ARWEN HAD A SULTRY, CURVED LOCK OF HAIR HANGING IN FRONT OF

her face as she sipped her ale. It was silky smooth and shiny in the flickering lanterns of the tavern. I wanted very badly to tuck the

chocolate strand behind her ear. So badly, it was making my palms sweat.

What kind of masochist tells the woman he loves that he’s in love with her, knowing full well she doesn’t feel the same? Perhaps the same idiot masochist who makes her come with his tongue and then swears never to do it again. Both reckless choices had turned merely being around Arwen into torture.

And now I was sweating over a lock of hair. Arwen raised a brow at me. “Are you all right?”

“Just fine.” I downed the rest of my drink. “Can we get another round?”

The barmaid was a slim woman with a chest too large for her frame. She replaced our empty mugs with fresh, overflowing ones and flashed us a bright smile. I took in the tavern around us, growing busier as the light bled from the sky.

“Are you even thirsty, or do you just like when the pretty server fawns over you?”

“Careful, bird, your talons are showing.” “Am I wrong?”

I put down my ale and appraised her. “You’re a very jealous woman, do you know that?”

“That’s rude.”

“Am I wrong?” I mimicked.

Arwen blew out a breath. “No, I guess not. It’s kind of horrible, isn’t it?” “For you, perhaps. Envy is the poison we feed ourselves.”

She took a sip of her ale and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “I spent a long time feeling less than. And lonely . . . It’s my default now, to assume nobody will pick me first. That you’ll find other women prettier, that—”

“Mari would rather befriend Ryder?”

“I’m going to work on it.” She grimaced. “I think I actually might owe Amelia an apology.”

“If it helps, I have eyes for none but you.”

It was true, and despite the pain, there was potent relief in being honest with her. I took another swallow of the frothy spirit. When Arwen said nothing, I couldn’t help but add, “You, on the other hand, seem to have eyes for many royal men. Is that a power thing?”

Her pinched little nose was going to be the death of me. Why did I love to torment her so?

“You are truly insufferable,” she snipped, amusement in her eyes. “It’s a wonder anyone puts up with you at all.”

“I’m not sure anyone does.”

We had been seated at a sticky table with one short leg that made for an irritating wobble, and when I placed my forearm against its surface, I accidentally sent our full mugs of ale sloshing.

“You and I especially,” she said, stabilizing the table with both hands while I wiped up the spilled ale, “seem to fight like schoolchildren.”

“Do you remember Lady Kleio and Sir Phylip?” I asked, throwing the ale-covered napkins into the barrel behind her as she ducked.

“Yes, they’re two of your nobles. They hate each other.” “They’re married.”

Arwen’s eyes lit. “You’re kidding me.” “Will be twenty years this winter.”

“They can’t be happy, though. They tore each other to bits in that forum.”

“They challenge each other. They’re rather sweet together, actually.”

Arwen glanced out the foggy window behind her. The cloud cover was so thick outside it was hard to tell what time it was, but I knew we had been here at least four hours.

“Arwen—”

“I’m not giving up on her.”

I swallowed a sigh, her determination as impressive as it was frustrating. “Bird, you don’t even know the girl.”

Arwen maneuvered to peer out a different window, the one to my right. “You can fly back to Shadowhold. I’ll find my own way there later tonight. Maybe I’ll hitchhike.”

“You’re hilarious,” I said dryly.

“Let’s get one last round from your cute friend and give Esme’s daughter another hour. Then we’ll go.” She trained her eyes on mine with sincerity. “Please? I have a feeling about this.”

“Sure.” I wasn’t in a rush to leave, really. I had everything that mattered to me right here in this tavern.

“Want to play roses and thorns?”

I nearly spat my drink out. “Isn’t that a sex game?”

The look of horror on Arwen’s face was worth all the coin in my kingdom. “No! What is wrong with you? It’s a children’s game.” She shook her head. “Bleeding Stones, Kane.”

I laughed hard into my mug. “All right, teach me this children’s game.”

She tucked her hair behind her ears, finally moving the rebellious strand from its spot against her cheek. “Your rose is the best part of your day, and your thorn is the worst. My mother used to do this with us each night at dinner when I was growing up.” A flicker of sorrow danced across her face, there and gone in an instant. “I’ll go first so you can see how it’s done. My rose was coming here, to Crag’s Hollow. I love the sea air, the gloomy sky, the bustling town. I’m grateful I got to see it.”

Her love for my favorite town in Evendell made something soft and gentle swirl in my heart.

“And my thorn—” Arwen sighed. “Almost everything else in my life, if I’m being honest.”

I narrowed my eyes at her. “Fun game.”

“It’s not usually this depressing.” She looked to both windows once more. Still no sign of the little seer.

“My turn?” Arwen nodded.

“My rose is getting to spend an entire afternoon in here with you.”

Arwen’s eyes grew brighter, and it was enough to make my honesty well worth it.

“And my thorn,” I said with a wicked smile, “is that I didn’t—”

But her expression lit with surprise at something behind me, and I turned in the direction of her eyeline. There, a tiny brunette girl, nearly skin and bones, was pushing her way through the boisterous crowd. She was the spitting image of her mother, that same warm, brown hair—hers shorn to look more boyish—huge dark eyes, and pointed, dainty chin. She couldn’t have been more than seven.

Arwen leapt from our table, sending it wobbling once more and nearly knocking our empty mugs to the floor. I narrowly righted the table in time before strolling after her.

“Hello,” Arwen said to the girl brightly. “You must be Esme’s daughter.

I’m Arwen, and this is Kane.”

“You’re just as you look in my visions,” the girl said.

A chill broke out along my spine. Arwen faltered for words but the girl only stood there, jostled by patrons, eyes full and solid and unwavering. The pub was growing livelier as the evening settled in, and I could barely hear my own thoughts. “Here, follow me.”

Arwen offered a hand, but the girl didn’t take it, choosing instead to trail us out of the tavern and onto the cobblestone streets. I led them around the corner into a narrow alleyway wedged between a fish market laden with tentacles and scales in crates of crushed ice, and a candy shop with rows of bright green apples dipped in butterscotch.

Arwen leaned down to meet the girl’s eyeline. “What’s your name?”

“Beth.”

“How did you know to come find us, Beth?” “I overheard you. In my mother’s shop.”

“You’re very bright,” Arwen said with a wry smile.

“You were loud.” Her voice was ice-cold. Devoid of any emotion. Likely thanks to years of seeing things far beyond what she should— moments she had never and would never live—love and death and loss.

“I know what you seek,” Beth continued. “But I don’t know where the blade is. My visions of it are too fleeting.”

I had lost faith in vague leads such as these a long while ago, but Arwen straightened beside me and grasped my wrist tightly. “We’ll take anything you can give us.”

Beth, showing her age for the first time, fisted her hands in her trousers and cast her eyes down to the gray stone beneath us. A briny wind carried over the scent of fish from the shop next door. “The blade has been in Onyx all along. It never left.”

“That’s not possible,” I said, not unkindly. “It was stolen from my vault five years ago. The entire keep—the entire kingdom was searched.”

Beth shook her head with vehemence, those dark, haunting eyes still downcast. “I’m never wrong. Even when I want to be.”

Arwen swallowed hard and straightened to stand beside me. It seemed at once we both suffered the realization that the seer’s gift had been more of a curse on the young girl.

“The Blade of the Sun is in Onyx. I have visions of it, thrown beneath heaps of other weapons. Tied to another master, but yearning to be paired with its mate.” She turned to face Arwen. “You.”

The color had seeped from Arwen’s face, leaving her even paler than usual. “What do you know of me?”

“You are the final Fae of full blood born at last. As my nana said you would be. Daughter of the Gods.”

Daughter of the what?

“What does that mean?” Arwen pleaded, crouching down to the young girl’s eyeline once more.

“You don’t know?” Beth’s depthless eyes met mine. “Neither of us do. Can you share?”

She opened her mouth, but must’ve thought better of it and instead took a step back. “What about my father?”

“We’ll find him for you, I promise,” Arwen swore to her. I fought against my tensing muscles. The man was likely dead. It was a daring oath to make.

“The king beside you thinks he is dead.”

I bit my tongue. “A seer and a mind reader. Quite a lot of lighte you’ve got there, Beth.”

“It’s why my mom keeps me hidden. The world is not safe for Fae like me.”

She was right. Not as long as Lazarus harvested lighte like wheat in a field. “Then why trust us?”

Arwen shot me a devastating glare, and I shrugged at her. “I know what you fight for.”

“We will do our best to find your father, and if he is alive, we will return him to you and your mother,” Arwen said. “If I can find the blade, I will kill Lazarus. I will fight to give you a world in which you do not have to hide.”

“You will die,” Beth said, devoid of emotion, and I tried to ignore the way three words from the mouth of a seven-year-old nearly brought me to my knees.

Arwen, to her credit, kept her voice even. “I know.”

Beth turned to face Lake Stygian. The sun had disappeared behind Hemlock Isle in the distance, and the night had become chilling and forlorn. “The story your mother told you was true. She met your father in a tavern, and they spent the night together. He left the next morning and she

never saw him again.”

“So she was my mother? How is that possible? Was she a full-blooded Fae, too?”

“No. She was mortal. Carrying a full-blooded Fae to term in her womb made her ill. She should have died, from the lighte that poisoned her. But

your abilities healed her over and over again. Eventually, she grew immune, and the months of holding a powerful being inside her took their toll.”

“You’re saying I—killed my own mother?”

Beth, not one for sympathy, only nodded. “But she knew what you were.

Your father told her the truth.”

Arwen stalled, unable to find words to respond.

“And what was that?” I asked, words forming around my own shock. We needed to wrap this up before Arwen’s shattered heart took some final blow it couldn’t withstand.

Beth brought her chin up to face me. “That he was a Fae God. And he would father the final full-blooded Fae. A chosen one, a prophesied savior of Fae and mortal alike. And that it was unlikely she would survive the pregnancy.”

“But she did,” Arwen said. Not a question. “She survived.” “You healed her.”

Arwen shook her head. “And then she lived. Even after I couldn’t heal her anymore.”

“Yes,” Beth said, face almost careless.

Arwen’s brows pinched together, and her voice broke as she asked,

“Why?”

It could have killed me, to hear so much pain in her voice. I reached for her, but she was fragile, her emotions too precarious—later. I’d try somehow to soothe her later. I flexed my fingers and folded them into my pocket.

“I can only tell you what happened, or what will happen. Not why.” “Perhaps it was her love for her children,” I supplied.

“That was what her stepfather thought, too.”

Arwen’s eyes shot from the ground up to Beth. “Powell knew? He knew what I was?”

“Your mother told him everything.”

The beatings. Arwen had wondered why he hated her. Now we both knew. He thought she was killing the woman he loved. It was awful. It was unfathomable. It was—

“Thank you, Beth,” I said, breathing evenly. “Can you tell us one last thing?”

Beth looked back up to the winding road that led up to her mother’s shop. “I don’t want my mother to come looking for me.”

“Quickly, then. Is there any other way to kill Lazarus? Is Arwen truly the only one who can defeat him?”

“I don’t know all that is to come. I only see bits and pieces. I have seen the way of the Crow, if that’s what you’re asking. It’s possible, but the cost will be greater to her than her own life.”

The pit in my stomach expanded with the weight of the girl’s words.

What could cost Arwen more than her very life? The thought terrified me.

“Is there anything else you can tell us about the blade? About where it is in Onyx? About our battle with Lazarus?”

“You must defeat him. You are the only hope either realm has.” “Yes.” I gritted my teeth. “That I know.”

I waited for Arwen’s reprimand of my tone, but it never came. She was looking off toward the lake, and I knew then.

I knew that I had lost her.

It might’ve been the clamor of my chest caving in on itself that rang in my ears. “Beth, what is your father’s name? What does he look like? We’ll do our best to bring him back to you.”

For the first time the girl’s eyes lit up as she said, “Vaughn. He has dark brown hair that reaches his shoulders, and a beard. I haven’t had a vision of him since they took him weeks ago. If I do, should I write a letter to you?”

“Yes, address it to Lieutenant Eardley at Shadowhold. Thank you for all your help.”

She turned to leave and made it halfway up the slick road before spinning back to us, horror clouding her youthful eyes.

A chill rippled through me.

“What is it?” Arwen managed to say.

“You’ll . . . you’ll have to make the deal. When the time comes, you’ll have to.”

“What deal?” I asked.

Beth stiffened. “I don’t know. I only get pieces . . .” All I could think to say was “Please.”

“Her face will be wet with tears,” Beth said, motioning to Arwen. “And your hands . . . they will be coated in blood.”

The storm had moved in, and though the buildings beside us offered some cover, rain had begun to drench us both. Before I could say more, Beth ran back up the hill to her mother’s store, and we watched until her silhouette disappeared into the mist.