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“I saw,” Fey answered.

“And your sisters?”

Her smile grew. “They saw too.”

“It’s not always a good thing, Fey. She doesn’t know when to quit, doesn’t know when she’s lost.”

“She didn’t lose,” Fey said, and Dameon cocked his head toward her, frowning. “She didn’t lose,” Fey repeated.

“Her opponent had her on the ground in under a minute. That’s a loss.”

“In Solare, maybe. But for a Blade?” Fey shook her head. “You don’t lose until you’re dead, Dameon. There’s no fighting dirty, there are no rules to break, no decorum. She wouldn’t give up, even when she was beaten. That’s not a loss to me, that’s a win. That’s what we need. That’s what the realm needs.”

When Dameon said nothing, she continued. “You should bring her to us for her trials. She’s the one, Dameon. No one else we saw today even came close.”

When he didn’t answer, her patience snapped. She stopped, forcing him to stop alongside her. “It’s been a month, Dameon. We’re tired of waiting for you to make your move. A month. We’re not…” She searched for the words, searched for a way to convey the emptiness left inside them. “We’re not whole with only three.”

Dameon clenched his jaw but nodded.

“Fine. Consider it done,” he conceded. “I’ll bring her to you within the week for her trial. But if she fails, Fey…”

“She won’t,” Fey answered.

She couldn’t.

“Go on—” Dameon nodded toward the path leading toward the palace entrance. The white marble doors stood open, flanked by a pair of the Queen’s guards. “You’re needed at the party tonight.”

“You’re not coming?”

Dameon smirked. “Blessed be the Goddess, no. I have other business to attend to tonight.” He motioned toward Lunairea, the massive crescent-shaped building on the palace’s other side that housed the generals’ quarters. “I have a meeting with the generals.”

He motioned her toward the palace and turned to leave, but Fey stood rooted to the ground, studying him. She chewed the inside of her cheek, a question pounding against her chest.

“Do you ever miss her?” she asked, finally, and before the words had fully left her mouth, she saw Dameon stiffen, his shoulders tense. Alice’s name hung between them, unspoken.

He kept his back to her. His voice was dark when he answered. “Miss who, Your Grace?”

His answer was a warning.

We don’t speak of the dead.

Fey took the hint. She left him without another word and went to find her remaining sisters.

Chapter 2

As a Queen’s Blade, Fey had performed countless unsavory tasks. She had known her share of violence and gore while working for the Crown and had dismembered and beheaded more enemies of the throne than she cared to count. She’d buried bodies, burned bodies, and even dissolved a body in lye (though only once, and she swore to never do it again. It had taken days, and it was immensely easier to dispose of a corpse than a body’s worth of goo).

During her work for the Crown, she had bled, cried, and vomited. Some nights she’d even done all three.

But nights like tonight were perhaps her least favorite of all the unsavory tasks required of her.

“Happy birthday, Princess,” the man kneeling on the dais crooned in an unctuous voice. He set a delicately wrapped present on the already massive pile beside Princess Amalia’s throne, beaming a saccharine smile up at the realm’s heir and her mother.

Fey fought the urge to squirm. She hated this, hated the groveling and the posturing. Hated standing in one spot, unable to move, for hours on end.

If either the Queen or Princess felt the same, seated in their matching thrones on the dais, they certainly didn’t show it.

Princess Amalia smiled at the man as he fussed with placing his present. A dull, rather brainless smile, but a smile, nonetheless. Fey only vaguely recognized him. He was someone important enough to warrant an invitation to the Princess's birthday celebration, clearly. He was a duke, maybe? Or the brother of a duke? But Fey lacked Lilith’s seemingly endless fount of knowledge about the comings and goings of the royal court and couldn’t place him. Joy would know, of course, but Joy stood at the Queen’s other shoulder, still and quiet as a statue, and the two of them were not to move, not to speak, during the celebration.