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Baylaur gleamed in the distance.

Maybe by the end of the night, I would know why.

* * *

She took a circuitous route around the edge of the valley, avoiding the strip of barren desert where the Gremog made its home. When she finally did cross, I hesitated a moment. She took no apparent precautions as she walked across the desert toward the city. I could only assume we were out of the Gremog’s range.

I was tempted to shift—for the speed alone.

But Veyka was getting smaller and smaller in the distance. I could not lose her now.

One hand on my axe, I sprinted across.

From there, I followed her into Baylaur itself. I hadn’t ventured into the city yet. I figured that terrifying the elementals inside the goldstone palace was sufficient until after the Joining. At least then, I would be High King of Annwyn rather than a foreign prince, in title if nothing else.

The streets she chose were narrow, no more than alleys. She was trying to avoid notice.

She’d pulled a hood over her head, her white braid disappearing beneath it.

Was her appearance well known in the city? It certainly wasn’t beyond it. I’d known next to nothing about my betrothed until I’d seen her across the throne room. If one ignored that first meeting in the woods.

Which I did not.

We were working our way toward the heart of the city. The alleys slowly became dirtier, busier. I had to dodge refuse being dumped from windows overhead. Even this late at night, children darted across the alleyways.

Poverty was as alive here as it was in my own kingdom, despite the presence of powerful magic.

Veyka stopped only once, to drop something into the hand of a sleeping figure huddled against the wall.

I paused long enough behind her to see—a jewel. One of the amorite gems she wore in her ears, pressed into the palm of the sleeping fae with grizzled gray hair.

With a sigh, I turned back to the end of the alleyway.

Veyka was gone.

Ancestors below, she was so fucking fast. I was at the edge of the alleyway in half a second, but it met a much bigger street. Busy, even now that it was well-past midnight. I supposed in a city of this size, the hour didn’t much matter. Veyka’s scent mingled with the other elementals crowding the street. I tried harder, summoning the beast within me. I caught a whiff of terrestrial magic—one of my own from the delegation, probably. I’d given them no orders binding them to the goldstone palace. A traveler was possible, though the citizens of our two kingdoms rarely intermixed, especially this far from the Spit.

But no hint of Veyka.

Fuck. I spun for the alley, my furious strides eating up the ground. I had to catch her essence on the breeze again, see if I could follow—

“Who’s the clever one now?”

The tip of her dagger touched the artery just below my clavicle.

I inhaled deeply, letting the smell of her flood my nostrils and mouth, all the way into the empty cavity of my chest. Despite the anger that was still rushing through me, the distaste that I was even out of my bed for this selfish princess, my beast rumbled a little growl of satisfaction at having her near once more.

“How did you hide your scent?” the beast asked in my own voice. He didn’t plan on letting it happen ever again.

“That is none of your concern,” she said. “Why are you following me?”

I ignored her question. “When did you realize I was trailing you?”

Veyka snorted. I hadn’t expected her to divulge that information. “I have told you—and shown you—that I can defend myself.”

She pressed her knife a bit harder against my chest to make her point.

“I could have you on the ground beneath me in the time it takes you to stab that knife into my chest,” I crooned, soft like a lover.