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The Green Man’s face lights up with my admission. “It’s a rare treat to come across honesty within these walls.” He glances around us.

Technically, there are no walls, but the ones he’s talking about are invisible. They divide peasants from nobility, humans from fairies.

I give him a tight smile, my gaze moving to the crowd. They’re watching me again, probably because the Green Man is at my side.

“It’s awful, isn’t it?” he says.

I glance to him. “What is?”

“The eyes that both see you and don’t. The posturing. The studied gaiety.”

I hide my swallow. This manisreading me, and I don’t like it that he can do it so easily.

I make a noncommittal sound, searching the crowd for Des. There’s an ever-increasing cluster of fairies around him, vying for his attention. I’m tempted to elbow my way back to his side, but I don’t want to be in that dogpile any more than I want to be right here.

My eyes then land on Mara, who’s laughing among her group of men and some fawning nobles. She’s the sun, and they’re all planets revolving around her, eager for her smile, her touch, her gaze. The only one missing from her group of admirers is the man at my side.

“Will you dance with me?” said man asks.

That makes me turn my full attention to the Green Man.

Fairies in general, and male fairies in particular, make me nervous. Karnon and his men are to blame for that.

But when I look at the Green Man, I don’t see a predator—I see a kindred spirit.

Why not dance? Tonight is a festival, the Green Man looks eager, and it’s high time I stopped clinging to the edges. If Temper can do it, so can I.

“Sure,” I say.

He smiles at that, and I reel back at how staggeringly handsome he is when he’s happy. It’s not that I hadn’t noticed earlier—all fairies seem to be attractive. It’s just that Mara’s presence eclipses him.

He takes the wine from my hand, sets it on a side table, and leads me into the crowd of dancing bodies. And then we’re moving, spinning just like all the other couples.

The alcohol warms my stomach, and the dancing throws away the last of my caution. I find that as soon as I move my feet, I’m caught up in the music’s haunting rhythm.

“So you are the Night King’s mate,” the Green Man says, staring a little too intensely at me.

“Mm-hmm.” It’s hard to focus on him when the music, the wine, and the dancing all want to pull my attention up and away.

“You have our kingdom fascinated by you,” he says, his hand moving to the small of my back. “A human with supernatural powers, a mate to the King of the Night. Not to mention that you are lovelier than many of our women.”

Why are we talking? And why about this? “What does being lovely have to do with anything?” I say, distracted.

I guess it’s a stupid question to ask here in the Otherworld, where beauty is a point of fixation and ugliness only ever lurks beneath the surface.

“Everyone thought the merciless Desmond Flynn had gotten himself shackled to some ordinary slave,” the Green Man says. “We had pitied him until we met you.”

The wine sours in my stomach, the music begins to grate, the dancing starts to dizzy me. I push away from the Green Man, no longer interested in dancing with him.

“Is something wrong?”

He says this as though he didn’t just refer to my people as slaves, as though he didn’t just insinuate that he holds them in such low regard. It’s his casual bigotry more than anything that’s off-putting.

“Iam an ordinary human,” I say as the couples around us continue to twirl.

“No, Callypso Lillis, enchantress of mortals,” he says, “you are not.” With that, he begins to back away. “Try to enjoy yourself tonight,” he recommends. “You have a week of festivities ahead of you.”

With that, the crowd swallows him up, and I’m alone once more, warm twisting bodies brushing against me from all sides.