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“What? Fucking hell,” Temper says under her breath.

“You must be imagining things,” he says. “The oaks are fine.”

Imaginingthings?

“No, I’m not—”

Temper puts a hand on my arm. “There is no use trying to talk sense to this man. He and his wifekillkids.”

The Green Man’s expression turns patronizing as he looks between the two of us. “Don’t tell me you have a bleeding heart when it comes to those creatures?”

“It just seems hypocritical,” I say. To protect a plant but smother a fae life.

“It would be hypocriticalifthe trees were afflicted the same way those children are,” the Green Man says.

Ugh, why did I even bring this up? Fairies can be so tedious to talk to.

“Forget about it,” I say. I bump Temper’s shoulder. “There’s nothing here to see.”

We move between the aisles of coffins, heading for the door.

“Even if the trees have developed rot, they didn’t start out that way,” he says to our backs. “The children did. You can cure an illness, not a permanent state of existence.”

I ignore him.

“They say a specter haunts this place,” he adds, changing the subject.

I stop.

“He’s just trying to reel you in, Callie,” Temper says, grabbing my arm and urging me on. “Be better than his tricks.”

But I remember something I heard a month ago, about a shadow watching over the children in the Night Kingdom’s nursery.

I turn around. “What do you know?”

He smiles. “The slaves are usually the ones who see him. They say that during a full moon, you can see him move about the coffins.”

“‘Him’?” I say, stepping a bit closer. “How do you know it’s a man?”

He tilts his head. “Because there’s only one person who attends these women now—

“The Thief of Souls.”

Chapter 26

I stare up at the stars, Des next to me, the two of us quiet.

Both of us have been plagued by worry: him for the Night soldiers, who still haven’t turned up, and me for what the Green Man told me.

The creep’s just trying to get a rise out of you, Temper said when we left.

Maybe he was, and maybe he wasn’t. I haven’t yet figured out the motives of fairies. Not even those of the one who sleeps next to me.

The King of the Night and I have returned to the Sacred Gardens. Last night this section of the palace grounds was teeming with activity. Now it’s utterly abandoned; the only evidence of the previous evening’s revelries is the wine-stained ground and the piles of ash where the bonfires burned out.

Des reaches out for my hand. Wordlessly, he brings it to his mouth, pressing a kiss to the skin there.

“I’ll be happy to leave this place,” he says.