Another gift from the Veil, maybe. Another change I hadn’t asked for.

  I made it halfway down before I heard the rush of wings overhead.

  I froze, pressing myself against the rocky outcropping, heart hammering. Patrol. Had to be. Lincatheron’s ‘increased aerial surveillance’ making itself known at the worst possible time.

  But the wings passed overhead without slowing, and I caught a glimpse of someone smaller than Lincatheron, their flight path steady and routine. Just a regular patrol. Not looking for me specifically.

  Not yet, anyway.

  I waited until the sound faded completely before continuing, moving faster now. Every minute I wasted was a minute closer to someone checking on me and finding me gone.

  The city rose up gradually—first scattered houses, then clusters of buildings, then proper streets paved with stones that gleamed faintly in the moonlight. Even at this hour, there were people. Not many, but enough. Figures moving through the darkness with purpose, slipping in and out of buildings that glowed with warm light.

  Taverns. Had to be. Because some things were universal across realms, people would always need somewhere to drink and forget.

  I picked one at random. Small, tucked into a corner where two streets met, with a weathered sign hanging above the door that depicted what was either a dragon or someone’s drunken attempt at a horse. Light spilled from the windows, and through them I could see bodies moving, hear the low rumble of conversation and laughter.

  Normal. It looked so beautifully, impossibly normal.

  I pushed open the door.

  The warmth hit me first, then the smell, ale and smoke and bodies packed together in comfortable proximity. The conversations didn’t stop when I entered, which was a good sign. No one looked up, no one seemed to care about another hooded figure slipping inside.

  Just another traveller. Nothing special.

  Exactly what I needed.

  I made my way to the bar, claiming a stool near the end where I could watch the room. The bartender, an older woman with silver streaking through her dark hair and the kind of face that had seen everything twice, raised an eyebrow.

  “What’re you having?”

  “Whatever’s cheap and strong.”

  She snorted. “Honest. I like that.” A glass appeared, filled with ale that smelled like it could strip paint. “Two coppers.”

  I fumbled in the cloak’s pocket, found the small pouch of coins I’d stuffed in there. I dropped the coins on the bar.

  The bartender made swept them off the counter. “You lost?”

  “Something like that.” I took a sip, managed not to cough. “Just passing through. Heard this was a good city. Safe.”

  “Safe as anywhere, I suppose.” She was wiping down glasses, but her attention was on me now. Curious but not aggressive. “Safer than most, thanks to Lord Varyth. He keeps the monsters out.”

  “Lord Varyth.” I said the name carefully, testing it. “What’s he like?”

  “Fair. Stern. Doesn’t tolerate nonsense.” She set down one glass, picked up another.

  “Keeps us safe and doesn’t tax us into starvation. That’s more than most lords can claim.”

  I nodded, filing that away. “I heard something happened today. At the castle. An attack?”

  The bartender’s expression shuttered. “Where’d you hear that?”

  “Rumours. You know how it is. People talk.”

  “People talk too much.” But she leaned forward slightly, voice dropping. “There was an incident. Some fools tried to breach the wards. Didn’t end well for them.”

  “Who were they? The attackers?”

  “No one knows. Or no one’s saying, which amounts to the same thing.” She studied me with eyes that were far too aware. “Why the interest?”

  I shrugged, aiming for casual. “Just trying to figure out if I picked a bad time to visit. Don’t want to walk into trouble.”

  “Trouble’s already walked out, from what I hear. Anyone foolish enough to breach those walls isn’t living to talk about it.”

  I finished my drink and slipped out. Another tavern couldn’t be far.

  I’d made it two steps before the voice came.

  “You’re a long way from the castle.”

  I spun, hand going instinctively to my hip where a weapon should have been and wasn’t.

  Cindrissian emerged from the shadows like he’d been born there, all lean grace and that insufferable smirk that made me want to punch him on principle.

  “How long have you been following me?” I demanded, heart hammering from the surprise I refused to show.

  “Since you slipped out of the eastern postern gate.” He tilted his head, studying me like I was a particularly interesting puzzle. “You’re good, I’ll give you that. Most people wouldn’t have made it past the first courtyard without triggering something. But you move like someone who’s spent a lifetime avoiding notice.”

  “Creepy. That’s creepy, you know that?”

  “I prefer thorough.”

  I stared at him, trying to decide if murder was worth the complications it would cause. Probably. Maybe. “Are you going to drag me back?”

  “No.” The smirk widened into something almost genuine. “Where would be the fun in that?”

  I blinked. “You’re not⁠—”

  “Going to report you to Varyth? Alert the guards? Sound the alarm?” He examined his nails with studied disinterest. “Why would I? You’re not doing anything I wouldn’t do. Besides, watching you navigate your new reality is far more entertaining than another tedious evening at the castle.”

  “You weren’t at dinner.”

  “No.” Something flickered across his expression, there and gone too quickly to identify. “Darian can be... ill-tempered after stressful weeks. I find it best not to aggravate him with my presence.”

  Right. Because he and Eilrys used to be together.

  Cindrissian must have read the thought on my face because he nodded slowly. “Ah. Someone filled you in on the sordid history. How much did they tell you?”

  “Enough to know it’s complicated.”

  “Everything here is complicated.” He leaned against the tavern wall, all casual grace that didn’t quite hide the coiled readiness underneath. “That’s what happens when you trap immortal beings with long memories and longer grudges in close proximity. We’re all just waiting to see who bleeds first.”

  I studied him, trying to reconcile the playful mask with the darkness underneath. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because you don’t trust me.” He said it like a compliment. “Which means you’re paying attention. That’s rare.”

  “Forgive me if I’m not throwing you a parade for basic observation skills.”

  His laugh was soft, barely audible over the ambient noise from the tavern. “You know what I like about you, Isara? You don’t perform. Most people, especially new arrivals, spend so much energy trying to appear harmless or grateful or whatever they think will keep them safe. But you?” He gestured at me, at the defiant set of my shoulders. “You’re just you. Prickly and suspicious and ready to burn the world down if it gets too close to your children.”

  “Is there a point to this character analysis, or are you just lonely?”

  “The point is that your instinct not to trust me is correct.” His expression shifted, something genuine bleeding through the perpetual amusement. “In fact, I’d recommend extending that policy to everyone in that castle. Including Varyth. Especially Varyth.”

  I studied him, trying to parse truth from manipulation. “You work for him.”

  “I work with him. There’s a difference.” Cindrissian pushed off the wall, moving closer. Not threatening, exactly, but deliberate. “I’m loyal to Varyth because it serves my interests to be loyal. The moment that calculation changes, so will my allegiance. That’s how it works here. Immortality makes mercenaries of us all.”

  “Sounds exhausting.”

  “It is.” He said it so simply, so matter-of-factly, that I almost believed him. “Which is why I developed my charming personality. If I’m going to spend eternity playing politics, I might as well entertain myself.”

  “By following people who sneak out of castles?”

  “Among other things.” The smirk returned. “I’ve survived longer than most of the people who came here believing in things like loyalty and honour and the inherent goodness of powerful men.”

  “You’re telling me to trust no one.”

  “I’m telling you, I haven’t trusted anyone since I was thirteen. And it’s kept me alive.”

  The specificity caught me. “Why thirteen?”

  For a moment, I didn’t think he’d answer. Old pain flickered across his face, but it was swiftly buried. Then his mouth curved into something too harsh to be a smile.

  “Because that’s when I made the mistake of trusting the wrong person. It ended with my father shipping me off to another court.”

  Horror crawled up my spine. “Your father—” I couldn’t finish the sentence. The idea of a parent abandoning their child, sending them away like unwanted cargo. “Why would anyone do that? Why would a father send his son away?”

  “At the time.” Cindrissian’s eyes fixed on mine, intense and unwavering. “He sent his daughter away.”

  I blinked. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I was born in a female fae form.” His voice was steady, clinical almost, as though he was reciting facts about someone else. “And I found it profoundly unfitting of who I was. By the time I was seven, I knew I was different, though I didn’t yet have the words for it. When I was thirteen, I knew. I made the mistake of confiding in someone I thought I could trust.”

  He paused, jaw working.

  “They informed my father, who only saw me for my value as a bride. He attempted to marry me off, to correct the defect he saw in me. I was...” Another pause, longer this time. “Averse to the marriage. And made an attempt to bring the situation to a very permanent end.”

  My breath caught. “Cindrissian⁠—”

  “My would-be husband found out and called off the wedding. My father was furious. He sent me away as punishment.” An almost amused huff escaped him. “Turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me, though I suspect that wasn’t his intention.”

  The admission punched all the air from my lungs. “That’s—gods, that’s⁠—”

  “Ancient history,” he finished, but there was nothing casual in his expression. “Once I was in that place, I realised it wasn’t what my father had assumed. I was able to embrace who I was. But I learned my lesson about trust. Haven’t made that mistake again.”

  I tried to process, failed. Tried again. The image wouldn’t reconcile, this smirking man in front of me, trapped and desperate enough to⁠—

  I cut myself off before the thought could finish.

  “I’m glad you made it out,” I said, and meant it. “That you found—” I gestured vaguely at him, at the deliberate swagger and the easy confidence that I now understood was armour forged in survival. “Yourself. Casual stalking tendencies aside.”

  His smirk returned, but there was a softness underneath it now. “Noted. I’ll try to be more obvious about my lurking in the future.”

  “Appreciated.”

  We stood there for a moment, the tavern noise bleeding out into the night around us. I shouldn’t have felt comfortable with him, with anyone who admitted to being a mercenary with conditional loyalty. But there was something about the rawness of what he’d just shared, the deliberate vulnerability of it, that shifted something in my chest.

  Trust was stupid. Trust got you killed.

  But maybe there were degrees of stupid.

  “Can I ask—” I hesitated, trying to figure out how to phrase it without sounding like an idiot. “Is that a fae thing? Being able to change your form like that?”

  He laughed, but there was no humour in it. “No. I had to see someone with a specific magical skill set. They changed my form for me when I was thirty.” He sighed, and gods it sounded tired. “But it was seventeen years of knowing exactly who I was and being trapped in a body that disagreed. Seventeen years of being called the wrong name, stuffed into the wrong clothes, told I would make someone a lovely wife someday.”

  Seventeen years. He’d been thirty when his body was made right. Which meant he’d spent more than half his life before that living as someone he wasn’t.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry your father was a coward who couldn’t love you for who you were.”

  Cindrissian went very still. Then his eyes narrowed. “Just like that? No questions about how it works, or if I’m truly male, or⁠—”

  “You just told me you are,” I shrugged. “Why would I question that?”

  The silence stretched between us, taut and strange. He was staring at me like I’d grown a second head, like I’d spoken in a language he didn’t recognise.

  “That’s really it?” he finally asked. His hands clenched and unclenched at his sides. “No interrogation about the magic, no uncomfortable curiosity about my body, no⁠—”

  “No.” I cut him off. “You told me who you are. I’m taking you at your word.”

  “Most people have questions,” Cindrissian said, his hands clenched tight now. “Doubts. They want to know details that aren’t their business, or they look at me like I’m a broken thing that needs fixing. Or worse, they smile and nod and then refer to me as ‘she’ the moment they think I’m not listening.”

  The bitterness in his voice was sharp enough to cut.

  “Is it not common, then? In fae society?” I asked. “Changing form, I mean.”

  “You’d think.” His laugh was harsh. “But no. It’s not common. The magic required is rare, for one thing. Expensive. Difficult. Most people who might want it can’t access it. And culturally?” He shook his head. “Fae society is just as rigid as any other when it comes to certain things. Someone like me, who refuses the role they were born into, disrupts all of that.”

  I thought about that. About being valued only for what you could provide, not who you were. About being trapped in expectations that felt like shackles.

  “Who knows?” I asked. “In Varyth’s court, I mean.”

  “Fenric. Eilrys. Brynelle.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “That’s it.”

  I nodded slowly. “I won’t tell anyone.”

  “I know.” He said it with the kind of certainty that made my chest ache. Not hope. He was too smart for hope. But close to it. Recognition, maybe. As though he’d looked at me and seen someone who understood what it meant to carry secrets that could destroy you if they fell into the wrong hands.

  Because I understood secrecy the way I understood breathing, it was knowledge that lived in your bones. Some things you held tight because letting them loose meant giving people weapons to use against you.

  And Cindrissian had already been hurt enough by people he’d tried to trust.

  “At least you picked a name that suits you,” I said, surprising myself with something almost like teasing. “Very intimidating. Very ‘lurk in dark and make cryptic pronouncements.’”

  His laugh startled me, genuine this time, without the usual edge of performance. “I actually didn’t choose it. I had friends, where I lived after my father sent me away. When I told them about who I was, they immediately set about finding a name for me that suited my, as they described it, ‘shadowy personality.’”

  The fondness in his words was unmistakable.

  “They came across Cindrissian in some old text, something about darkness and secrets and transformation. The moment they said it, I knew.” He shook his head, smiling at the memory. “It felt right in a way nothing else ever had. I knew I was hearing my own name for the first time.”

  I tried to imagine him, young, newly arrived at a strange court, finally being seen. Having friends who cared enough to search through texts looking for the perfect name.

  “They sound like good friends.”

  “They were.” Past tense. The smile faded.

  “Where are they now?”

  “Gone.”

  The weight in that single syllable told me everything I needed to know about loss and time and the price of immortality.

  “You were at Nyxaria,” I said, pivoting, because the grief in his eyes was too raw, too familiar. “Before here. Is that the place? Where your friends were?”

  He nodded. “Yes. That was before Ashterion rose to power, though. It was different then.” His expression turned distant, like he was seeing something I couldn’t. “Especially before he married.”

  “He’s married?”

  “Four centuries now.” Cindrissian’s mouth twisted with disgust. “She’s a vile creature.”

  Four hundred years. Four centuries of whatever the fuck they were doing in Nyxaria.

  “Do you know why?” The question lashed from me. “Why Ashterion would be sending people after me specifically?”

  Cindrissian studied me for a long moment, weighing something.

  “The magic that echoed when you crossed the Veil,” he said carefully. “That kind of resonance doesn’t just alert people nearby. With power like that—shadow fire—it would have rung like a bell across realms. And for someone like Ashterion?” His expression hardened. “That signal would have resonated more powerfully with him than anyone else. Because shadow fire was his court’s magic, once upon a time.”

  Everything in me went very, very quiet.

  “What is shadow fire?” My voice barely rose above a whisper. “Everyone keeps saying it like I should know what it means, but no one’s actually told me.”

  Cindrissian’s eyes locked onto mine, and I saw something like pity there. Or maybe fear.

  “Shadow fire was the weapon of Nyxaria’s fiercest warriors,” he said slowly. “Ancient magic. Brutal. Devastating. They used it to conquer territories, to break armies, to remake the world according to their vision.” He paused, jaw working. “But they grew too powerful. Too difficult to control. They started turning on each other, on their own court, on anyone who tried to rein them in.”