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“Aye. Again. I thought we had buried this long ago, but he has returned to it.” I leaned my back against the tree and watched the bees as Melty did.

We grew quiet, a faraway look in Melty’s eyes. She was prone to spells of madness and sanity. Over the years, she had grown accustomed to letting silence swallow the urges to scream and keen for no reason at all. I’d often wondered if Melty was the product of an affair with a bean sidhe, but she had no other markers of the mourning widows, not the dark hair nor the inky black footsteps.

When it passed, it passed in a snap, and she returned her sunny regard to me. “I’ve asked several times now, Raven of the Dawn. Why do you come to my grove?”

The way her honey-and-grass gaze roamed over me, framed with the pulsing glow of an invisible candle, told me clearly that I was not unwelcome, but that I should tread carefully with her patience.

“I come to make a deal, Emberlight of the Crypts,” I said, and with no guile. Other courtiers I needed to move and bait, but if I tried that with Melty, she had a thousand or more soldiers at her whim to punish my temerity.

“For what? What have I that a disgraced Ard Tiarna would come looking for?” She narrowed her eyes, and her brows slid across her skull into what might have been a scowl.

“Just information, Melty. Nothing of consequence and nothing that would put you or your charges in danger.” Bees began to float closer, only a few at first, but as the swarm grew thicker, I recognized the threat for what it truly was—Melty telling me to choose my words carefully and not to try to swindle her. “I swear it, Melty. What I would ask of you would be a yes-or-no answer to two questions.”

“That’s it?” Skepticism was plain in her simple question.

“For now, yes.”

“Ask your questions. If the bees approve and the price is met, then you will have your answers.” The tiny insects began landing on her, pushing around the wax of her body to make themselves comfortable.

“The first question. My anam cara, did she make it to Tromluí Údramáil?”

“And the second?”

“Is she protected by the new Ard Tiarna of Nightmares?”

The entire swarm settled on Melty, a riotous hum of wings fanning and dancing around her body as she herself hummed like she was listening to them. “We will answer these. For a price. What will you pay for this knowledge, fawn slayer?”

I frowned into the moniker, noting the slight glassing of Melty’s eyes as she watched me. “What is the price you wish? You once asked me for my true name.”

“We have no need for that any longer. It is no longer of interest to us. We sought to bargain for protection from the storm, but we have seen the weave of the flame and know which way it burns now.” Every word darkened her eyes and hardened her features.

I had never known Melty before she became what she was now, but as she leaned in, cloaked in her living dress of bees, her face seemed to change and arrange itself into the classic beauty of a true-born Celestial, a courtier of Árus Adaig. It was subtle at first, like the wax fought not to be shoved back into the memory of what it once was.

“I have a small cache of stable magic. It is not very powerful, my tattoos prevent me from great works or even storing much of my own, but it is mine and not tainted with purpose from another.” Was she always like this when propositioned? Had I made a mistake trying to bargain with the lesser Fómhar courtiers? Was a scion of nightmares and fear still a scion of nightmares and fear, no matter how high upon the aristocracy they were?

“I do not need your paltry magic. And you will need every mote of it if you are to survive the storm.” Veins of glowing honey, syrupy and golden, began dripping through her irises. “Again. Try again.”

“My fears, my hidden nightmares that no one but I knows. I will give them to you.” I was getting desperate; I hadn’t expected her to decline the offer of my true name. Most courtiers, even if they had no immediate use for it, would have taken it. If nothing else, it was an insurance policy against my future wrath. That alone had been risky; I didn’t trust Melty as far as I could run from her bees, but she was steady in the way most Fae were not. Predictable in the Fae court was just as deadly as a knife to your throat.

She laughed, a clear, crystal-like bell of a laugh that had the husky seduction of a good cognac, and she leaned forward. Beauty, dark and terrible, pulsed in her new face, still waxen and glowing from within with a flame unseen and unburning. “If my goddess blesses you with her attention, why would I take this from you? Why would I curse you to be bereft of a goddess’s favor? Again. Try again. You’re almost there, bone breaker.”

“Who are you?” I whispered to the new face that had taken up residence in my companion’s body.

“I am Emberlight. I am the Crypts. I am the night that stalks the soul, kept in a box, locked in the mausoleum, grasping for light when she is distracted. Crawling fingers up to pry my prison bars open. I am she who will grant your request. Try. Again. Inveigled.”

This was not Melty, nor a side of her that I had seen in the hundred or so years I had known her. I had seen her gripped by lunacy, screaming and keening at the flowers. I had rescued her from fountains where she sought to swim through their depths out into the oceans. I had saved her from more slings and arrows than she could ever conceive, too soft-hearted to allow the girl to bear the weight of more mockery. But this Emberlight I had not encountered.

She was an unknown entity, and with that came danger. With that came the uncertainty of not knowing if this was the wisest plan after all. At least with the Bride, I knew exactly what to expect. Warning ran up and down my spine, and my arm itched to reach for the sword at my side. She kept calling me strange names. Names that made no sense to me.

“In truth, my lady, I have bargained with everything I have of value. What would you wish for this knowledge?” I let the smooth guarded balance of the warrior courtier slide into my voice. It was a mistake. Her face grew more solid, more venomously beautiful as if she were a bloodhound that scented the fear on the wind.

“Then you must give what you do not have.” A delicate finger, just a little too long, tapped at her lush bottom lip. “Bring me the anam of Mabh.”

“Mabh’s anam cara was dead by his own hand before she even took the throne. I cannot bring you a dead Fae who has already been scattered to the wind and returned to the Well. Or is this your purpose, Emberlight? Do you set before me an impossible task because you cannot answer two simple questions with truth?” I parried her thrust. After all, warriors battled with swords and courtiers fenced with words. It was the same dance; it was always the same dance.

Rage ticked under the perfectly sculpted scimitar of a brow. “Did I say her anam cara? I said bring me her anam. Her soul.”

“Mabh is also dead, Emberlight! You know this. The whole of the realm knows this. We live in a world ruled by the madness unleashed by her death.” I let the blade of my frustration tease her into thinking I was getting sloppy. “You play me for a fool?”