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Because Clover’s father hadn’t just been a clockmaker. He had been creating illicit amulets made out of pure Tendrille and carved with ancient Fae so that humans could have magic too. She still had no idea how the thing worked. Only that she had gotten it to work at the best possible moment. When the world had come crumbling down in the arena, the amulet had burned brilliant white. She, Hadrian, and Darby had disappeared and landed here in the midst of the RFA headquarters. The amulet hadn’t done a single thing since.
“We’re still working on it,” Hadrian said diplomatically.
“Indeed,” Thea said.
Thea wanted to hand it off to the inventors she had working on a similar creation since Clover’s father had been killed, but Clover couldn’t part with it. Just having the thing off from around her neck made her feel sort of sick.
Her father had been making it for her after all. He’d wanted a way to cure her illness that no Fae healer had been able to discover. It still didn’t do that, but if they could make it work, it might give them a shot against the Red Masks.
“Are you sure we can’t bring my inventors in?” Thea asked.
Clover had already let her make sketches of the circular necklace and even take a mold out of clay for the designers. She’d looked in on what they were making and let them see the necklace while she was wearing it. But her mother had told her to run and not to trust anyone. She couldn’t shake the feeling that if she gave it to the inventors, she’d never see it again.
“No,” Clover said at once.
Darby put a hand on her arm. “It would be helpful to have more eyes on it.”
“I don’t trust anyone else.”
Thea sighed. “I know that, and I apologize.”
“You certainly didn’t help the matter,” Clover said.
She knew she sounded snippy, but Thea had lied to her. She hadn’t told her about her connection to her parents. She’d purposely kept it back to draw her into the RFA.
“I didn’t, but I would do it again,” Thea said with bravado. “This is too important. Without Kerrigan, we are at a loss as to how to stop the red tide flooding our people. I will do anything to stop it.”
Hadrian cleared his throat. “This is beyond my knowledge. I might be … too concrete of a thinker to figure out the magic within it.”
“So, you all think I should be working with other people?” Clover asked.
She got up from her seat and walked to the closed window. Kinkadia was still burning two weeks after the Red Masks took over. They were still uprooting people out of their houses and putting up guard blockades, all the while calling it peace.
She pulled hard on her cigarette. She needed help. She needed Kerrigan. Kerrigan would know what to do. But she was dead or missing in action. Clover would have to figure this one out on her own.
“Fine,” she said with a heavy sigh. “You can bring them in, but I have to be here at all times.”
“Of course,” Thea said, the relief evident in her voice.
It wasn’t until she was gone that Clover spoke again. “Am I making the right choice?”
Hadrian and Darby glanced at each other—a gesture that was as familiar as breathing to them. They got up and came to her side, taking her hands.
“We’ll figure this out together,” Darby said. She leaned her head on Clover’s shoulder.
“Together,” Hadrian repeated, tucking them both into him.
“Together,” Clover whispered.
20
The Princess
WYNTER
The hills to Wynter’s homeland were so familiar, but she had never traversed them on foot. For a thousand years, the House of Shadows had been under a spell. None of the descendants of those who had first been trapped could enter or leave. She’d been born under Ravinia Mountain and until the spell came down, she had never left the mountain, except for the few hundred feet outside of its beautiful exterior.
Then, the spell had come down.
She had done that. She had sacrificed all to get them out of there.
No. That wasn’t quite right. She knew the order of things now. Kerrigan had brought the barrier down. Wynter just witnessed it. She … exploited it. She and Aisling had walked into the throne room and convinced her father to march on the nearest human city.
She shook her head at the memory.
She was still working on piecing it together. Like her mother before her, Wynter had something wrong inside her mind. Like broken glass, and sometimes, the jagged pieces rattled around, making her mother go absent. Eventually, she had taken her own life to escape the glass.
Wynter had believed that was her own path.
That being on the outside of the spell might fix it. But if anything, it had only made it worse.
