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He will not lose her.

Ahead, the path leads into the bluffs’ heart. The Palace of Starlight emerges from the trees, forged of inlaid wood and woven with branches.

Two archers guard the threshold, each sentinel brandishing crossbows. Envy skids to a halt. All right, maybe he should panic. What was he thinking? That he wouldn’t run into such obstacles? Where is his brain?

He knows the answer to that. It’s somewhere deep in Sorrow’s pocket.

He doesn’t recognize the archers, but he can handle two at once. The problem is, can he handle them quietly?

Knocking them out is an option, if he can manage to scuttle behind them. But considering his size, there isn’t much wiggle room in this compact area to reach them unseen. He’ll have to achieve the impossible from here.

Deftly, Envy slides a glass arrow from his quiver and nocks his bow. Blowing out a breath, he aims through the fronds.

A small hand lurches from the dark and seizes his elbow. His head whips to the side, his gaze slamming into a pair of lilac eyes, their lashes adorned in a glossy sheen.

Envy knows that face. It’s the moppet who’d commanded a litter of youths in the valley. Earlier, he’d been on the pier, exchanging some kind of silent communication with Sorrow, right before shit hit the fan. Envy had witnessed the scene from the rooftop.

The child releases Envy’s arm, points to a camouflaged gap in the vegetation, and whispers, “This way.” The shorty flips around, about to hop into the crochet of bushes.

Envy snatches the child’s hooded velvet robe and yanks him back. “Ah, ah, ah,” he drawls. “Not so fast, Thumbelina.”

The miniature archer flashes his teeth in umbrage. Unless he’s up to snuff on human fairytales, he won’t know what that means, but he does grasp the implication it has on his height. Up close, he’s a beauty with tanned skin, dark curls that spring around his head, and an exploratory gaze.

“Who are you?” Envy asks. “What is your name?”

To that, the archer slits his eyes, his pointy features bunching into a wad of consternation. It’s common practice to ask an archer’s root emotion, yet this moppet glowers as though Envy just accused him of wearing polyester.

The child is astute enough to register suspicion and proud enough to take it personally. He hisses, “Are you coming or not?”

“How do I know this isn’t a trap?”

The archer’s mouth breaks into an impish grin. “You don’t.”

“How original.”

“This is a limited-time offer.”

His Guide must have taught him that mortal phrase. Either way, Envy’s lips quirk. “What you see before you are six-foot-four inches, plus two-hundred and twenty-five pounds of male radiance, all amounting to a rather fatal mood. Don’t play games with me.”

“Too late.” With that, the child flounces into the underbrush.

Fates help him. Casting another glance at the sentinels, Envy reconsiders the silent exchange that he’d observed between Sorrow and this youth.

Sighing, Envy stalks after him. The rough-hewn path dissolves into the murk, the foliage growing denser and flooding out the stars. It worms around the palace, its direction and elevation erratic, dipping and twisting and ascending again. Envy mutters an oath while squinting, in order to keep the moppet in range.

At last, a break in the hedges reveals the throne garden set within a waterfall amphitheater, where cascades pour from the summit like a dam and smash into a moat that surrounds the area. A single infant dragonfly perches on the central dais and its five seats, all of which are vacant.

Envy’s gaze charges across the wild blooms and trimmed hedges, the starlit lanterns that sway from the boughs, and the winding paths that lead to other plots. The Court is nowhere to be seen, but they’ve been here. His gaze stumbles upon the evidence of that, the sight depriving him of oxygen.

She’s unconscious. Tethered to a tree branch, her head slumps forward, layers of purple sloping across her profile. A link of glistening chains wraps around an overhead branch and chokes her wrists, forcing her arms overhead. There’s barely enough slack, so that she hangs like a ragdoll.

The position exposes her arms, the ladder of cuts she has made over the years—and the new ones that weren’t there before. Lines of blood ooze from the wounds, each one stacked atop the other.

Clean lines. Attentive lines.

Lines that were made with deliberate, prolonged purpose—with an agenda.

Envy’s pulse accelerates like a full-throttle berserker. Four more archers patrol the perimeter. He’s going to massacre them, he’s going to rip them to shreds, he’s going to…to make this child pay for restraining him.