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CHAPTER FIFTEEN

T HE ROAD INTO CERELIATH wasn’t lined with the hungry but with soldiers. Rows of tents filled the harvested fields as a makeshift barracks. My jaw clenched. Aemon never had money to house the people dying outside of the city’s walls yet the Crown’s armies were well covered.

And well stocked from the piles of food and weapons at the center of the tents. A group of young soldiers stood with their armor half on, wrestling over the last piece of meat. The older soldiers sat, sloshing their ale as they cheered.

The men had been here for almost a fortnight with nothing to do but patrol. They were like starved dogs, vying for a fight.

But I wouldn’t give it to them.

Yet.

The soldiers paid me no notice as I walked by on the King’s Road. I smirked. Riven had insisted on using a glamour but I knew my disguise would be enough. My dress was tattered and covered in mud and manure. I led an ass I had stolen from a nearby field on bare feet and filled its saddle basket with the rotten fruit left in its slough.

I lifted an empty tin toward the soldiers walking on the road, covering my eyes with the hood of my moth-eaten cloak. One averted his eyes, too disgusted to look at me, while the other spat at my feet. Neither suspected that the deadliest blade in the kingdom had just asked them for coin.

I hid my smirk all the way into the city center.

A cast-iron thread and needle hung over the entrance of the house. My knock resounded off the metal-plated door like a rock falling to the bottom of a well. Mistress Augustine did not entertain her guests at the main house, but it was where her most prized girls stayed.

I straightened. There was no noise on the other side of the door. I knocked again and glanced down the street to make sure no one was taking too much notice.

Footsteps so soft no Mortal would be able to hear them approached the door, but it didn’t open. I leaned closer.

One heartbeat. I cleared my throat of its rasp. “I’m here to see Miss Dynara. We have an appointment.”

The breathing on the other side of the door stopped. I reached for the thin dagger holstered under my skirts.

The door opened to reveal an elegant woman, her gray hair pulled back into a bun without a strand misplaced. The years had turned her hard-lined mouth into a permanent frown and spotted her pale hands. She wore gold rings endowed with impressive jewels of every color so her hands were always grasping her riches. She collected young and beautiful Halflings in the same way, holding them and their youth close as hers faded with every passing day.

None of this surprised me. I’d had many encounters with Mistress Augustine during my tenure as Blade. Her theater was a notorious place for traitors and power-hungry lords to get a bit too drunk and a bit too loud.

What surprised me was seeing her at all. Last I’d heard, she was dead.

Poisoned by Dynara herself.

I bowed my head. “Mistress Augustine.”

A smug smile grew along her face. It seemed unnatural for her features, like her mouth was moving in ways it never had before.

“Let her in before she’s seen,” a familiar voice called from the landing of the wide staircase. Dynara stood at the top of the stairs, her silk robe draped effortlessly over her shoulders and her hair pinned in curls around her head.

Mistress Augustine chuckled and opened the door wide enough for me to slip in.

I looked between the Mistress and Dynara, not sure what I should say. “Not exactly the attire I was expecting, D.”

“Not all of us need to use a blade to cause trouble.” Mistress Augustine folded her arms and leaned against the banister. “Though I’m glad I only have to rely on my wits this evening and don’t need to bathe myself in essence.” She sniffed pointedly at the scent of lavender and dew rose that wafted from Dynara’s slick skin.

Dynara shook her head. “Keera darling, meet the lovely Crison Clairbelle. She is somehow more stubborn and cross than you’ve ever been.”

Mistress Augustine held out her hand, but it was no longer bent and spotted. Dynara’s introduction shattered the glamour, blowing the illusion away like mist in the wind to reveal a much younger-looking and much more beautiful woman underneath. She had a full pout and feline eyes that held a rage behind them.

I spied the faint stitches along her ears as her black hair fell from her face. Not a woman at all. But a Halfling.

I smirked and shook her hand.

“Keera Waateyith’thir,” I said. My full name felt foreign on my lips. I’d never introduced myself with it before.

Crison didn’t hide her study of me. She let her eyes trail up my body from my bare feet to the mud-caked braid. “Traded your hood for your name, I see.” She raised a thick brow at the state of my dress. “I’m starting to think Nara oversold the luxuries of the Faeland.”

I huffed a laugh. “Always better to blend than hide.” I turned to Dynara. Our voices echoed throughout the house, but I couldn’t hear any other voices besides ours. “Speaking of hiding. Where have you hidden them?”

Dynara pulled a thick gold chain from her pocket and locked it around her neck. “Who, dear?” She adjusted the amber stone between her breasts; it was the size of a child’s fist.

I blinked. “The courtesans. Gerarda and Elaran are at the safe house. They’ll ferry the Halflings to Pirmiith and Feron at the portal as soon as the fire—”

“Portal?” Crison’s rounded ears twitched.

I ignored her. “I thought you would have the courtesans here …”

“The party can’t be a distraction if there are none of us at the party to distract .” Dynara nodded at the wall, not at the large portrait of Mistress Augustine and her scraggly cat, but at the house at the top of the hill in that direction.

The House of Harvest.

I rubbed my brow. “How many courtesans are going to be joining us tonight?”

“All of them.” Dynara crossed her arms.

“How many is that?”

“Two hundred.” Crison’s lip curled. “Why does she get to come in here and question all our planning?” She sniffed loudly.

“Because I can do this.” My fist burst into flames.

Crison merely shrugged. “Nothing I haven’t done with a candle and a bottle of mead.”

Dynara shook her head and walked down the hall. “Come, Keera, you need to dress,” she called down to me.

Crison raced to the stairs to climb them first. I followed her into Dynara’s chambers, the vein in my forehead pulsing.

Dynara pointed at the tub of steaming water. “Get in and hurry. It will take ages for us to wash that dirt from your hair.”

“Us?” Crison cocked her jaw to the side and leaned against the window.

Dynara ignored her. “The carriage will be here in just over an hour.”

I shook my head, partly because I didn’t want to disrobe in front of Crison and partly because I wanted to understand how Dynara thought we were going to ferry two hundred courtesans out of the House of Harvest without anyone noticing. “The plan was to get the courtesans out of the city not into the center of it.”

“No, that was the end of the plan,” Dynara replied, almost bored.

Crison shouldered me as she walked past and opened an armoire. It was full of vials and jewelry that concealed dangerous weapons. “First we host a party of our own.” She looked at Dynara, disgusted. “You said you trusted her with your life, but it doesn’t seem like she pays the same respect to you.” She lifted her chin, eyes narrowing in my direction.

My jaw pulsed. “I trust Dynara with my life.” I turned to my friend. “But you may have overestimated my abilities.”

Dynara shook a few drops of cedar essence into the tub. She leaned toward me and sniffed then poured in half the bottle. “Keera, you told me you needed Kairn and you had no doubt I could do it. Trust me in this too. Every Halfling will make it out of that house but first they have to ensure the lords do not.”

Crison grinned and chucked a piece of parchment at me. It was thick and folded along the middle to create the perfect invitation. I’d read the top lines when Dynara had first sent her courier. Now the last two caught my attention.

Mistress Augustine presents: The Dance of Elves.

House of Harvest. Invite only.

“How many lords did you invite?” I looked up at them both.

Dynara’s answering grin was feline and deadly. “I invited them all.”