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‘But she and Edored never …’

Lyn’s long-suffering groan was enough of an answer.

‘Oh, gods,’ I said, wincing. ‘I thought, with all his pretty nymphs …’

‘The pretty nymphs are half of the problem.’ She glanced at the door, then continued in a hushed voice, ‘Look, she’s madly in love with him and always has been – but he’s analf, Em. Getting himself bonded to someone who’s not …’ A grimace. ‘He knows exactly what a mess that can cause. So he told her from the beginning it would never be anything, and she’s stupidly proud and told him that was perfectly fine.’

I let out a laugh. ‘Even though she about murders him whenever he mentions any of his bloodyfriends?’

‘Yes,’ Lyn said, rolling her eyes, ‘clearly she’s not perfectly fine, but we’re talking aboutEdoredhere. I once joked the sky was green and he ran to Tared because he was concerned about my eyesight – so if Nenya says she’s fine, he’ll assume she is until she spells out the opposite for him. Which she won’t, because she’s far too proud to risk his rejection.’

‘And no one ever thought to tell him—’

‘He’d panic,’ she said flatly. ‘And Nenya would rather end herself than admit what she really wants. So for the past few centuries …’ She shrugged. ‘He flounces into her bed every now and then, she never tells him to piss off, and then he moves on to the next fling and Tared and I spend a month putting out fires. It’s all mildly ridiculous – but it’s better than the Gar Temen catacombs, I suppose.’

‘She …’ I swallowed. ‘She really went back to that place just to tell Bakaru to stop fucking around.’

‘Yes, and he was fucking around only to make the point that he still owns her.’ She slid from the edge of the ancient mattress, snuffing out the fire in her palm with a snappish gesture. Only her voice pierced the abrupt darkness, young but laced with centuries of sadness. ‘We may be fighting the fae these days, but don’t ever believe the rest of the magical world is much kinder at heart, Em. It’s wolves against wolves in the end.’

Most of the half-somethings end up here, she’d told me months ago.The full-somethings tend to make a fuss about them.

I didn’t want to know what a vampire king obsessed with blood purity would think of a little mongrel like me.

‘I’ll remember that,’ I said feebly.

‘Good.’ With a sigh, she opened the door and gestured for me to go first, back into the corridor and the faint sliver of light below the kitchen door. ‘Oh, and Em?’

‘Hmm?’

‘Are you and Creon alright?’

My stomach gave a painful jerk. So she had noticed it, the way he kept turning his back on me? She thought it was more than just the role he was playing, too?

No confirmation had ever been so alarming. If she’d seen it too, if she’d found it unusual enough to ask the question …

That meant it wasreal.

‘Perfectly fine,’ I said brusquely as I began walking back to the kitchen. Somehow, the lie seemed safer than whatever the truth was. ‘Thanks.’

She sighed but didn’t probe.

At the table, Edored was talking about Lyckfort and dragon scales, his voice loud and excited. Nenya was smiling when I stepped back into the firelight – a weak, watery smile, but it tugged harder at the corners of her lips with every sentence of Edored’s incoherent yet pleasantly dramatic travel report. The smell of frying onions filled the kitchen. Creon didn’t look up as I passed him by, didn’t even halt his stirring for the blink of an eye.

Fine.

I swallowed a sting of dread at that laughable word. Tonight, then. Ihadto find a way to speak with him alone tonight. Although someone would be awake with him, of course, likely one of the alves, which meant …

‘Oh, Lyn?’ Beyla said, interrupting both my thoughts and Edored’s winding monologue on the burned earth we’d found outside the Lyckfort city walls. ‘Agenor left a letter for you in the Underground. About the phoenixes, apparently. It’s in my coat.’

‘Already?’ Tared said sharply.

‘I know.’ Beyla sagged in her chair, a wry pessimism below the thinness of her voice. ‘Seems unlikely for them to agree that quickly.’

Which suggested bad news. I whirled around just in time to see Lyn pull the sealed parchment from Beyla’s coat pocket. For three, four heartbeats, no sound but the sizzling of oil and onions broke the silence as her eyes shot lightning-fast along the lines.

Her gaze paused on the last words – long enough to make Tared stiffen by the table.

‘Fuck,’ she said.