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She felt her pulse in her fingertips. Then Toven scoffed and plucked up his wineglass, draining the contents and preparing to excuse them from the room.

She thought of Cordelia withering away in a dark castle. Her blue eyes dim, and her magic gone.

Briony stood swiftly. The room was still. They watched her as she moved to Canning, who was smirking at her with hungry eyes. She didn’t spare a glance at Toven as she sat in Canning’s lap and pulled his neck down to kiss him squarely on the mouth.

The table erupted in cheers and groans. She felt Canning smile against her lips before returning her kiss with a vengeance, his mouth cold and rubbery against hers.

She was just pulling back when his hand slipped into her hair, and his other dropped to her thigh, rubbing the skin.

His lips moved under hers, his hand gripping her curls to hold her still, and then his tongue was against her mouth, pressing forward to get inside.

He’d barely managed it when she pushed back with all her might, breaking free of him and stumbling to her feet. The sound rushed back to the room as Canning grinned up at her, his thumb brushing over his lips. The men pounded the table and howled.

“Your secret, Trow?” Briony hissed under the din, staring down at him, resisting the urge to wipe her mouth.

Canning raised his hand to quiet the room, his teeth shining proudly. “Cordelia is moved quite frequently. She was at the Locklin estate last week, the Seat’s Castle before that. She may not have magic anymore, but she certainly has some good fight left in her.”

Briony felt the blood drain from her face. There was noise somewhere in the room, but she couldn’t decipher the sounds.

The Seat’s Castle and the Locklin estate. Moira Locklin was fifth in line to the Seat, but Briony had no idea where the Locklin estate was.

She tried to find the voice to ask, but her wrist was taken, there was an arm around her back, and then Toven was leading her out of the room. Pushing her, really. The game was over. Several others followed them out, passing the guard, moving down the stairwell.

Toven was silent. His hand on her hip was rigid as he guided her through the door, but she couldn’t spare his temper a passing thought.

Her mind was spinning with all the information she’d learned and the images her imagination conjured of Cordelia hanging on by a thread, bleeding on some castle floor.

She walked the corridor in a daze, shoving her memories of Cordelia back into a closed book on the shelf, where she belonged.

Her lips still felt strange and dry from Canning’s, and her dress felt too tight.

Toven steered her outside and toward the sound of the crowd. Around another corner, Ilana waited with a tray of drinks. Briony snapped out of her exhaustion. She was going into the arena again. She needed her wits about her.

They ended up in the stands this week. Briony and Toven sat on a bench, and the strawberry-blond woman dropped down next to Toven, Liam on her other side. Briony eyed her as she smiled at them.

Toven rested his arm on the bench behind Briony’s opposite hip, and she did her best to cross her legs in her short dress. She was just starting to dissociate from the events of the evening when she heard a voice with thick vowels to her right.

“Is it true your heartspring used to be a princess?”

Briony and Toven looked at the woman with strawberry-blond hair together. The same woman who’d lived at Claremore for months with her, tending to the linens of said princess.

“You’re not supposed to talk to her,” Liam said lazily from the other side of her, sipping a glass of whiskey.

“My apologies,” Strawberry-Blonde said, eyes still hungry on Briony’s face. “I haven’t ever seen a princess before.”

Briony stared at her as Toven mumbled something about her no longer being a princess. Was it not the same girl? It had to be.

The woman propped herself on her knees facing Toven and Briony. “You must be very rich to have purchased such a prize,” she said coquettishly.

“He is, just ask him,” Liam said.

Strawberry-Blonde giggled and flipped her hair. “She’s absolutely beautiful, Master Toven.” The woman shifted a shoulder, and as if by magic, one of her straps fell. “And the way you talked about her two weeks ago. About her being delicious …”

Toven brought his drink to his lips, tilting his head back to swallow it all.

And the strawberry-blond woman took that opportunity to lick her lips, reach forward for Briony’s neck, and pull her mouth to hers.

Briony’s brows shot up, eyes wide open. The girl’s mouth moved over hers, her hand sliding around Briony’s neck as she pulled their bodies together over Toven’s lap.

Briony couldn’t move with the shock of it. This was … What was this?

The woman brushed her fingers around Briony’s neck and let her tongue slide out, tasting Briony’s lips.

The woman pulled back, smiling brilliantly. “Delicious,” she said. “I’d love to taste more of her sometime, Master Toven.”

Briony’s cheeks flushed bright red as the room came back to her. Liam’s drink had frozen on the way to his lips.

And Toven was wound tight like a spring between them, his eyes hardening.

The woman giggled again and then slid back to sit on Liam’s lap as if she’d never been speaking with them at all.

Briony pressed her fingers to her mouth, trying to make sense of the last minute.

“I think you should let them taste each other, Toven,” Lorne said from one seat farther on. “What do you say?”

Toven smiled thinly and slid his hand over Briony’s thighs. “I’d say that I’m inspired to do my own ‘tasting.’” He stood from the bench and dragged her up with him. “Gentlemen,” he said in goodbye.

Briony stumbled behind him, turning to watch the woman who used to be her maid kissing Liam’s neck, not sparing her another glance.

“The fuck was that?”

Her eyes snapped up to find Toven scowling at her as they marched through to the exit.

Briony opened her mouth. Then closed it. “She was … very friendly,” she finally landed on.

He took her out into the garden and before she realized that they were at the portal spot, he cut his thumb, made a portal home, and said, “Any other friends you’d like to make tonight, Rosewood?”

He dragged her through as Briony protested.

Once they were in the Hearst drawing room, he dropped her arm and stomped out the door to the stairs. Briony blinked after him for a moment before her anger found her.

“Why did we leave?” she demanded, running after him. “We weren’t finished!”

“I think you had enough fun for one night,” he hissed, starting to climb.

Her mouth fell open at his retreating back. “You’re angry that I kissed Canning? You think that was fun for me?”

He spun back, several stairs above her. “I’m angry that you made me look weak.”

She gaped at him. “Are you joking? Canning only made that bet because you refused to kiss me! You made us both look like idiots!”

His jaw snapped shut. Starting to ascend again, he bit out, “Kissing is too intimate.”

Her temper boiled, bubbling over. Storming after him up the steps, she cried, “Too intimate? Everyone else was kissing! You’ve shown me far more intimate things that we are supposedly doing!”

“So tonight was revenge, then? For intruding on your mind?” He laughed humorlessly. “You’re going to go around flirting with as many people as possible to get back at me?”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Briony snapped. “That woman was—” She didn’t know if she should mention the fact that she’d lied about knowing Briony. “Strange,” she finished, “but Canning was a calculated move. He had information about Cordelia—”

“Oh yes,” he snarled, turning back to her, his face pink. “I do wonder what your old friends would have to say about your method of information gathering, Rosewood.”

She glowered at him. “I wouldn’t have to kiss your disgusting friends if you would just tell me what the fuck is going on!”

His nostrils flared, and he wheeled around to storm up the rest of the staircase. “I answer every fucking question you ask me, Rosewood—”

“The waters forbid you offer anything else!” She sprinted after him in her heels. “Like any kind of game plan for these evenings. Or having the decency to tell me about your stupid No Kissing Rule!”

She followed him around the corner as he made for his bedroom.

“You want a rule, Rosewood?” he yelled down the hallway, shoving open his bedroom door. “Don’t throw yourself at my friends!”

“Fuck off, Toven!”

He glared at her and disappeared into his room, slamming the door behind him. She followed suit, marching into her bedroom, fuming with the fire in her blood.

She ripped off her heels, chucking them at the wall connecting their rooms, hoping he heard.

She reached up for her collar, hating it and all it stood for. And it itched . She screamed in the back of her throat as her fingers tugged at it—

Until her fingers brushed something.

She pulled her hands away in shock as a thin scrap of paper fluttered down from her neck.

Briony stared at it, her entire body frozen.

A piece of parchment, torn off the edge of something, no wider than her little finger.

She bent down slowly, thinking of the way the woman with strawberry-blond hair had pulled her forward by the neck—it had caused quite a distraction.

To slide a thin slice of paper beneath the gold.

Briony’s shaking fingers reached for the paper, turning it over. Her breath hitched.

no dragon, don’t Worry

Her heart leapt at its cage.

The handwriting was familiar, but the word that truly took her breath away was “Worry” with a capital W .

That was what she’d called Rory as a child, when she couldn’t pronounce his name.

There really were only four people alive who knew the nickname.

Herself, Cordelia, Didion, and Sammy.

And one of them had written this note to her.