I watched over my shoulder until she was out of sight. “So Dusk folk still walk the streets by day, but… they’re conscious that they’re ‘diminished’ at this time?”
Bastian surveyed me with a blank expression. It was the longest he’d looked at me since leaving the Hall of Healing, and I wondered if he was seeing me afresh. “The Day King is still their ruler while the sun is overhead. They will obey him, just as you would obey your queen, but their loyalties lie elsewhere.”
“And how does this all work with your job?”
“From dusk until dawn, my queen rules. I brief her on what happened while she slept, take my chance to sleep, then meet with her again before the sun rises.”
“So she… sleeps all day?”
He gave a low hum of amusement. “Not if she had her way. But enchanted Sleep gives her no option. It’s part of the bargain made with the land. The king Sleeps all night in the same way.”
I was about to ask about this bargain when we turned onto a broad thoroughfare that led uphill. At its end rose a glittering mass of towers. Golden roofs and balconies marked the highest point of the city. Bridges spanned the gaps between impossible turrets, and white banners rippled in the breeze, a gilded symbol upon them catching the light. Pointed aspens and pines peeked over the lower buildings, but the towers dwarfed them, reaching for the deep blue sky.
“The palace.” It wasn’t a question—there was no need to ask, not with the size and grandeur and its position on the highest hill in the city. This main road pointed towards it, converging lines and leafy oaks framing it to perfection.
“Wait.” I blinked at the trees. “How long was I asleep for? It was autumn when…” I threw him a glance instead of referencing my attempted poisoning. As I’d dripped aconite into his glass, the trees in the grove had been shedding their leaves, but these oaks were full and green.
“A week.” He followed my gaze up. “The concentration of magic in the city affects the climate. Right now, summer is still clinging on, but autumn will come soon enough.”
Magic. That tingling sensation. It wasn’t in me—it was in the air. It didn’t feel unpleasant, just strange. New. I touched my cheeks, soothing the odd sensation.
And a week? What might’ve happened in that time? “Have you heard from Lunden? Or my estate? Is Ella all right?”
“I don’t currently have a secure line of communication south of the border,” he said, voice clipped, formal. “But Asher stayed behind to smooth things over with your queen. He’ll do his best to ensure Ella is safe from any fallout.”
It felt more like I was receiving a report than speaking to… Well, I wasn’t entirely sure what Bastian was to me anymore. Not a friend, certainly. Former lover seemed most accurate, albeit a grossly simplified label for the complicated mess that stood between us.
“As for your estate”—he nodded at a pair of Dusk fae passing—“there was a large amount of cash on the changeling. What did you call it—unCavendish?” He shrugged. “The debt against your estate has been paid off.”
I missed a step.
Just like that. Debt cleared. While I was asleep, no less.
The estate was safe. At least until that ninety-five percent arsehole racked up more debts. But I could breathe for now.
I hadn’t let down Morag and Horwich. They still had their home and their jobs.
My eyes burned. All the fear and manoeuvring, the lies, unCavendish’s cruelty, and what I’d done with and to Bastian—it had enabled me to help them. It had been worthwhile after all.
“Also…” Bastian raised one eyebrow when I caught up to him. “Every town in Albion has mysteriously received a message not to extend credit to Lord Fanshawe. A similar message may well be making its way across the continent as we speak.”
My mouth dropped open. I didn’t know whether to laugh or hug him. But things were different, now, making that second option impossible, so I squeezed my folded arms tighter around myself and chuckled softly. “How mysterious.”
“Isn’t it?” He flashed me a grin, then, canines showing.
Ah. There it was. The thing I’d missed through all of this conversation.
Those sharp teeth that I’d glimpsed so often before. The man who’d flirted with me and helped me break a hundred rules.
But those canines were gone as quickly as they’d appeared, smoothed away behind a bored expression like the one he’d worn the first time we danced.
We were in public—in his city, no less. Of course he had to maintain a certain fa?ade: he was the Night Queen’s Shadow, after all.
All of this is real.
I pushed the echo of his voice away and focused on the road ahead. The palace grew as we approached, spearing the sky. It dwarfed everything else in Tenebris-Luminis and the palace back in Lunden.
I raised my eyebrows at the gates. Tall and elegant, rather than thick and sturdy like those in Riverton Palace’s stone walls.
But that wasn’t what surprised me the most—carved in the form of branches and flowers with dragonflies and butterflies nestled amongst the leaves, these gates were made of crystal. Or glass or diamond, perhaps. Whatever the exact material, they were clear and refracted the sunlight into a thousand rainbow fragments.
Aside from the impossibility of their creation, I’d have said making gates from such a material was foolish—they’d be beautiful but brittle. Yet this was Elfhame, and I doubted they were as fragile as they appeared.
Magic was truly a marvel… when it wasn’t responsible for making you poisonous.
Either side of the gates stood a dozen guards, half of them in black armour with Dusk’s insignia across the chest in gold, the other half in white emblazoned with Dawn’s rising sun. The six from Dusk turned and bowed their heads as we approached. Their armour caught the light as they moved, gleaming not black, I realised, but the darkest possible shade of midnight blue.
Across from them, the guards from Dawn studied us with narrowed eyes. It was only as we drew close that I realised they didn’t wear white, but a pale, pale grey like shadow on a cloud.
Beyond the guards, the graceful arc of a bridge spanned a gorge and the rushing river at its base, but before we reached it, one of the Dawn guards stepped forward, hammering her spear into the ground. “Marwood.” She cocked her head at him before surveying me. “And who is this?”
4
Kat
I could feel the calculation in her stare. She didn’t only want to know who I was, but why I might matter. I returned her look, keeping my face neutral. Dawn and Dusk cohabited this city and the palace, but I didn’t understand the intricacies of their arrangement. And hadn’t all the stories warned against offending the fae?
（Fairly sure almost poisoning one was considered offensive, though.）
“Amandine. A delight to see you as always.” With the flat line of his lips, Bastian looked anything but delighted. “Katherine is a guest of Dusk and will be staying in the palace until she’s ready to return home.”
“A long way for a human to come.” There was the briefest hesitation before the word “human” like she found it distasteful to say.