KANE

RETURNING TO SOLARIS AFTER HALF a century away was not dissimilar to revisiting a childhood classroom as an adult. I couldn’t deny the

comfort, the familiarity—the soles of my feet knew the pebble-dashed streets of the walled city better than they’d ever know Shadowhold. I’d been raised here. Had played my first game of chess with my brother under that awning outside the noisy toy shop. Had broken my first bone climbing those still-mismatched stairs to the southern tower—the guard who’d allowed me such freedom was whipped the next morning in the city center until his back peeled like a late-summer peach.

These paved stone avenues only served to remind me that I’d never be that boy again. I could sail or fly or run anywhere—the highest peaks of the Pearl Mountains, the lowest depths of the Mineral Sea—but I could never truly go home. Not to the walls that had sheltered me in boyhood. Not to the life I’d built in Shadowhold. I was a nomad, with no destination, and everything still to lose.

Think on the bright side, I told myself. You’ll be dead soon.

And it was true. Soon I’d spare the greater good from the monster that was my father, and in doing so, find my home there. Perhaps my coffin might serve as some new foyer. A mantel of graveyard soil. A roof of inching worms.

The brassy twangs and pitchy strums of an orchestra plucked me from my gruesome fantasies. I craned my neck up toward the looming palace flickering with glowy red light and the shadows of exultant bodies.

He was celebrating. Hosting a ball of some kind.

My father experiencing joy should have sent my dragon hackles straight up. The vacant ridges only served as a reminder of how egregiously underprepared I was to stalk inside those walls.

As I neared, the palace entry became visible, and I could just narrowly make out revelers wandering in and out amid the merriment, donned in elaborate masks.

The Lumerian Solstice. I’d been gone so long, I’d forgotten what had once been my favorite day of the year. More memories of Yale and Griffin, not even ten years old—unwilling to dress as anything other than stately guards. We’d fight my mother, who’d handcrafted brilliant masks of rich leather and real lion’s fur to turn my brother and me into decorative, regal beasts.

This was good, actually.

A mortal in the palace of Solaris hunting for the Blade of the Sun? My full week in Pearl traveling across pillowy, silken clouds and endless snow had not offered me a single intelligent idea on how to accomplish that without dying. And swiftly.

But the masquerade was a godsend. Perhaps literally—I’d never know. Once inside, finding a mask couldn’t be too difficult. Knowing the

Solstice, there would be fewer sober patrons than I could count on two hands. The real obstacle would be slipping inside in the first place.

Crouching behind a stationed carriage, I appraised the palace entrance.

Rows upon rows of those bone-white gates with their red-and-black filagree stretched on. Hordes of silver-clad Fae guards milled between every layer. And beyond them, deep inside the heart of the castle walls, I knew each invitee was being checked against an elongated scroll with at least a thousand names scribbled down its face. An infestation of thick silver armor would monitor that, too.

Perhaps…perhaps I wouldn’t need a mask at all.

That silver Fae armor—molded carefully to each guard, sealing off everything but their face under a red visor—was as powerful a disguise as any headpiece or costume. One on one, I couldn’t physically best a Fae soldier with my new mortality, but with a bit of creativity and the element of surprise on my side…I’d at least have a shot.

But I’d never get my hands on one of those men at the castle’s entrance.

I hurried from the bustling gates toward the back of the palace. Around carts selling masks of monsters and dragons and exotic birds—I fought the trivial ache that stirred in my chest at the wings and scales—and through cobblestone alleys with decorative garlands of Fae lighte strung high between buildings.

It wouldn’t be spare of guards, but I’d have far fewer to contend with. And I’d have the gardens—tall, strict hedges and precisely cut grass—as meager cover.

I kept my face buried in my cloak. I knew it was an unnecessary precaution—no mere citizen would recognize me after all these years. And even if they did, the fallen prince would have to be mad to return to Solaris without an army, and in his human form no less. They’d assume their mind had been playing tricks on them—nobody could be that foolish, right?

Wrong. So very wrong.

I was as foolish as the night was dark.

The dry, clipped gardens surrounding the back entrance were closer to the rich Solaris neighborhoods that hugged the city’s walls. Those nearest to the palace were the most noticeably grand and stately. If I found myself outrunning Fae soldiers—or trying to—I’d at least have a chance of hiding in some noble’s courtyard or lofty agate doorway.

I slipped behind a crisp, sheared hedge. Back here, only one spear-tipped gate stood between the gardens and the palace. Heart beginning to ratchet, I pulled my sword from its scabbard and threaded it under my arm and through the fabric of my tunic. From afar it made for a convincing stab wound. And my clothes were dark enough that they’d be unable to discern whether I was bleeding or not. I lifted my cloak’s hood over my head.

Kneeling to the sharp blades of grass, I sucked in a mouthful of muggy Solaris air.

“Help,” I called out with an exhale, crawling out from the hedge into clear view of the castle. Moving toward the suburban, pebbled streets, I writhed back behind another row of low, dehydrated bushes. I slid across the dirt, cautious not to actually slice the tucked blade right through my rib cage. “Dear Gods!”

I crawled even slower. Then I croaked out another garbled plea.

One set of footfalls sounded a few feet away. Hurried, but in no real rush. “Sir, this is royal property.”

Victory sang in my ears. I only moaned, my face blocked by my hood.

The soldier sighed, kneeling to inspect my grievous wound. “What happened to you?”

I overtook him in one swift movement.

My cloak served as a fine noose, wrapped tightly around the flailing soldier’s neck—working both to subdue him and silence his screams. I grunted as I rose to my knees, heart spasming, and kicked us both back behind the nearest towering hedge. Looming over him, I pulled the fabric tighter, and tighter still. His face—a round one slackened by shock and lack of oxygen—was turning a ghastly shade of purple. My muscles strained, my brow dripping sweat. The soldier clawed at me, nails scraping entire chunks of skin from my neck and cheek. The pain hardly registered.

An eternity crawled between us. He gasped and spit. All I could think was that his silver helmet would prove even more useful now that my face was marred by scratches.

“Please,” he gasped, hardly audible. “Just let me—” Death stole away with his final words.

NOW, THIS WAS A PARTY.

An upbeat melody blared through my eardrums, steady drum line like a heartbeat in my chest. Women danced with abandon, dressed like works of

fine art, men drunk and drooling after them. Roasted bird and hot buttered rum scented the air. I swiped a full chalice of crimson birchwine from a server as I ducked through the throng and toward the banquet table.

Arwen’s chocolate hair and endless eyes filling my mind, I raised the glass slightly and drank the rich spirit to her in one long swallow.

It was a beautiful night to die.

If I could commend my father on anything at all, it was his tremendous forethought. The man had always been six steps ahead of me. Ahead of everyone. Of course, once he realized the blade couldn’t be destroyed he’d have it guarded night and day. Probably by the fiercest creatures known to man.

Which meant it was in one of the lairs.

The monsters Lazarus chained beneath these floors…they made my nightmares look like sleeping aids. Where they were kept were the only catacombs in the castle Griffin and I never dared explore. Not even at our most rebellious…or most inebriated.

The best route to the lairs would be past the raised banquet table atop the decorated dais, through the castle kitchens, and down into the—

“Honored guests.”

Layers of skirts heavy like sodden mops slowed their swirls all around me. Shiny leather shoes stopped midtap. Bile pitched in my gut.

I hadn’t heard my father’s voice since Siren’s Bay.

My head swam with startlingly vibrant memories of Leigh’s and Arwen’s screams. Sand that had grown heavy with blood. The clash of metal, bleeding into the band’s quieting harmony. I tucked my chin down and pushed faster through the crowd, my heart slamming. The silver helmet covered my face, I knew, but it wouldn’t be the first time he’d picked my thoughts out of a crowd. Though I’d found ways in my youth to quiet my mind around him, I didn’t dare look to that dais and run the risk of letting my emotions get the best of me.

“What a triumphant celebration of our plentiful harvest,” Lazarus announced.

The crowd of trashed noble Fae cheered.

Rat brains. F**king imbeciles, all of you. How could they fall for his manipulative swill?

My eyes suctioned to the scuffed, checkered floor of the great hall. Ten more feet. Maybe twelve. I could slip into the kitchens while he addressed his subjects. Make it to the monster lairs in the next few minutes, if I was fast.

I hurried past buxom women and potbellied men scarfing down enough food to nourish the entire starving realm. At every too-quick step that drew an odd look from a guest I slowed my pace until my legs moved rigidly, as if wading through a swamp.

Five feet now.

“I couldn’t conjure a better night to announce, in the greatest union our realm has yet seen—”

I could just make out the oil lamps that lit the hallway that led to the kitchens. The chefs and servants and dishwashers fussing like hens to get each appetizer and drink out to the crowd. I dodged one such speeding server, steadying his tray of emptied glasses with a muttered, “Sorry.”

“I present to you,” my father continued, “the beautiful last full-blooded Fae, who has agreed to be my queen.”

I stalled at his words, my eyes still on that bustling hallway, my blood turning to solid ice.

My first thought was that my father was lying to his people. He’d done it before. Countless times. He was the kind of leader—the kind of man—who would tell his subjects anything so long as it served him. He’d tell them all to slit their throats if it would award him more lighte, more power, more coin…Certainly he wasn’t above dressing some unassuming Fae girl up and presenting her to his court as the captured full-blooded Fae?

Within a fraction of a second, a different, far more horrific thought drifted in: He’s going to display Arwen for them. Her rotting, impaled corpse. His crowd will cheer as he—

No.

I was sick. Sick, twisted, depraved—that kind of barbarity permeated only my mind, not reality. He wouldn’t…even he couldn’t—

As the masked revelers around me boomed their cacophonous cheers, and morbid curiosity won out, I lifted my head to the banquet table.

A gold-draped woman stood in an elaborate matching mask beside my father.

It’s not her. Don’t do this to yourself. It’s not her.

But…the woman’s curled brown hair falling softly down her back, and the gentle shape of her jaw, and those full, worried lips…so similar. Standing there, body bound tightly in some garish gold monstrosity that hugged her hips and too-thin limbs and displayed her chest as if it were a feast for any lecher’s eyes. Her lovely flushed cheeks. Her long, elegant neck. Her chest, rising and falling—

Everything inside of me halted.

No mask—not even the lavish gilded one that covered half of her delicate face—could hide those warm olive eyes from me.

Alive. She was alive.

Where devastation had run rampant—all of it, cleared out in a single instant. My vision blurred with hot tears. My knees buckled, and I locked them to stay upright. Was this real?

I took in the sweaty, delighted faces and grotesque piles of food and barrels of spirit. I was here. In Solaris. And so was she.

Arwen—my Arwen—was alive.

Even with the White Crow, I’d never allowed myself to have hope. But I doubted the woman I beheld now had ever given up on me. That thought alone—how she might recount the days she spent steadfast in her belief that I’d come for her, soft hand laced in mine as she spoke—it nearly sank me to my knees.

But I stood firm, holding her shadowed eyes as she observed the roaring crowd with nothing but loathing.

“In honor of our sacred Solstice,” my father said beside her, “we swear a hallowed oath to bear heirs worthy of this palace.”

His words slammed me back to this plane. This reality—heirs.

The crowd, still hollering with glee, cheered louder as Lazarus edged toward her. “True Fae heirs that will restore this great realm. Heirs that will

bestow more lighte, the strongest lighte, back into its soil. And we’ll begin our quest…”

Arwen flinched as he reached for her. Stroked her cheek. Her neck. Her arm.

I dug my toes into the floor to keep from launching myself at him. From becoming a human barrier between her and his fucking hands. He was touching her with his fucking hands.

Lazarus grinned as he cupped her backside with familiarity before a rabid audience. “Tonight,” he promised.

No—no.

A harvesting ceremony.

That’s why he’d put her in that vile, degrading costume. Why he’d fondled her before his entire court.

I pushed past a squealing woman in a ghoul mask as Lazarus grasped Arwen’s face in one hand. Not gently. Not a touch between a king and his queen. But with malice. So tightly I could see the flesh of her cheeks draw inward, could see her recoil from his touch and try to yank herself away. But he was stronger, and he jerked her toward him.

I was barreling through a grunting, squealing crowd when he planted his lips on hers.

My stomach coiled into feverish knots, and I froze.

My eyes, locked on a more gut-wrenching sight than I had the stomach for.

He was kissing her. Not chaste, not kingly. A vile, vicious kiss. A promise of violence to come.

Arwen squirmed. Tried to withdraw from the intrusion.

And the sick, sycophantic members of his court all around me were still

cheering, as if beholding a harmonious union.

I would annihilate him. I had to. And if I could, I would have killed each member of his court, too. Slowly. And with euphoric pleasure.

Lazarus released Arwen and motioned for the crowd to quiet down. In the absence of their hoots and claps I could hear only my heart pounding. My lungs, shallow with breath.

But I had to be smart, first. For her sake, I had to drown those volatile, impulsive parts of me for the time being.

Arwen was alive. She had survived the fall. Survived impalement. And not only was she alive, she had likely spent the last few months here. In Solaris. With my father. Betrothed to him. He had probably beaten her. Harvested her lighte. Done…unspeakable things to her.

And I would not be able to save Arwen, to shear the skin from my father’s bones—to feed it to him as it regenerated for a thousand years— until I’d been reborn as full-blooded. If I charged the dais now, I’d be dead in the next minute, if not less.

And then he’d conduct the harvesting ceremony before his entire banquet of nobles without incident. An archaic practice performed at midnight every Lumerian Solstice. One which my father and his court believed would help him conceive the full-blooded heir he’d always hoped for.

All those men and women, watching in polite silence as he rutted— I couldn’t—wouldn’t—allow that to happen.

I pulled my eyes from the now-seated Arwen, staring at her plate piled high with dead peacock, and moved swifter than I ever had in my life. Not for the dais, nor the monster lairs, but for my only hope of getting to Arwen before my father could.