trying to make it worse for you, Aura,” she said. “Not for you. I was trying to make a point to the High King.”

“Point taken. Cross my heart and hope to die,” Lucais sang, acting out the words with his hand, “I’ll never do it again.”

“I’ll get over it,” I told the High Lady.

Iwouldget over it, but her interferencehadmade it worse for me. Much worse. Morgoya had been my one true friend.

The three of us left the House, joining a small group of High Fae in the courtyard outside. Gravel crunched beneath our steps, and the babble of voices quietened into hushed whispers as we approached.

Standing in a circle, I spied Wren and Enyd among the crowd.

Wren flinched when he saw me and averted his eyes. Mine prickled with sharp, bubbling tears, but my anger quickly dissolved them.

Enyd was too preoccupied talking to one of her sentries to look up as we came to a stop at the edge of the circle.

I saw the reason a moment later.

Lying on the ground in the middle of the circle, there was a mangled body writhing against the stones.

“I thought you told me he was dead,” Lucais said, scrunching his nose.

Enyd’s head snapped up. “Heisdead. There’s no pulse, but he won’t stop twitching. Do you want to tell me what in the Elements is going on?”

Lucais hummed and took a step closer to the body.

The grey uniform of the Court of Wind was in tatters, concealing only the man’s most private parts. His skin was a sickly green colour, covered with protruding black veins like his decapitated comrade. But this time, the veins were pulsing, like the blackness came from a fluid oozing through his body.

His eye sockets were swollen, his face sallow and bruised, and his hair was black as night. The tips of his fingers were black, too. Like his extremities were slowly dying.

The High King crouched beside the body and began poking and prodding it.

“We have a problem,” he announced after a few moments of scrutiny.

“No shit,” Enyd hissed. “What has happened to my men, Lucais?”

“Malum,” he answered gravely. “He’s in transition.” He cleared his throat and cast his gaze around the group. “Anyone have a sword handy?”

A member of his Guard stepped forward and extended one to him.