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“I apologize,” she said, surprising him with her sincere tone. “I am still learning.”

“No problem.”

She blinked in confusion.

Oh goodie, another one.

“I mean, your apology is accepted but unnecessary as I am unharmed.”

She lifted her blade to the gates, and they opened.

“Are you friends with Dautre, by any chance?”

“No.”

“Just asking.”

He cast a glamour as they walked, changing his jeans and T-shirt into something more appropriate for court: a black suit and a gray button-up. He called the sword and let it hang on his back.

Until recently, he thought he’d shed his emo phase, but darker colors called to him lately. Still, he was getting better about accepting the changes, the scars.

He tried to spend a little time without a shirt each day, or even in a tank top. Vic did not comment, but Adam sensed his approval, especially when Adam took Vic’s hand and encouraged him to trace the lines on his arms or across his chest. If the mood was there, he guided Vic’s hand lower.

Fucked up exposure therapy indeed.

Usually he mixed it with what he called happy time, the daily moment or moments, when he did what Dr. Cahill had suggested and meditated on something good in his life.

He was still thinking about the tattoos, but even if he decided he really wanted them, they weren’t cheap.

“Whoa,” he said, noticing the park.

Eran followed his gaze. In every tree, ribbons hung. They trailed from the branches to almost touch the ground. They were every color. The spiraling characters of the elven language ran their length.

“We do this in mourning,” Eran explained. “There is one for each person who died that day, regardless of their race, Lost or not.”

“It’s a beautiful gesture,” Adam said.

While it lit a blue flame of sorrow in his chest that there were so many, a second warmer glow of hope mixed with it.

He wondered which one was Carl’s. He wondered if they’d hung one for Lily. Surely, the knight, despite her crimes, was included. The elfiest elf who’d loved a human and died by the hand of her child, who intended to damn five worlds and all of them just so he would fit in.

Then they were at the ballroom, and Adam found himself strumming with tension, the sorrow and tiny hope forgotten.

Silver waited on his throne of milk-colored ice, his sword across his lap, his long suitcoat flowing to the ground but open to show the holster strap across his perfect chest. His white shirt could have been carved from marble. This was his judgment drag, and he wore it like he wore anything, beautifully, luminous, and cold.

“Adam Lee Binder, first of his name, Page of Swords, son of Robert Jack Binder the first and Tilla Mae Binder the first.”

Oh, the whole list. That did not bode well.

“You have a habit of disobedience.”

“Yes, my king.”

Adam bowed, just to the correct amount. The last time they’d done this, he’d felt bad enough to grovel. Today, he just wanted it over with.

“And yet you have done us a service, performing your role and helping us to reach beyond ourselves.”

It didn’t feel like it. A lot of people had died. A lot of Lost Ones, a lot of elves, and Seamus’s people.