I was all for taking down the Autumn Court, but there had to be some other way.
I glanced at Liam, whose scowl was the deepest I’d ever seen it. He stared hard at the map, his eyes flicking from my wooden square to the pair of crowns that were splayed on their sides, as if someone had knocked them over, as if someone were proclaiming them as fallen.
“Is that what this is, Phelan?” Liam’s voice was a growl. “Because it’s not happening. Norah is not walking into that castle and murdering the Queen of the Autumns. You’ll have to kill me before I’ll let that happen.”
“No one is killing anyone,” Phelan countered, narrowing his eyes. “Yet.”
“So, then what is the point of all this?” I gestured at the map, at the fallen crowns. “Why do you want me to go into the Autumn woods?”
“We want you to be our spy.”
“Your spy.” I repeated the words, as if that would make them make more sense. “Wouldn’t it be better to find an Autumn fae who could do that? I highly doubt I’m going to be able to walk around in there without getting noticed.”
“Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong.” Phelan turned to Alastar and gestured for him to take over the conversation.
Alastar gave a nod and pointed to a circular clearing in the midst of the free territory. “At the Feast of the Fae, you were kidnapped, were you not?”
I frowned, wrinkling my forehead. “Yes, but I don’t know what that has to do with anything.”
“I saw you.” He looked up, his eyes glittering. “I thought I was imagining things at first, but I saw you. The Autumn fae who were trying to get to you and your friend. They couldn’t, could they?”
I thought back to that night. It had all been so hazy. Fear had been pouring through my veins like molten lava, and my head had been so full of screams. I was there with Liam one instant, and then I wasn’t. The Autumn fae had shifted me halfway across the grounds. Bree was by my side, her back arched, her fingers curled into claws. Her body began to shift and change, black hairs sprouting along her arms. The Autumn fae had stared at her, glanced around the clearing, and then disappeared into the chaos.
“They couldn’t because Bree is a Redcap. Well, kind of. She’s a cured one, so she has complete control over her body now. She only changes when she wants to. She scared them off.”
Alastar exchanged a glance with Phelan, and then met my eyes again. “I had a feeling you had no idea what you were doing. It’s often the case when it comes to these kinds of powers. Norah, the Autumn fae fled because they could no longer see you anymore. They couldn’t see Bree either. They thought you’d vanished.”
I blinked. “Say what now?”
Liam leaned forward and braced his fist on the war table. “You mean she shadowed?”
Alastar gave a nod. “For a moment, I thought she’d shifted, but there was something about the way she melted into the night that looked familiar. I saw Marin do it a few times, when I was serving in her Court. It meant she was still there in the room, quietly watching, no one the wiser. Not very many fae knew she could do that.” Suddenly, his voice went soft. “Only her mates and her closest advisors.”
“So, you’re saying those Autumn fae couldn’t see me?” I pressed my hand to my neck and swallowed hard. It had taken a long time for me to get accustomed to the fact that I could transport myself from one location to another, but this was something far beyond that, at least to me.
I could make myself invisible.
No wonder the Summer fae wanted me to be a spy.
“No onecould see you,” Alastar said, dragging his stubby finger from the free territory to the castle set atop of Esari, the glittering city of the Autumn Court. “Which means you can sneak into the Autumn Court, find out as much information about their plans as you can, and then report it all back to us. Then, we would know exactly what to do in order to beat them. You’d be in and out without a single Autumn soul realizing you were ever there.”
I nodded and gazed down at the map. I could see now why they’d been so insistent about my part in this, why they’d said it could affect the future of the realm. If we knew what Queen Viola was going to do ahead of time, we could prevent the Autumn Court from winning their next attack and from taking out another batch of Royals. But it was also a massive mission, one I wasn’t entirely sure I could pull off.
“You do know that I’ve only ever done this shadowing thing once,” I finally said. “And until now, I didn’t even know I’d done it.”
“Twice,” Liam cut in.
When I turned to him with confusion, he gave me a strange smile. “Remember when you and Kael went in search of the Starlight for Bree? You mentioned how you’d scared off a Breking by just standing there with a sword pointing at the sky. I always thought that was strange and highly unlikely, even if the creature was wounded.”
Realization dawned in my mind. The creature hadn’t been trying to bait me into an attack. It hadn’t run from my ferocious stance. It merely hadn’t seen me. Ha! And all this time, I thought I’d scared it off.
“Okay, but again,” I said, holding up my hands. “I had no idea I was doing it then either, so who’s to say I can make it happen voluntarily?”
Phelan stepped forward and gave a nod. “A valid concern. You’ll stay here with us for a few days, and we’ll train with you. Alastar was close to Marin and knew her tricks well. With some coaching, you should be able to master it well enough to complete the mission successfully.”
“Right,” was all I could say. Truth was, I was more than a little nervous. Sneaking into the viper pit with only a couple of days worth of training sounded dangerous, impulsive, and hasty. A part of me wanted to do it, of course. The part of me that sang when the summer sun glistened across my skin. The part of me that had raged when Redmond had gone after Finn. The part of me that melted underneath Liam’s heated gaze.
But, as I was quickly learning, there were other parts to me. Parts that understood the violent, calculating nature of the Autumns. Parts that knew just how important it was to be prepared for the worst.
