Was I the one who was wrong? The only mortal who seemed to despise the chance of being raised to Fae? I wanted my own magic. Not theirs.
“I have to get out of here,” I whispered to Fear.
He didn’t look away from the queen on the dais. His lips barely moved. “Go.”
I walked confidently out of the arena toward one of the many doors that led back into the barracks. Or at least, I tried to.
I found myself in a service corridor. I walked down one hallway after another, my rage giving way to the embarrassing sensation of being lost.
When I turned a corner, I found myself in a busy corridor. Servants in dark clothes rushed back and forth. At least I must be close to the dining hall and barracks. I slipped through the crowd, trying to find my way out. The scent of wine and fresh bread and sweets mingled in the air, along with shouted organization.
Then I pushed through a door, ducking aside as a mortal rushed past me with an empty tray, and ahead of me was the cavernous dining hall with its tapestries and long tables and candlelight.
I only had a moment of relief before someone seized my arm. “Girl. Malachite is still waiting on wine. Where’s the gratitude?”
I looked up into the face of a shifter dressed in dark green, with dragon scales as epaulets, and an arrogant smirk. I shrugged his hand off. “Not a servant. Not that you should speak that way to them.”
His eyes moved over me, and he frowned. Before he could respond, a second Malachite shifter, a woman this time, paused beside him with the pleasant authority of someone who had never been disobeyed in her life. “Fetch the Saurin red. Last year’s vintage, if they have it. Quickly, girl.”
I had a sword at my hip. I had ichor on my boots from the labyrinth. I had killed a kethryn an hour ago.
But all they could see when they looked at me was a mortal, and that meant all they saw was a servant.
I glanced over my shoulder, but these two were the only other shifters who seemed to have escaped the arena already. I had no support from Bismyth or Amber, and I was keenly aware of how much shorter, smaller, slower I was than these two shifters.
“At once,” a cheerful voice said at my elbow. Heida, appearing in the corner of my vision, looped her arm through mine. “I’ll show you how we serve the wine.”
She pulled me away. Back into the mass of servants, then out again into the hush of the empty antechamber outside the dining hall. “They never remember our faces,” she confided. “They won’t notice you don’t come back.”
Then suddenly, she seemed to realize how she was touching me, and she yanked away abruptly. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. I—” I glanced back, worried the shifters would follow us out. “Come with me.”
“I should get back to work,” she said, but she followed me.
I glanced around for a place to hide. Then I led her into the life dome.
She gaped up at the ceiling. Mortal, Fae, and shifter lives hung in a kaleidoscope of stars above us. Dappled light fell onboth our faces, turning her skin to the shades of blue and purple and white from the stars above.
The dullest stars represented mortals stripped of their magic. When Heida stared up, her lips parting in wonder, it was the Fae and shifter stars that seemed to cast magic over us both.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” There was no keeping the bitterness from my voice. My anger had been building since we emerged from the tunnel, as my relief shifted into something else entirely. “Thank you for rescuing me.”
“Oh, I thought I was rescuingthem.”Heida turned a wide-eyed, innocent look on me. “It would be so rude of you to kill them when I’m on dining hall cleanup duty tonight.”
I grinned. But it only lasted a moment. I was still so troubled by what I’d just seen. “Did you watch the raising?”
“No. I have to lay out Bismyth’s requests in the barracks. I don’t mind.” She added that last hastily as she saw my face change. “It only stings me to watch anyway. It’s so rare to be raised. I can’t imagine it will ever happen for me.”
“Is it so terrible to be mortal?”
In this world, it was. I knew that. I had been seized by that monstrous Fae who had intended to kill me for his own pleasure, and if I had been a regular mortal servant, no one would’ve cared. The thought was sour.
“You’re giving us all hope it doesn’t have to be.” Heida’s eyes were lit with hope. “If we can become shifters—if the prince has really found a way—imagine what we can do.”
Her gaze rose to search the stars. “Imagine having a brighter star.”
The story that he could create shifters from mortals was one of Fear’s many decoys, and her joy made something twist in my gut. I wanted her to find hope in what was possible, not in a lie.
