They emerged to birdsong. Warm air thick with sweetgrass and magnolia. The trees beyond the Curtain weren’t the gnarled conifers of the Winter Plane, but slender trunks sprouting blossoms and tender green leaves. Dappled sunlight filtered through the canopy and danced on loamy, unfrozen ground, the new arrivals causing a scurry of sparrows into the underbrush.
Eternal seasons were an oddity unique to the Season-Locked Planes—something about their close proximity. Most other, more distant Planes maintained fully-functional climate routines. The Spring Plane was, of course, more popular than Winter, for those who could afford it. Fi could never get past the allergies.
Antal appeared equally unenthused, grimacing at the bright light. Supposedly, the Twilit Plane received little sun. That explained the grayscale skin of its native predators, evolved for shadows rather than dappled forests.
Cardigan’s villa lay ahead, bordered in wild roses and daffodils.
“Ostentatious,” was a word that came to mind. “Compensating for something” shortly after. Wealthy retreats on the Spring Plane typically were. Compared to Fi’s humble cottage, she couldn’t fathom how Cardigan would use three sprawling stories of tan marble, accented in clay-tiled porticos and balconies dripping potted blooms. The perimeter wall alone must have depleted a small quarry.
Antal’s tree-hopping came in handy. He confirmed the villa’s occupants: Cardigan, two guards in the outer grounds, and one slouching man who matched the description of the assistant Fi had met during their ill-fated rendezvous on the Autumn Plane.
At dusk, Boden approached the villa alone.
The guards met him at the gate. As the light faded past apeach sunset, fireflies flickered on within the trees. Chanting cicadas masked any drift of conversation, but Fi took Boden’s confident posture as a good sign. He was ushered in, the gate closing behind him.
Now came Fi’s turn to get inside.
Her tongue pricked, static along the top. She looked up. Antal perched above her in a maple—wearing hissecondapproving smirk of the day. Fi loathed the swell of pride in her chest.
“Come,” he whispered.
He moved through the trees like liquid night, as swift and silent as the stories claimed. Fi followed, circling the villa on quiet footfalls. Antal brought her to a Curtain, the translucent shimmer barely visible in dusk.
She bit back a gasp when he appeared beside her, bit her tongue as he leaned close enough for his breath to brush her ear.
“Straight through, ten paces,” he whispered. “Pass one Curtain on your right. Take the second. I’ll find you inside.”
His tail swayed, a parting graze against her calf.A game, Fi reminded herself for the hundredth time. A dance between predator and prey, even as that flutter filled her stomach. They both tested. They both adapted. He was still the one with claws ready, if she ever stumbled.
Fi pushed through the Curtain, onto a Shard, grateful for the cold to clear her head.
Here lay another forest, more twisting than the Spring Plane, Void above and fog low between silvered trunks. She followed Antal’s directions, past the shimmer of one Curtain, through the second.
She emerged in a hall inside Cardigan’s villa.
Not only was Fi unaccustomed to a partner who could see Curtains, but she’d never met anyone so good at it. She’d have to find a way to tell Antal how impressed she was, withoutstoking his ego. Some sort of reverse compliment sandwich: “Hey, your sleeping habits are insufferable, but you navigate Curtains like a savant. Also, your teeth are unsettling.”
In contrast, she couldn’t scrounge a single compliment for Cardigan’s decor.
Fi snuck down a hall of Spring Plane marble polished to a squeak, oil paintings of Summer vistas, curtains of Autumn velvet, fixtures of Winter metal shaped like… lizards? Abstract mice? They held orb lights in crooked teeth, emitting dim silver energy.
A murmur of voices led her to a doorway. She paused outside, her view limited to a shaggy rug, bookshelves packed with curios and insultingly few books.
“Yoursister?” came Cardigan’s grating voice, that lilting Spring accent.
Bingo.
“My condolences,” the bastard continued. “Family can be such a burden.”
“Unfortunately,” Boden agreed. A little too earnest.
“Can you believe that bitch accusedmeof alerting trade wardens to our rendezvous?”
“She’s always been thankless.”
“And that hair. Alarmingly unprofessional. Those kinds of people, always looking for attention.”
Fi couldn’t groan without giving away her position. She rolled her eyes instead. Her ears perked at the tap of distant boots, guards moving outside the villa. Not a problem. Yet.
