Hammond reached for a glass filled with what I assumed was some kind of potent alcohol. “Why would you want to do that?”
Ambrosia’s grin was small and cruel. “Is the girl too clingy? Or areyougetting too attached?”
My jaw tightened. “You know the answer. Say it.”
They exchanged a glance. Ambrosia wiped her mouth daintily with a napkin. “Even if we did know, why would we tell you?”
“What would you take in exchange?”
Hammond waved a hand. “We do not know. Now leave us to our dining.”
I stared at the body on the table. The boy’s pulse was faint. His essence leaking slow and quiet.
My fingers twitched toward the dagger hidden in my coat. I wanted to kill them both. End the court here and now. But even if I could, Cassian would fall with them. The bond that tethered their lives made murdering them a last resort for me. And they knew it.
So, I turned away.
Their laughter followed me into the hall—sweet, silken, and vile. Outside, the night pressed close. The city lights blurred into ribbons of gold and red. Nadia tugged at me through the bond, asmall, steady pull in my chest, like a compass needle trembling north.
This is all a game to them,I thought.They are no court. They are parasites wearing crowns.
The wind bit at my face as I stepped into the street.I am one thread from being tangled in it forever.
I clenched my fists, breathed in the mortal night, and whispered to the dark, “I will find you, brother. And I will break this curse.”
The bond burned bright and silent in answer, guiding me home.
I climbed the steps and paused at the threshold. The moment my foot crossed it, the tug in my chest eased. The tightness that had been gnawing at me uncoiled. My shoulders dropped. My pulse slowed. Nadia was close. I was near her again.
The tether steadied with contentment.
Nadia sat cross-legged on the floor. Yarn spilled around her in a riot of color. A half-formed creature lay in her lap, eyes of mismatched buttons. A white, cotton-like substance bubbled out of a torn bag. Ezra hunched at his laptop, fingers moving, unaffected.
I studied her. She was assembling a small army of limp, looped cotton things. I cleared my throat. “Have you begun weaving protective talismans?”
Her head jerked up, then her face softened the instant she saw me. “They’re crochet dolls,” she said. “For anxiety. I guess.” She held one up, its ears lopsided and its head far too large. “This one’s a frog. Probably.”
I examined the frog. Antlers absurdly sprouting from its tiny head. “Why does the frog have antlers?”
She shrugged and avoided my gaze. “Because I’m bad at it. I’ve been trying to distract myself…” She let the sentence trail and finally met my eyes. “The bond. It feels awful when you’re gone. Nothing is right with the world. Where did you go?”
I said nothing. I walked to the couch and let myself fall onto it, then I extended an arm. “Come here.”
She hesitated for a heartbeat, then climbed up and curled against my chest. Her presence settled against me. My fingers found her hair as she pressed her hand against my ribs. I did not move. I allowed contentment to consume me.
Our breathing found a soft cadence. She mumbled, words drifting toward sleep. I kept my thumb moving in slow circles on her back.
“I am here,” I whispered. “Sleep.”
Darkness folded into a different room as I fell asleep beside her. I stood in a grand hall that swelled and shifted, walls inhaling and exhaling. Candles burned where no flame existed. Ambrosia spun in a gown of red, her laugh too bright and too full. She danced toward me, offering a hand with painted nails.
She spoke as if she had been waiting. “You dream ofher? That soft, cotton-stitching mortal?”
She tried to draw me into a slow dance. I jerked away.
The floor gave beneath us and opened onto a banquet table dripping with things that did not belong: a silver platter with a frog doll, stabbed through with pins; a goblet half-full of tangled yarn that shimmered with a dark gloss; a mirror that held Nadia sleeping, her form perfect except that the reflection wore Hammond’s face.
“Leave her out of this,” I growled.
