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That realization crawled under my skin and made a comfy home there, throbbing its venomous truth in a slow drip. Was I overreacting? Probably, but my time at the palace had only further cemented Rules #2 and #13. The sheep are just as deadly as the wolves. And always listen to the whispers that tell you who someone is. And I had seen enough “happy, safe homes” as a foster kid to know that somewhere under all the icing and assurances to the contrary, there was something rotting at the center of Havenhome.

Chapter 11

Ard Tiarna Emrys of Breacadh an Lae, The Raven of the Dawn

Iwoke in my own bed. Even if the room was nearly empty of anything but the bed itself, I still recognized it. A dark silhouette sat in the wingback chair near the window. Her long hair broke apart the line of her night-kissed body. Her head was turned away from me, staring out into the dark woods from the wide open window.

My heart thumped deep and hard in my chest.

“Little bug?” I whispered, too sure that even the sound of my voice would chase the specter from my sight. I wanted it to stay, just a little longer. Just a little longer to warm my chambers with its haunted memory.

When the head rose from a dark book and turned to me, I was sure it had to be her. Who else would sit before my window in her chair, read her books, and be able to get past my wards?

“Ah, you’ve finally roused.” The voice was feminine, and my heart twisted it into the shape of her voice.

“Little bug,” I said, barely able to hold back the sob that broke against the rocks of my throat. “Come sit with me on the bed.”

“I regret to inform you, my friend, that your little bug has flown.” A snap of her graceful fingers drew flame from thin air and pressed it into a candle that sat on the wide stone windowsill. Warm, golden light lit up the Bandrui’s sympathetic smiling face. “No one here but a bored drui who was waiting for you to finish up your beauty sleep and join her in the waking world. Did you enjoy your trip to magic?”

I groaned and rolled away from her, my eyes fixated on the salvation of the scallop shell on the small table beside the bed, still sticky with Siur Dobh, dark promises of respite from the ghost of hope’s torment hovering in the black between us. “How did you get in here?”

“Do you truly think yourself so mighty a magic weaver that you can erect, buy, or bribe a single ward to keep me out?” She clucked a tsk deep in her throat and rose from her perch to take up the invitation that was for someone else, bringing the candle with her. “I came because when you completed the watering of the tree, you forced it to bloom at a time of great magical peril. Your sacrifice was great, and the gods bid me tend to you. So, I unpicked the laces of your ward and brought you to recover.”

“How long has it been?”

“You’re too stubborn to stay down long, we both know that. It is the same day. I plucked you from the throne room shortly after dawn gave way to day, and you have been resting and healing asleep in your own bed. Your betrothed has come to visit you several times. Your Ard Rí as well. Both have been most inconvenienced that I was unable to drop the wards for them to come to your side. Naughty Raven, hasn’t let his two lovers cross his threshold?” A teasing sarcasm had worked into her grin. “You might need to answer for that someday, you know.”

“Neither are my lover.”

“And yet one or both should be, or have been in the past.”

“Neither ever will be again.”

“You have spent too long around humans, dear friend. You are becoming rigid and stubborn.”

“Becoming?”

“Okay, I yield. You’re becoming too lazy to hide your stubbornness.” She leaned down and set the candle next to the evidence of my relapse, a spear-sharp brow of accusation rising when the warm light licked over it. “Laziness in obfuscation is a deadly trait in our kind, Raven. You’ll need to do better.”

I grunted at the concern and rebuke in her voice.

Deep, wine-red eyes came into view as she tucked a tousled strand of hair away from my face. “Teasing aside, dear one, I have watched the way you have been moving these last few days. I see the dark sister has returned to your embrace. You have not supped with her in ages; I thought your love broken. What has happened? I have not seen you this destructive since the war.”

“She’s gone.”

“Who is gone?”

“Cricket.”

A confused frown dug into her beautiful features, and she began rubbing the fabric of my blood-stained tunic between her fingers. She knew what that meant to me. She knew what those words would mean. I had suspected my old friend knew more of the two of us, and this confirmed it. “What do you mean . . . gone?”

“I mean that she and three other human daora have disappeared from the palace.”

“But you can trace her movements, no? She is safe? You can find her in the world somewhere?” Concern, fear, anxiety—they all mixed across her ethereal face and painted a sincerity of worry rocking its way into her consciousness.

I remained quiet. I didn’t want to share this pain. I needed to keep it all to myself. I needed to hoard it inside of me and not share a single scrap lest her memory drain along with it.

“For how long?” Her voice was thinner than candle smoke.