“I want you to find Vito,” he said, his voice cool and dark. “Bring him to me, immediately.”

  There was no reply from the guards, none that I could hear anyway, but they were both gone in an instant. Once they’d left, the Viscount moved over to one of the end tables near the bed, picked up an oil lamp, and lit it only by touching the glass. He hadn’t needed a wick, a match, or a lighter.

  It just happened.

  With the lamp in one hand, he crossed the room to get a look at the cooling corpse lying close to me. I sat up, amazed that I couldn’t feel any pain in my stomach. There was blood on me, but no wound, no cut. The Viscount had ruined my dress, leaving me to feel a little too exposed for my liking. I pulled what was left of the torn fabric around my stomach and pinched it closed.

  “Who is he?” I asked, blinking hard to fight the stinging sensation in my eyes.

  Mace.

  It’s like I’ve been maced!

  He gave me his gaze, but he didn’t answer my question. “He came for you?”

  “For this.” I touched the pendant on my neck. “He came in through the window. He wanted to kill me.”

  “Kill you? Why?”

  “He wanted the pendant when we first met in the maze. Then I kicked his ass, and I guess I bruised his ego, so now he wanted to kill me, too.”

  The Viscount frowned as he kneeled beside the body on the ground. He looked over at me once more before giving the body his attention again. “And you are… Avery?”

  “I… I…” even now, even though I was sure he knew the truth, I couldn’t say the words. “I… am Kadeera Nightbloom,” I said.

  He took a deep breath in through the nose, then exhaled. “Very well,” he said, and then he carefully peeled the bandana off the face of the man I had just killed—the man with the huge shard of glass jutting out of his eye socket. A moment later, the Viscount’s eyes shut, and he sighed.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “I know this man,” he said.

  “You do?”

  “His name was…” a pause. “I seem to have forgotten his name.”

  “Is that strange?”

  “I forget nothing. I know who this man was, what he wanted, where he wanted to be, but I cannot recall his name.”

  “Can’t recall it, or can’t say it?”

  The Viscount looked at me again. “Good point.”

  I nodded. “Who was he to you, then? And why did he want this pendant?”

  “I cannot tell you why he wanted the pendant. I can tell you, he was once a bright young Fae, with a promising future, only…”

  “Only?”

  “He wanted to become a Squire. He wanted to work closely with the Knights of the Rose, to shadow them, to train with them. Eventually, he hoped to become one himself, but he wasn’t strong enough of mind.”

  “So, he was so upset that your Knights turned him down, that he became an assassin?”

  “I do not know how the transition occurred. As best I recall, Vito took him under his tutelage. If he could not become a Knight, he would become an entertainer, a storyteller. He seemed content with his lot in life. Vito is a good teacher.”

  “Looks to me like you were wrong about one of those things, at least.”

  The Viscount’s eyes narrowed. “I’m rarely wrong, but perhaps I was this once.”

  “Once is enough. If I hadn’t been… me… I don’t know how this would’ve turned out. You may well have had a second corpse on your hands tonight.”

  “Let us consider ourselves blessed that there isn’t, then.”

  “Blessed isn’t the word I would use to describe what’s happened here.”

  He set the lamp down near the corpse, and for a moment I watched him hesitate with a decision—to take the piece of glass out of the man’s eye, or not. After a moment, he decided it best to leave the glass embedded in his skull, just in case removing it also took out most of his actual eye. I was glad that he wasn’t interested in witnessing that kind of gore, at least.

  “What are we going to do now?” I asked.

  “We?” he asked, with a tone to suggest I was insane.

  “Yes, we. You know what’s going on, right?”

  “I believe so.”

  “Then you know I can’t talk about it, so you’re not going to get anymore answers from me. But you’ll be able to get answers from Rell, and between the three of us, we need to figure a way out of this.”

  “I’m not sure you understand the situation in its entirety.”

  “Yeah, I do. We need to find… we need to find h… dammit, I can’t say it!”

  “Then maybe you should listen to me instead of talking.” The Viscount tugged on his shirt again and approached, slowly, with intent. “I understand you are not who you appear to be. I also understand you aren’t able to reveal what truly happened to you. For all intents and purposes, you are Kadeera Nightbloom.”

  “But aren’t you—”

  “—able to find her? Perhaps, but that will take time, and until then… you are going to have to be her as long as this enchantment lasts.”

  “I’m… what?”

  “Lady Kadeera learned to masquerade as a human to avoid detection and to survive in your world. You are going to have to learn to masquerade as Fae for the same reasons.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “You don’t have a choice. Soon, you’ll be brought to Duchess Invidia, and you will have to do everything within your power to convince her you are in fact her darling daughter. If you fail—”

  “—it’s back to the dungeons?”

  “The dungeons aren’t where Invidia will send you. She will not want you anywhere near the manor. She will also not be able to send you anywhere, which leaves only one other recourse for her.”

  I swallowed hard. “Execution.”

  “Indeed.”

  I shook my head. “But you can’t let that happen, right? You can’t let her kill me.”

  “Fae Rites aren’t bound by fate or by magic, only by honor… and paperwork.”

  “So, whether I live or I die is down to how much paperwork someone is willing to put up with?”

  “Correct. You are lucky I am a man of patience, and of my word. The Duchess, however…”

  “Is far more likely to just kill me and be done with it? Great, she sounds like a lovely person.”

  “She isn’t known for that. The Duchess is a powerful woman from a powerful family, a true representation of the Spring Fae.”

  “Why don’t you marry her?” I grumbled.

  The Viscount’s eyebrow arched. “Speak up.”

  “Nope, I’m fine. Anyway, let’s just get this over with. I’m tired, I’m wearing a bloody dress, and I haven’t eaten in what feels like years. I’m not in the mood to be kept waiting.”

  The Viscount walked over to Kady’s closet and opened it. “You don’t eat because it is your choice not to eat. If you keep that up, the Duchess won’t have to kill you.”

  “I don’t like what I’ve heard, is all I can say.”

  “You will hear many tall tales about my kind during your time here, but I can assure you, our food is simply food. It will not change you. You may even like it.”

  “I highly doubt I’ll leave this place having liked any of it.”

  “Indeed,” he said, and without saying much else, he got to the task of picking clothes for me to wear. Kady’s clothes.

  I watched him from the bedroom as he worked, carefully selecting items from the vault that was Kady’s closet. The thought of having to wear more of her clothes made me feel sick to my stomach, but I was curious to learn what he thought would look good on me. What he wanted to see me wearing.

  Then I remembered I didn’t look like me, that the person he’d see in those clothes was Kady, and any curiosity I’d had evaporated. The way this man spoke to Kady, it was as if she was some niece he occasionally had to take care of; and maybe they were related. How was I to know?

  The point was, as much as I admired the way his muscles fit in his shirt, the shape of his arms, his back, the cut of his jaw, his pointed ears… this man was never going to see me. And why did I want him to, anyway? He’d wanted to kill me the first night we met. His hatred of paperwork was the only reason I was still alive.

  Hadn’t he said so himself?

  The Viscount emerged from the closet with a change of clothes for me to wear, and surprise-surprise, it was another dress. “Do the women here only wear dresses?” I asked.

  He set the dress on the bed and eyed it up and down. “This one is less extravagant than the last one,” he said, “I thought you would appreciate that, at least.”

  “I guess you’re right…”

  “You aren’t accustomed to dresses, I take it.”

  “I haven’t worn a dress since prom.”

  The Viscount frowned. “Humans have prom?”

  I looked up at him, eyes narrow. “The Fae have prom?”

  “We do, but perhaps the word means something different here. I don’t have the time to explain it. There’s a bathroom in there; get cleaned up and get dressed.”

  “Do you boss everyone around like that?”

  “I am accustomed to obedience, yes.”

  I squared up to him and met his eyes. I wanted to slap him in the face, tell him I was born in the same city that birthed Grunge, and then flip him off as I headed to the bathroom to clean up and change. Inside of me lived the spirit of Nirvana, the Stone Temple Pilots, and Pearl Jam; I didn’t need him, didn’t owe him, and definitely didn’t answer to him. But I couldn’t say the words. They were stuck in my throat.

  Fucking curse.

  I did, however, have enough control over my hand to bring my middle finger up and put it on display. The grin on my face couldn’t have been wider, and his scowl couldn’t have gone any deeper. At last, a little satisfaction, a moment where I thought I had beaten Arcadia and its denizens.

  They can take my voice, but I can still tell them where to shove it.

  The Viscount snatched my hand and held it in a vice grip. He pulled me closer to him, and glared at me from behind my raised middle finger. I could smell the anger coming off him in waves, I could feel his heart pounding through the tips of his fingers, and I thought if I concentrated hard enough, I could hear his thoughts.

  Don’t let her talk to you like that.

  Assert your dominance.

  Make her submit.

  It was written all over his face, that need to make sure I knew just how much stronger he was than me, just how much bigger he was, how much more important. But as we stood there, breathing quickly, and sharply, staring into each other’s’ eyes, I could tell there was more; another layer hidden underneath that.

  A layer we had only briefly touched twice before, when we’d kissed.

  A layer best left buried.

  If we could manage it.

  He was about to open his mouth, when a guard opened the door. There was no knock, no question, no wait. It was an intrusion; one so sudden it made the Viscount release me in an instant, as if he hadn’t wanted to be seen touching me.

  “What is the meaning of this?” demanded the Viscount.

  “My Lord,” said the guard. “Au Pair Vito… is dead.”

  Chapter 24

  I wasn’t given a chance to hear more about what had happened to Vito; I only knew he was dead. The news came as a shock. Vito was an asshole of the highest order; I’d seen it with my own eyes. He’d tortured that poor girl, Thea, he’d enslaved her, turned her into a piece of grotesque art, and he had attacked me.

  Sure, I had kicked him in the balls first, but he was a creep, and he deserved it.

  It was still troubling to hear he had been found dead. I hadn’t caught much information; only that he’d been found in his quarters, on the floor, his mouth full of green foam. Poison, the guard thought.

  It was possibly suicide.

  He had tried to have me killed. He had wanted the pendant I was wearing. Knowing that his assassin had failed could’ve driven him to take his own life. But how could he have known that his assassin was dead?

  Magic, maybe.

  If someone had murdered Vito in his quarters, then it meant there was another person in Emerald Hall—someone above Vito—with a dark agenda that probably still involved the choker I was wearing.

  Kady’s choker.

  Knowing that the Viscount was on the case made me feel a little better. He was also an asshole, but he was a capable, competent asshole, and if anyone was going to be able to figure out who had killed Vito, it was likely to be him. As much as I had wanted to, I wasn’t given the chance to assist.

  I had a meeting with Duchess Invidia.

  By the time I was done washing myself and getting into the clean dress the Viscount had prepared for me, the body that had been lying in Kady’s room was gone. A man on his knees was in charge of cleaning up the blood that was slowly soaking into the floorboards, while another scooped up bits of broken glass and tossed them into a bucket.

  It was going to take more than a bit of elbow grease to deal with that mess, but I was at least glad I didn’t have to look at the corpse again.

  Two guards standing by the door to Kady’s room escorted me through the manor to the room where the Duchess was waiting for me. It felt a little surreal, still, walking through the place. It was so extravagantly lush, and well decorated. Never in my lifetime would I have ever walked through a place like this if I’d stayed in Seattle; I just wasn’t important enough.

  Walking across a balcony that overlooked the foyer, I caught a glimpse of Rell sitting by his perch near the front door. The little dragon was asleep, curled into a delicate ball of himself, gently breathing. Strangely, he perked up as I looked at him, and for a moment we caught each other’s’ eyes.

  “Gonna kill you,” I mouthed, silently. He’d had every chance to talk to the Viscount earlier, to explain to him what had happened to us in that maze, and he’d chosen silence instead. Rell stuck his forked, reptilian tongue out at me, then went back to sleep.

  Little bastard.

  The guards continued walking me all the way to a door at the end of a hallway, far away from the main foyer. One of them knocked on the door, and after a pause, a voice on the other side called for us to come.

  One of my escorts opened the door for me, then bowed. I wasn’t shoved in, nobody mistreated me, and neither of them made snide comments about my being a human. Already I could feel the change in circumstance. I had gone from a captive, to kind of a prisoner, to the Lady of the house, and the change was instant.

  Nodding at one of the guards, I let myself walk through the door and into what looked like a reading room. I’d gone through a study somewhere downstairs, and that room had been packed to the brim with books and places to sit and read. This, however, was a far more private room, with only a small selection of books sitting on a nearby shelf and a single, round table to share between two comfortable armchairs.

  A large, bay window behind the chairs overlooked the grounds toward the back of Emerald Hall. It was night out, and dark outside, but I had a feeling that in the hours of the morning, this room was probably gifted with a stunning view of the sunrise over the trees far in the distance.

  There was a woman sitting on one of the armchairs; a woman with silver hair held in a neat updo, wearing a comfortable, lavender evening dress. A pair of shining, blue eyes looked up at me from behind the book she held in her hand, and for a moment all I saw was Kady. Then she set the book down, and Kady morphed into an older, more refined, less prone to bullshit version of herself.

  She shot the guard behind me a stern look. “Leave us,” she said, her voice low, but full of quiet confidence and power.

  The guards didn’t hesitate. In an instant, they were gone, and I was alone with this woman. When she stood, I almost couldn’t believe how much taller than me she was. She, herself, was statuesque. Long, and slender, and lithe, the vision of an acrobat whose years were only slightly starting to catch up with her: she could consider teaching, but she probably has a few years left in those ankles.

  Duchess Invidia’s eyes scanned me, as if they were looking for weakness to exploit. She went to make a circle around me, but stopped at my left shoulder, curious, as if something had caught her interest.

  Invidia prodded my shoulder with a long, hard finger. “Back straight,” she snapped.

  My body replied without my having to tell it to. What came after were another series of taps and commands—chin up, lips closed, feet together—and I followed each of them as if my life depended on it. I supposed it did. If this woman found out I wasn’t her daughter, I was done. What were the odds that she’d let me live in her palace looking like Kady?

  “You’re slacking,” she said.

  “I’m no—”

  “—did I say you could speak, girl?”

  Already I could see why Kady hated it here. “Sorry,” I peeped.

  The Duchess finished her circle of me, finished her inspection. I watched her, my heart pounding against the sides of my throat, wondering what in the world was going through that woman’s head. She looked off to the side, and I saw her pointed ears, and the many earrings hanging off it; studs, chains, hoops.

  It was kind of badass, actually. Like a quiet rebellion.

  Though, it probably wasn’t.

  Sighing, Invidia reached for the cup of tea sitting on the round table between the armchairs. Without looking at me, she took a sip, holding her pinky up as she drank. I swallowed hard, but it didn’t help the anxiety rattling around inside of my chest.

  “To think, all this time, I thought she was an idiot,” said the Duchess.

  I wasn’t sure what I’d heard. “I’m… what?”

  The Duchess’ cutting, almond eyes fell on me. She set her cup of tea down on the plate she’d picked it up from, then she walked over to me, and laid her fingers against my throat. There was a moment, a surge of warmth followed by a flush of sudden cold that shot through my neck and up into my head, like brain freeze.

  Wincing, I shut my eyes and shied away from her touch. “What did you do to me?” I asked, staring at her.

  “I undid some of what my daughter did to you,” she said.