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He propped himself up on his elbows when he spotted her. “You are not dressed yet?”

“With so many options, how can one choose?” she asked sweetly. Truth be told, though, she didn’t know what to wear. What kind of dinner was this to be?Formal, like it had been every evening with Lord Tyndell?

“Wear what you’re comfortable in, Scarlett,” Sorin replied, as though he'd read her mind.

“I’m comfortable in training attire,” she retorted under her breath.

“Then wear it,” Sorin answered, rising from the chaise and coming to her. Damn him and that Fae hearing.

Scarlett rolled her eyes. “I cannot meet your Inner Court and dine with a prince in training clothes or dressed like Death’s Maiden.”

“I am a prince,” he replied with a smirk. “You have dined with me eating out of a box on my couch.”

“That’s different,” she remarked, waving him off.

He snorted. “How?”

“You and I are different. Besides, I didn’tknowyou were a prince when I met you,” she replied.

“Would it have made a difference?” he asked, again with that smirk.

“Yes!”

“I doubt it.”

“I do have manners,” she scowled.

“I would love to see them sometime.”

Scarlett gave him a vulgar gesture before turning back to the closet.

“Rude,” she heard him call after her.

She surveyed the display of clothing before her again and sighed. He had lain with her on the ground. He had lain with her, letting her sort through everything that had happened. He had not asked to talk about it. He had not told her what had happened after she’d left. He had just crawled into a pit and sat with her in the darkness.

She couldn’t decide what to make of it. This male that had contributed to her breaking, lying with her in her shadows. She certainly wasn’t going to acknowledge the feelings that were creeping up,not with Callan under the same roof. Not until she could speak with him and try to explain. Explain what, she didn’t know.

She finally selected fitted black pants with the dark purple sweater. The fabric was luxurious against her skin. She pinned her hair up off her neck. She was strapping a dagger to her thigh when she came out of the closet and found Sorin waiting for her. He noted the dagger and gave a nod.

“You are fine with me wearing it to dinner?” she inquired, a challenge in her tone.

“I wear multiple weapons everywhere. Why wouldn’t you?” he responded simply.

“Well, yes, but you are a man and a trained soldier,” she countered.

Sorin winced a little. “Before we go to dinner, some Fae decorum. We are males and females. Men and women are humans.”

“Semantics,” Scarlett replied with a roll of her eyes.

“Not to Fae. To Fae they are very, very different.”

“You are offended?”

“Not me. I am used to you calling me all kinds of endearing names, but yes, others will find it deeply offensive,” Sorin answered. He closed the distance between them and took her right hand. “This belongs to you.”

Scarlett looked down to find he’d slipped her mother’s ring onto her finger. And suddenly she wasn’t in the Fiera Palace at all, but she stood in the forest clearing where she had sat with the beautiful man. Shirina appeared at her side, brushing lightly against her leg.

She caught movement out of the corner of her eye and turned to see a giant wolf emerge from the forest to the east. It was the same one she had seen when she’d watched Sorin with Talwyn back in Baylorin. Scarlett stilled, but the panther walked towards it. The two seemed to stare each other down in some sort of stand off, before the wolf gave a bow of its head in Scarlett’s direction.