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“You could. You very well fucking could. And if you do, know that those seven days are a fucking courtesy. If I think for even a moment that you seek to fuck me in any way during those seven days, I won’t hesitate. My freedom will either be through that front door or with a knife in my chest. One way or another, I will fucking have it. It’s your choice if you want to be fucked in the process. Any way you squirm, know that I will find a way to make it a decision you regret.” I sneered at her, flicking my eyes to the door. “Go. You have plans to make.”

She watched me through slitted eyes for what seemed like an eternity. I could tell she was trying to find a way to slither from between the coils of the noose she had wrapped around her neck. The sad thing was, a Fae could never understand the exact brand or flavor of a human with nothing left to lose. A human with comfort and luxury is the contented little pet. A human you have taken everything from, even if you don’t realize it is all gone, is the most terrifying of creatures because they were likely to do anything at all, even if that was self-mutilation. And even if I was born Fae, that rabidity was still hardwired into my essence.

She finally decided to retreat, to lick her wounds and plan a way to slip free. She was welcome to do so. There was no bluff in anything I promised her. Even if this palace wouldn’t keep me, a Fae, from permanently dying short of having cold iron shoved into my heart or one of the other multitudes of deadly Fae poisons and methods, I would rather die than sing in their canary cage.

I watched her slip out of the throne room and slid the knife back into its sheath, then handed it to Goose, who quickly swallowed it. I smirked down to him and ruffled the curling wisps of smoke at his head. “Go tell Emerald I need to know who Lord White Throat is and why he and The Oaken Rose might be in cahoots.”

Goose whimpered and looked around the empty throne room.

“I’ll be fine. You’ll only be gone a little while anyway. Go on, off, you fuck. I’ll go polish a knob or something.”

Goose made his way to one of the shadows near the back of the throne room and turned to me, watching me with concern flashing in his lens-flare eyes. I shooed him and smirked. He’d become a hen over the last week. The more I hid from The Raven, the tighter Goose stuck to me. He didn’t seem to like the way I shivered with sorrow and need any time the scent of cedars filled my nose. I didn’t like it either.

Rag in hand, I began idly dusting the monstrosity of a tree-bound throne.

I didn’t like the unfinished business between The Raven and me. I had seven days to figure out how to settle it. I knew, without a doubt, that the strength that I would need to walk away from him would be more than I could bear. I knew that I had to. He had lied to me, and he had, before even knowing me, cursed me to a life without family and to grow up without love in my life. There was nothing that could erase that sin from his tally sheet.

I needed to keep reminding myself that he was engaged to my greatest enemy, the lover of my archnemesis and the architect of my misfortune.

If I could keep that in my line of sight, I might be able to make it through these last seven days without falling back into the cycle of yearning and hate.

“Little Pearl . . .”

A soft, masculine voice filled the cavern of the empty room, and I stiffened. I did not recognize it, but there was something under the edges that whispered familiarity. Those two words felt like layers of old wallpaper in an ancient house I had once lived in for a few weeks. The more you scratched at it, the more patterns you found beneath.

I spun on my heel, wishing I hadn’t sent Goose away with the blade. A soldier stood in the doorway that led off to a private study Daróg rarely seemed to use for all the dust that had settled on every surface.

A gauntleted finger beckoned me into the study, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up as I watched his doe-brown eyes dart around the room to see if we were alone.

“Who the fuck are you?”

“Shh! Come!” the soldier whisper-yelled in a hiss and leveled his gaze on the door. “I won’t hurt you. I swear it. Come.”

I cocked a brow and looked from the door to the grand gallery back to the soldier. I inched closer, and the soldier opened it wider, nervous eyes glued to the other.

An assassin sent to kill me wouldn’t be so concerned about Silver and his companion soldier that guarded the other side of that grand gallery door. Right? Why the fuck would they care if anyone knew I was talking to them? Wouldn’t they just jump in and get to slicing?

I wasn’t overly familiar with the ways of assassins, but the last one I’d seen sure as hell didn’t seem to care all that much that I watched.

Shrugging, I slipped inside the study and put space between the soldier and I as he closed the door.

He relaxed significantly the moment the door to the study closed. I noted that he didn’t bother to lock it, which set me at ease as well. Even if I did back up to the desk and palm the thin bar of the letter opener that lay on its polished face.

The soldier turned a warm smile on me and let his gaze travel up and down my body with a familiarity that made me squirm under his regard. He clucked disappointment when he saw the cuts on my neck. “Little Pearl, you’ve cut yourself. Let me lick it better?” He took two steps forward, and I leveled the improvised weapon at him.

“Back the fuck up, weirdo. There will be no licking my neck for you. Who the fuck are you?”

An enigmatic smile curled along his lips, and he canted his head at me. “Do you truly not recognize me? Dig deep, little pearl, tell me true.”

My glare raked him up and down, but I did not recognize this nameless soldier clad in the livery of the guards and with rank-less ear cuffs. The longer I looked, though, the more that image of me sitting in the nearly empty room of the Cervantes family home, scratching at wallpaper with my thumb nail to pass the time grew.

The guard leaned against a bookshelf as I watched him, picking apart every detail.

“I do so love it when your eyes are on me.”

“Brittle Spear?”

He clucked a gentle reproach. “That would be Ard Tiarna Brittle Spear, little pearl.”