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Maewyn dropped herself into the reading chair and fanned at her face to wave the flush out of it. “Frankly, I would prefer it. Especially if you can scare away the wedding planners.”

Aunyx hesitated, but something out in the palace kept him there regardless, and Maewyn was grateful for the distraction.

“Did you have a nice time at the party?” It was a stupid question because she knew he didn’t—she’d caught glimpses of him glowering in the shadows the entire night.

“Lord Ulric is a gracious host,” he said as if he had forgotten every complimentary word in existence and had to grasp for the right ones.

“I’m sure Lord Ulric is many things,” Maewyn scoffed.

Aunyx halted his pacing before the shelves, dark eyes turning on her. “I feared you were far too clever a match for the prince, seeing the things he does not. It seems I was correct.”

She pursed her lips. She didn’t know Aunyx well at all, but she’d known people like him who insisted on wearing only one face—a skill that served until it didn’t. “You don’t trust Ulric either.”

“I do not,” he blurted and then spoke with a quickness, “but the prince believes he owes him his life.”

“He’s in debt to him?” She sat up, alarmed.

“Only in his mind.”

“Aunyx,” she said with a command that felt foreign. “Please, you have to tell me everything.”

The shadow fae hesitated, hands clasped behind his back, and then he nodded to himself.

“Roan was a sensitive child.” When she laughed at that, Aunyx only sighed.

“You might not have recognized him then, but his heart was easily bruised, and his magic was powerful and volatile, so when he first became a raven, it was disastrous.”

“When his parents were severed.”

“He told you?”

“Not exactly.” She could simply feel it, the pieces falling together. “Go on.”

“There isn’t much else. He was lost for days trapped in that feathered skin, and the way he recalls the story, Ulric supposedly rescued him like all those other fae in his manor.”

“Something’s wrong with those fae.” Maewyn pressed a hand to her stomach as it turned over, the thought of their dull stares nauseating. “It’s as if half their life has been drained away just like that barren place he’s got hidden behind that door.”

“Door?” Aunyx took a step toward her. “Ulric has a hidden eingress? And you revealed it?”

“If that’s what it’s called, yes,” she went on quickly as she plucked up one of the books she’d studied, flipping to the pages about the doors fae sometimes locked their truths behind.

“It’s a wasteland, and everything there is starving.

I thought I’d find something that would tell me what he really is or what he wants, but there were just lifeless trees and these creatures with leather wings that tried to eat me.

Roan called them faelings, but they were horrible.

” She pushed the book toward him to show him the pages.

Aunyx took the tome, dark eyes flitting over the words. “How old was it?”

“Ancient,” she said without a second thought, knowing he meant the place itself.

The shadow fae held her gaze for an intense moment then returned to the book.

“What does that mean?” she insisted.

“I don’t know. I’ve tried to voice my suspicions, but Roan already thinks I’m…”

“What?”

He looked up at the door to the library, and there was a deep sadness in his black eyes, but it was gone before she could really see it.

Maewyn placed her hand on the pages so that Aunyx had to look at her instead, and though the stoniness crept back into his gaze, she knew what she’d seen. “Roan told me that he and Jynquil will be living there in that manor with Ulric after all this. He must have some ulterior motive.”

Aunyx opened his mouth, and a name formed on his lips too quiet to be heard, but the springy sound of it found Maewyn’s ears anyway.

“We all have ulterior motives,” he grumbled as he stepped back, propriety wavering.

“Just because some of them could never come to fruition doesn’t mean we aren’t blinded by the impossible things we want.

You— you just want to go home, don’t you?

Do you really care about what happens here? ”

“Of course I care,” she snapped. “Roan might be a self-absorbed prick, but he’s…he’s my self-absorbed prick, and I couldn’t bear it if something happened to him that I could have stopped.”

Aunyx looked utterly taken aback.

“And this stupid war,” she said, throat burning with something like embarrassment.

“You’ll all probably be killed if Roan does the inane thing that he wants with Jynquil.

” She bit out the Spring Princess’s name just to see, and there it was again, that spark of pain that made the shadow fae look like he would throw himself on his own sword if he had to hear it again.

“Neither of us can just let this happen. Ulric will hurt them both.”

The shadow fae’s jaw worked in deep thought. “We don’t have much time. Lord Ulric will soon arrive at the palace for your wedding.”

“A wedding he does not want to happen.”

Aunyx cocked his head. “A wedding that you would have happen?”

Maewyn took a slow breath, unable to answer. “Please, do whatever you can. I’ve got quite a bit more reading to do.”