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Where would she and her baby be safe?

The Wyldelands.

My heart gallops at a frightening pace. If my intuition is right, I have to buy her time.

“Well, Sacrifice?” King Joal fixes his leery gaze on me. “Do you know where his wife would’ve run off to? A secret vampire lover, perhaps?”

Tyl flinches. He loves Cress. And she loves him. She does. Even if she jokes about murdering him and running away with me to live out our childhood fantasies, she loves him.

But not more than her child, not more than her pack.

“She spoke often about seeing the world,” I say carefully. The weight of Viv’s prodding stare nearly crushes me. “If I had to guess, she probably ventured to the shores of Elawar. She said she overheard foreign travelers in Gild the Lily talk about how pretty the ocean is there. They mentioned a steady peace in the fields where the farmers live, just miles from the shore. It could be relaxing for a new mother.”

Tyl’s brow furrows. “E-Elawar? But that’s hundreds of miles from the capital.”

King Joal turns his stern gaze back on him. “You said she was in labor. Could she have had the baby and run?”

“No, Your Majesty.” Tyl shakes his head fervently. “Cress would never disobey the Crown.”

Liar, liar. He knows exactly what Cress thinks of King Joal.

Tyl’s eyes slide to me.

“I see.” The king gestures for more wine, and a woman sidles up to his side, refilling his chalice. “As a servant of the Crown, you have my permission to take two hunters and one tracker with you to find your wife. Do what you do best and bring your baby home alive.”

But not your traitorous wife.

He doesn’t say the words, but I taste them in the air, sickly sour and devastatingly bitter. My chest constricts.

Father’s eyes nearly bulge out of his head. “Your Majesty, if I may speak freely?”

King Joal waves a bejeweled hand, and the glow of the witchlights dangling from the chandelier glimmers against his ruby rings.

Permission granted, Father says, “After last night, it’d be foolish to risk sending any number of hunters or trackers from Adelphi. We’d be endangering the sanctity of the rite.”

The pale glow of the Death Moon drifts in through the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking our expansive garden. It’s nearly time. Sweat pools between my shoulder blades, drips down my back.

“You’re correct, Jarrett,” King Joal says, clearly unconcerned. “But we are hoping to find a way to make use of all children born under the Death Moon, so if this baby is born, they’re just as important to me as dear Vivian.” He pats Vivvy’s arm. “You may go, tracker.”

They’ll hunt Cress every day for the rest of her life, and there is nothing I can do to stop them, nothing more I can say to buy her the time she so desperately needs.

“T-Thank you, Your Majesty,” Tyl says, bowing at the waist. “I’ll organize a team and depart within the hour.”

Tyl spins on his heel, tossing one concerned glance over his shoulder at me. Though he cannot see them behind the veil, my features remain impassive as I do my best not to give away my lie. Cress will not head to Elawar. She’ll head southwest to Nightfell, to the village where her aunt resides. If all goes well, by sunbreak, she and her child will be far, far away from the five kingdoms.

Chapter 13

QUILL

“Will you please stop brooding?” Risna sighs, snapping shut the romance book she’s pored over for the last hour. “Your foot rubs used to be splendid, but this”—she wiggles her toes, her feet loosely held in my hands—“is absolutely pathetic. Limp and morose. It brings back terrible, terrible memories.”

“Ah, Bren,” Eivor says, looking up from where he sits cross-legged on the floor. For the better part of the day, he’s tried and failed to piece together Carver’s window as if it’s his very own stained-glass puzzle. “Somehow, he was simultaneously the best and worst lover you’ve ever had.”

“Do not speak his name in my house!” Carver yells from upstairs.

Risna waggles her eyebrows at me and whispers, “You’re not the only one who got in trouble for using—or trying to use—Carver’s bed.”

“Quit your whispering,” he snaps. “It’s dreadfully unnecessary in a house full of vampires.”