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They didn’t acknowledge me beyond the occasional flick of an eye over their shoulder to ensure that I was, indeed, following. Follow, I did, doing my best to memorize each turn and twist as we navigated the seemingly unending labyrinth of corridors, passageways, and staircases. Rule #17: Always have an exit plan.

But the more I tried to focus on the mental map I was trying to build, the faster it fled from my mind. I clung to it desperately, tried to hold on to it. Left, left, right at the column of carved dark-brown-almost-black glass with the tiny gold stars. Or was it right at the painting of the snowbound castle? Shit! It was like trying to hold on to dandelions in a tornado.

The moment I saw other Fae, I pulled years of armor around me. Imagining them solidifying out of thin air to mimic the suits of metal of my guards, minus the rich kelly-green tabard sporting a sword pointed at their throats and a sprig of nightshade, meadowsweet, and foxglove bound over it. Mine was made of stars, twinkling in my mind’s eye, the cold vacuum of space lending me its icy chill. My back went rigid, and my chin tipped up enough that I could look down on the otherwise taller people who gawked at the pearly daoire swathed in a sheer bloodred nightgown.

I was surprised to see the two I’d spoken with at the Night Market in the ranks of Fae we passed as I was escorted into what I could only imagine was a throne room. Maybe I shouldn’t have been. I had always known the world was smaller than we liked to think, so what made me think this hidden society was any less tiny?

He was there, of course, wrapped in conversation with a woman with roses woven in her dark hair. He did not look my way, did not even acknowledge me, and that sat sideways in my throat. I wanted to spit in his face like I had Rictus. I wanted to scream at him he owed me all his attention for what he had done to me.

But what had he done to me? He hadn’t put me here, and he hadn’t forced me into slavery. All he had done was bought me and given me a blanket. He owed me nothing, and I owed him nothing, so I turned my iciness on him as well.

Let them all wither in the arctic.

I caught pieces of the conversation he was having with the beautiful rose-bedecked woman.

“And who, dear Raven mine, have you absconded to your bed this time? Which court will be before my brother next month when you tire of her and her lord comes to the King demanding your head?”

Her laughter was light and airy, familiar with him.

“A surprise, My Lady Oaken Rose. You have seen her. Though not as I have.” He leaned into her, a solicitous whisper loud enough for others to hear, his tone lecherous. “The sight of her splayed out across the bed would shame the stars in the night sky.”

I should have kept walking. I should have kept following my guard. Perhaps it was fate that I did the exact opposite and turned on my heel to face him fully. After all, the kin’tha was already turning before I was.

“Tattooing stars on your palm and calling it a ‘her’ doesn’t count.”

Shocked gasps of outrage echoed in the otherwise dead silent chamber. The woman he was speaking with turned slowly, rage crackling in her well-practiced, passive features. A slow smile crept across her face like a spider.

Heat banked in his eyes as they connected with mine and held them.

Had I not been busy staring at the shifting spires of a forest within his gaze, I might have seen the hand aimed for my face. I barely noticed until the crack of her palm against my cheek snapped me back to her.

“A daoire does not speak in the chamber of the Ard Rí unless ordered to do so.” She tossed a glance to the guards. “Be sure that she is beaten and then remove her tongue.”

“Now, now, My Lady, your brother and I might want to use that tongue this evening. Perhaps tomorrow, the guards can deliver it to you if we find it unpleasant.”

His soft baritone split velvet like a razor as his gaze raked over me, hungry and molten, before he turned back to his whispered conversation with the woman.

Leather-clad fingers dug into my shoulders and forced me back toward the carpeted path I had been heading down.

You fucking idiot. I chastised myself. Survive, eh? That was not surviving. That was stupid.

I bit down on my tongue and began tracing a two and a one into my thigh as I neared the grand dais before me.

I had seen many movies and TV shows with thrones, but I was not prepared for the splendor of this one. It was otherworldly. A pair of intertwined trees, boughs heavy with leaves grew straight out of the stone wall behind it. At the center of its branches was a stained glass window, casting shifting rainbows of colors between the graceful arms. Below it, its trunk had grown into an ancient-looking seat polished by who knows how many asses. Flowers, ferns, and herbs grew along the tiled floor in a carpet of pure green shot through with a riot of color. And at its center stood an enormous man who towered over the others, a crown of golden foxgloves woven into his rich blonde hair. If I didn’t know this was the Ard Rí, a kidnapping slaver, and a bastard by any measure, I’d have called him stunning. But all I could think of was that old saying that even the devil is beautiful.

His head was tipped down in conversation with another man, whose black hair danced with the shimmering corona of stars at midnight. The tips of pale ivory ears adorned with a golden wire-worked cuff that bore two raw amethyst points broke apart the night sky his head was wreathed in. The contrast between his hair, inky garb, and pale skin that shone like the face of the moon was disarming.

Every one of the Fae who gathered in the grandeur of the throne room was, on their own, a glimmering jewel of otherworldly beauty. As a whole, in a single place, dressed in their best courtly glory, it was almost too much to bear to look at. Each one wore caps on their ear tips, some gold, some silver, some bejeweled ivory, some carved and polished wood, yet all wore the riches of their station plain to see. Nightmares, dreams, angels, demons, and everything in between glittered in the dappled light streaming in from the windows that towered above us, and I felt myself getting drunk on the beauty around me.

As if following the notes to some unheard tune, The Raven of the Dawn appeared before me, the wide plane of his back naked of armor this time. I was treated to watching the expanse of his muscles up close as his breath drew in and out, stretching the velvet of his tunic as he gave a deep bow at the waist toward the two chatting men.

“Great Ard Rí, Glory of the New Dew, I come before you as your humble servant to present a gift.”

The deference in his voice sounded odd. I barely knew this man, but I had listened to him say only a handful of words and already knew that the flavor of submission was one that sat on his tongue like rotten meat. His voice was meant for whispering the foulest of depravity and for singing the lullaby of death across the battlefield. It was not meant to be contorted into a statement of humbleness.

It didn’t seem to bother the Ard Rí, though, who turned away from the man with the midnight sky for hair. I didn’t expect the shrewdness in his bright cornflower-blue eyes. I didn’t expect him to take my measure in half a second and then land his gaze on The Raven not a breath between. I expected that at least more than a half glance would be spared for a nearly naked woman surrounded by guards and escorted by a massive black cat. When dancing among the constellations such as his court was, I guess a single pearl was nothing but a passing fancy.

Thunder rolled in his tumultuous gaze but for a single moment before the clouds were broken by a false smile that stretched easy and with well-worn practice across his features. “The Raven has returned from his flight! Rise, brother! Your King would acknowledge his oldest friend.”