Chapter 18
I STRUGGLED WITH that strange corset vest long enough that Lore came back to knock. “Need some help?”
“No,” I lied. Practicing for later, I supposed. “I’ll be down in a second.”
I frowned at my reflection. It should’ve felt like a costume, but instead, it felt like meeting a new side of myself that I hadn’t realized existed. I liked it. And I hated it too, because I didn’t want to like anything here.
As I returned to the library, Soren strode toward the tunnels, and we nearly collided.
He stopped abruptly.
I swallowed under the intensity of his gaze.
From behind him, Lore popped up from the couch, peering over Soren’s shoulder with a grin. “I knew it. It’s perfect.”
Weird that knowing she couldn’t lie made it a genuine compliment.
Soren seemed to blink back into motion. He stepped back, waving for me to pass, and murmured, “After you.”
Brushing past him, I glanced back over my shoulder, and our gazes locked again.
“I’ll be back shortly,” he said without explanation, disappearing down the tunnel, where the deep shadows darkened his wings to the point they almost looked real.
I pushed down confusing emotions at his abrupt exit.
What was that?
It almost felt like he’d been avoiding me since I’d signed the contract.
“You don’t need to worry.” Lore misunderstood my expression, coming over to lightly touch my shoulder. “We know what we’re doing. I believe we’ll find your family.”
“I wasn’t thinking about that.” Or at least, I hadn’t been. Now I was . . .
I glanced in the direction Soren had gone. He’d seemed almost angry. I whispered to Lore, “Did I do something wrong? He seems like he doesn’t want me here.”
Lore pulled her lips into her mouth, and her eyes lit up.
“Ah, that’s how you see it? I suppose you’re half right.
” She glanced at the tunnels and sighed.
“He doesn’t want you here, that’s true, but that’s for your sake.
This assignment isn’t safe for a fae, much less for a human.
We told him you could handle it, that you’d say no if you couldn’t, but he’s more ornery about it than usual. ”
“That’s why he doesn’t want to talk to me or look at me?”
Lore cleared her throat. “I wouldn’t say that . . . In fact, I’d guess the opposite.”
Leave it to a fae to confuse me further.
I crossed my arms, self-conscious. “I thought the party wasn’t until later. Why do I need to look fancy now?”
Julian sauntered over. “You’re correct. The Winter Solstice Ball isn’t until later this evening.” He said that like it explained everything.
“What you’re wearing isn’t fancy,” Lore argued, gesturing to her own white dress. “Just because it’s a skirt doesn’t make it fancy.”
“Yes it does,” Gwen chimed in from the couch.
She still wore dark leathers, but she’d changed into a top that left her arms bare, revealing that the tattoos on her dark skin weren’t only on her neck and face.
They crisscrossed in a detailed pattern.
When I looked closer, they almost seemed deeper than tattoos .
. . like they’d been carved or burned into her skin.
I shivered at the thought of enduring that.
She’d pulled most of her long dark hair back into thick corded braids, which revealed surprisingly dainty hoop earrings.
“In this case, though, it’s wise to don finer attire, since you’re going to court.
You need to look like you belong there.”
“If I wore pants, I’d have pockets,” I grumbled.
“Pssh, you think we don’t know about pockets?” Lore grinned, reaching out to show me four hidden compartments in the tight leather vest.
“They’re so small.” I couldn’t fit my phone in there. I’d been careful to turn it off whenever I wasn’t checking it now, and it still had 12 percent battery left. I couldn’t leave it behind.
She laughed. “The skirt has a pocket too.”
I shook my head. How had I not seen that? It was placed differently than human pockets, more in the center with a nearly invisible seam for the openings on both sides that led to the same single front pocket. It was deep enough for my phone. My shoulders relaxed.
Peregrin picked up some empty drinks from the table, and on his way to the kitchen, he leaned over to whisper, “You want to bring snacks? They’ll have food there, but if you want to eat on the way, I can pack something.”
“I’m okay, tha—” I cut off before I said “thank you,” glancing over at the tunnels where Soren had disappeared. “I’ll be okay.”
“Just say the word if you change your mind.” He smiled.
***
Two full hours later, instead of the one Lore had predicted, we finally left.
When Soren summoned us, I let out a shaky breath.
Nerves sang as we swept down the tunnel in a group.
I barely noticed the doors or any passing fae this time, too busy rehearsing my lines.
Soren had returned from his strange outburst, acting like nothing had happened, and had gone over the “script” of sorts with me for almost an hour, drilling me until I could say everything without tripping over my words.
If I screwed this up, he didn’t have to fulfill his end of the deal and get me into the party later to find my family, so the pressure weighed heavy—not to mention what might happen if the fae prince found out I was lying to him.
“Take a deep breath.” Soren’s voice in my ear startled me out of my thoughts. “You look like you’re about to faint.”
He’d let the others get a bit ahead. They didn’t seem to notice, continuing to chatter a few paces in front of us.
“Is this the part where you give me a pep talk and say, ‘You can do this’?” I muttered as we squeezed through the narrow portion of the tunnels.
He gave me a side-eyed glance. “You know I can’t do that.”
My eyes widened, and my chest grew tight. “You think I’ll fail?”
Groaning, he pinched the bridge of his nose. “I didn’t say that either. Perhaps instead of predicting the future, we could go over what you’ll say one more time.”
Now I wanted to groan. But it was the smart move, so I nodded. “Caius told me a bit about the people—I mean, humans—in this court last night, so I’m going to use that as an opening. I’ll tell him that I know the secret he didn’t want to share with me.”
“Which is?” Soren prompted, letting the others get farther ahead.
“That the Hollow Court has enlisted more humans into service than the fae treaties allow,” I parroted.
The prince had implied the humans came here of their own free will, though.
He’d said they were given food and shelter.
In fact, he’d said all the right things, really, looking back.
But if I considered his exact words, like Soren had taught me, he’d never actually said humans came here of their own free will, he’d said “some” have nowhere else to go.
That could be as few as one or two people.
And, technically, even if he gave them mere crumbs and a roof of dirt, he could claim he'd given them food and shelter. Had I been as wrong about the prince as I’d been about Soren?
Actually, did I have enough evidence on either of them to make a truly informed opinion?
Earlier, I’d been too busy memorizing my lies, but now it hit me.
“When you say the humans are ‘in service,’ what does that mean?”
Soren cut his gaze to mine as we crossed through a dim tunnel with dozens of root pockets and crevices, where all kinds of strange creatures might be hiding. “I think you already know the answer to that.”
“I think I do too,” I whispered, unconsciously stepping closer to him. “But I need to hear you say it.”
“It means they signed contracts, like your family. And most had no idea what they’d agreed to until it was too late.”
Blinking at the blurry tunnel as I processed this, I nodded, throat closing. “Does Caius know?” Maybe the prince didn’t realize that some of these people had been tricked into signing their contracts.
Soren avoided my eyes. “Try to focus on the task at hand.”
Classic fae diversion.
But why?
If he hated Caius so much, I’d think he’d say yes, knowing it’d make me hate him too. So, did that mean he couldn’t say yes? That Caius didn’t know? I hoped that was the case. Knowing Soren, if he evaded a direct answer, I couldn’t expect to get any more information.
“Right. Okay.” I swallowed. “So, then I’ll say something like, ‘I probably shouldn’t tell you, but the Unseelie king just found out about the large number of humans and sees it as a big problem—”
Soren shook his head.
“Ah . . . I mean, as an act of war. Because his court doesn’t have access to as many humans, so they’re . . . uneven?” It definitely wasn’t supposed to come out as a question, but my breathing had gotten a bit choppy again.
“Unbalanced,” Soren corrected. “Your goal is to get him worried.” He repeated what he’d said earlier. “We want him to approach me to discuss a resolution with the Shadow Court. I’ll handle the rest.”
I nodded. It made sense that Soren could speak for the Shadow Court, since I’d gotten the impression that not many other fae here were from there.
Wait. “I thought my ‘goal’ was just to be convincing.”
“If you’re convincing, he’ll be worried, so it’s the same goal, really.”
It wasn’t though.
One was in my control, and the other wasn’t at all.
My mind raced as we traipsed through the tunnels. I tried to remember the exact wording of the contract.
Share a lie. No problem.
Deliver it exactly as requested . . . My jaw clenched.
As I’d noticed earlier, the wording was vague, with no specifics to clearly define whether or not I’d fulfilled it. If Soren didn’t get the results he wanted, he could claim I hadn’t delivered the lie correctly. I really should’ve at least tried to argue that point. Now it was too late.
I tried desperately not to lose that last little thread of hope, gripping it fiercely. “I can do this,” I whispered to myself as we turned a corner where the cave mouth leading to the court opened wide.
But this time, daylight streamed out.