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Dare pushes from the boulder. Before he joins us, he frowns at a damp patch on the leg of his breeches from the moss, then swats at it, once, twice. “Brothels?” he murmurs under his breath.

Daxeel hides a smirk.

Aleana rolls her eyes.

But I’m stuck on what Eamon said about this place.

All the times I’ve gone with Eamon into the human lands, not once did we pass through a Midhouse. So, as Eamon pushes through the old glass door at the back of the house, the awe of it slackens my face with a touch of wonder.

The moment I step over the threshold, into the warmth of a carpeted, old hallway, the bustle of it thrives up all around me.

And I know I am standing at the seam between realms.

Two younglings, smeared in brown that smells of chocolate, cut in front of me. I near step on them, but all they notice is the gentle thuds of the bouncy red ball they chase past me, then down a corridor.

I make to move for Eamon’s back, to keep close in the burst of chaos, but I don’t manage more than a step before a litalf cuts around me.

I stumble back, right into Daxeel’s chest.

The stranger mutters “move it.”

It lures a slight growl from Daxeel. He watches the litalf male scuttle down a dark, narrow corridor, then disappear through a door.

Eamon leans back to snatch my arm and calls to the group, “Stick close!”

He yanks me into step behind him.

Aleana is pushed into place behind me just as a stack of wobbly parcels spears down the hall, wobbling on their own—or so I thought, until the familiar metal clang of snapping brownie teeth gnashes near my boots.

I look down at the creature who balances all seven parchment-wrapped parcels on his head and carries them through the back door into the gardens.

Aleana hisses a curse.

My gaze swerves to her not a moment before she starts to hit at her hair. A band of pixies fall out, some steal a strand of hair, yank it right out of Aleana’s head, then fly off in a flurry.

Cursing, Aleana swats at the pests until a half-dozen of them fall onto her shoulders. The stragglers take flight—with more of her hair.

Aleana snarls after them. “Pests.”

“If Samick were here, he would’ve eaten them,” I say and push from the wall.

That earns a scoff from her.

Behind us, Daxeel draws closer; a shadow that sticks close to Aleana and me down the rest of the hallway.

Dare follows, but his attention is so far from protecting us from more almost-attacks. Instead, he’s snatched a purple apple from a potted plant, and bites into it. I hear the crunch.

The other wall gives way to an ascending staircase, old and wooden and creaky. The runner rug is flattened from too much traffic over many decades, I imagine. Craning my neck to see beyond the dusty banister, I catch a glimpse of a human whose waist is cinched with a bodice—a bodice that has the hand of a dokkalf female caressing it.

My brows hike at the blatant kiss the fae and human share, out in the open. A dokkalf in Dorcha could never.

That’s when it clicks in my mind, like fingers snapping.

It’s just another Midlands. Some folk can be freer here than in their own lands.

Ahead, Eamon ducks, and not a second after, a stack of envelopes comes zipping overhead. They graze the crown of my hair.

Aleana shoves by me, her boots tripping over themselves as she evades the whipping vines that lash out at her from the cracks of the floorboards.