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“And yet I have. I count thrice now. Let me count the thanks I have received in kind.” He paused, tapping his chin with his gloved fingers. “Hmm. Carry the one, multiply by . . . Ah, yes. Exactly zero.”

“An accomplished self-flagellator and a mathematician? Your accolades astound me, good sir.”

I would drown in my own sarcasm now that the Laundress wasn’t bent on drowning me in my bath.

His full lips twitched up, struggling to keep the laughter at bay.

The kin’tha yowled its displeasure with both of us and sauntered over to the sunbeam that had borne one of the twin creatures, and it flopped into its warmth.

“How did you do that?” I whispered, fearing both that he would answer and that he would not.

“Magic.” He shrugged. “Your people turned away from it a long time ago, long before the Romans dared to invade the human side of our realm. All of it that you ignored fled into our realm and enriched us even more. What you saw was a simple parlor trick compared to the sum of our might. What you experienced at Rictus’s hand was mild compared to what we Fae can do. We are the masters of all matter in this place. We could make and unmake you a thousand times and get bored before we weaken. As a deposed Ard Tiarna of the court of Dawn, my domain is the light. I can bend it and shape it to my will just as you can bend and shape clay to your will.”

“Is that what that means? Breacadh an Lae?”

He hummed. “It means Break of Dawn. It was the name of our palace but now stands as the name we are called. Well, I am called. There is only me left of the Dawn.”

“And the others?”

He moved to rest against the tub opposite mine, taking up the soap the Laundress had left. “If you ask where the others are, they are dead.”

“Ah . . . I meant the other words you had used.” Awkwardness began to writhe under my flesh. I had guessed from the just me part that they were all dead. I itched to ask more about why, but something told me that the story would only make me feel bad for him. And while I was talking instead of yelling at him, I wanted to keep my ire.

“Árus Adaig, it is the name of the Court of Night. Lon di Lughae is the name of their palace. It means Oath of the Blackbird. The Fae you saw the King speaking to was their lord and Ard Tiarna.” He paused, tossing the soap into the tub and pushing up to stand. “Clean up. Hot baths are not usually afforded to daora. Cherish it. When you are done, I will send in another to dress you and then I will take you before the King.”

“You’re leaving me alone?”

“Your pet is here. I’m sure you won’t get far. And my pets watch from the sunbeams.” He turned away from me, stalking toward the door. “And Cricket? Watch yourself before the King. I might find your spirit amusing, but he will not. I cannot keep you from his wrath should you lose your novelty.”

Chapter 9

Itook my time in the bath. My stomach was in knots. The Raven hadn’t seemed like the kind of man that would issue warnings just to hear his own voice. There was something about the way his jaw ticked when he said it that made me think that my games were going to have consequences that I had not factored in.

In Detroit, my foul mouth and biting sarcasm could get me beat down and, in the most extreme cases, maybe shot. I’d never actually seen a shooting, though, despite the city’s reputation, so the odds were incredibly low I’d be shot. Here, in this twisted place, though, those odds seemed skewed. In Detroit, you couldn’t kidnap someone off the streets and mutilate them into your plaything. You couldn’t pull a sword on someone in a bathroom and walk away so easily.

Memories of news segments about human trafficking and people going missing all over the country flashed in my mind. Okay, maybe you could. I was starting to wonder if all the people who had been snatched off the street were as easy to snatch as I had been or if I was just incredibly dim witted.

I lingered in the bath, picking at a copper screw that was coming loose at the edge of the tub until I could pry it free.

“Just have to survive. Just survive,” I whispered to the screw as I dug into my foreign pearl-gold skin with it, below my hip at the meat of my thigh. Soft white cyclamen bloomed in the milky water as I dug in. “You’ve been here for less than three days. You figured a way out of the Blukman house. You’ll figure your way out of this.”

The Blukmans had wanted me to be someone I never would be. Quiet, chaste, Christian, and subservient. It wasn’t the house where I had received the worst beatings, neglect, or work. It was the place where I felt the most suffocated, though. I was a shitty, snot-nosed fourteen-year-old girl with an attitude that wouldn’t quit, but I had never felt so rejected for who I was, and it had been mental torture.

It took me four months to get taken out of the Blukman house, and I burned it down on the way out, too, even if the match was only figurative. I felt bad later in life for the lies I had to tell to get out of there, but it was them or me, and I would always choose me. Long after the self-inflicted wounds I pinned on an alleged exorcism had healed, the investigation had ended, and I was safely languishing in another miserable place. I sat awake, thinking about what I had done. But I always came back to Rule #15. Even when that made me a bad person, I would always choose me.

At the end of the day, that was all I had—me. Rule #15: Always choose you.

My delaying of the inevitable did not go unnoticed, and The Raven’s back appeared at the door. “You’re stalling. Don’t make me drag you from the bath, Cricket.”

His tone was soft, a hint of regret coloring the corners.

“You’re giving a daoire privacy? Cute.”

Satisfied with the twenty-one carved into my thigh, I stood, letting the water flush down the little bits of milky golden blood still leaking from it. Its sting would remind me and center me as I moved through the madness of this realm. It wasn’t much, but it was mine. In this one thing, I was me, and my body reflected that. It wasn’t enough, and seeing it carved into my skin made me itch to take the screw to more of my body so I could, once more, be in a shell I had control of.

“It’s not much, but it’s what I can give.”

It was a rumbled whisper. I barely caught it as he disappeared beyond the massive wooden door.