Kyol shakes his head. “The remnants wouldn’t follow a false-blood so easily. We’re dealing with a fae who is charismatic and smart. I think it’s likely he was one of Atroth’s officers or he was rising in the ranks quickly. He’s looking for a Descendant who can rival your bloodline, but he hasn’t yet found one who’s willing to take the throne.”

No one here misses hearing the “yet.” We’re on borrowed time. I don’t know how Lena’s going to make the high nobles confirm her as queen, but she needs to come up with something soon. I wish I had a suggestion, but fae politics are beyond me. Plus, I have another problem to add to our list.

“There’s something else we need to talk about,” I say. “The remnants abducted Paige.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Kyol stiffen. He looks at me, but I keep my gaze focused on Lena, and say, “They put a ward on her purse and left it at my apartment for me to find. That’s why they showed up when I was there.”

“And Paige is…” Lena asks.

“My friend. We went to her sister’s wedding.” “Went to” is stretching it. We were there for, like, five minutes because Aren wanted a public place—one filled with humans—to exchange me for Lena after the Court captured her. “I need your help finding her.”

She stares at me for a good five seconds before she turns and sits on the top step of the dais. If she didn’t look so weary, I’d be annoyed by her lack of reaction. Still, I have to get Paige back.

“What do you want me to do?” she asks. “Assign a hundred fae to search the entire Realm for a single human? Shall I assign a hundred more to search Earth?”

“Lena,” Aren interjects, stepping to my side.

“What?” she snaps. “The remnants attacked the palace because they knew I’d divert resources to save her.”

I manage to draw in a slow breath and count to three before responding, but only because I know she’s stressed and hasn’t been getting much sleep.

“You could offer a trade,” I say. “They took her for a reason. You could at least attempt to—”

“And who should I trade?” she demands. “You?”

Lena and I have never been friends. We probably never will be, and our tolerance for each other has its ups and downs. If she didn’t need my shadow-reading talent and I didn’t need her to bring some kind of stability to the Realm, we would have nothing to do with each other. But the fact is, she does need me, and I need her. I need her to end this war so that I can have some hope of living a seminormal human life.

“If it comes down to that, yes,” I tell her.

I feel Aren turn toward me—I’m sure he has a few things to say about a trade—but I don’t look away from Lena, not until her gaze focuses behind me. I glance over my shoulder and see Jacia, daughter of Srillan, limping our way. She’s a former Court fae, one of almost a hundred Kyol convinced to support Lena. She also happens to be the woman King Atroth wanted Kyol to form a life-bond with. That never happened because he was in love with me. I wonder if it’s a possibility now. She’s strong and beautiful, with long, black hair braided over one shoulder and the brightest silver eyes I’ve ever seen.

“We need a healer,” she says in Fae. Her voice is monotone, but not tight, which is a surprise since she’s left a trail of blood behind her. The jaedric armor protecting her left thigh hangs on by just one lace.

“There’s still fighting at the veligh?” Lena demands. She rises from her seat on the dais’s top step to glare at Kyol. “Why are you here?”

“I needed to…” He stops, glances my way before clearing his throat. “I needed to know what was happening here.”

Translation: he needed to know I was safe.

Almost as an afterthought, he adds, “You sent your guards to the veligh. I’m here because you cannot be left unprotected.”

“One thing we can agree on,” Aren mutters as he walks to Jacia and peers down at her injury. He pulls off the jaedric leg shield, then slips his hand through the rip in her blood-soaked pants so he can heal the gash in her leg.

Only Aren, Lena, and a handful of other fae have the ability to heal. It’s one of the only endangered magics that I wish was more common. Some of the others, like the ability to read minds or to cast darkness, are less beneficial, more terrifying. The king and the majority of the Realm think humans and our culture and artifacts have been weakening the fae’s magic over the generations. They blame my people for making gate-building and a few other magics—magics that I’m not certain ever existed in the first place—extinct.

Jacia’s gaze moves from Aren to me. I have no idea if she knows why Kyol rejected a life-bond with her. We tried to hide our feelings for each other, but I’m sure some people were suspicious. But then, maybe life-bonds are rejected often? Fae are able to sense each other through the magical bindings, and if it’s a good pairing, they’re able to use more magic without becoming exhausted. The biggest drawback is that life-bonds are permanent; even if the couple splits up, the magical bond remains. I’m pretty sure the only way to end one is for one of the fae involved to die. That would definitely discourage me from agreeing to one.

“Jacia,” Lena says. “What’s happening at the veligh?”

Jacia says the situation is under control, but if I’m translating her words correctly, the remnants were close to breaking through our defenses. A portion of the silver wall was damaged from flames thrown by a fae.

That fae had to be powerful to be able to manipulate fire like that. Trev is a fire-wielder, one powerful enough to throw flames, and Lena can do something similar with air, but most fae who are able to manipulate the elements can only create small, temporary flames or a soft puff of wind. I hate knowing that the remnants have such powerful people supporting them.

When Aren finishes healing Jacia, Lena questions her further. They’ll need to erect a scaffold to support the wall until a more permanent fix can be made. Aren and Lena discuss who will be in charge of that project, then they switch to another subject, then another. When they start talking about the books that contain a registry of fae names and magical abilities, I glance at Kyol, but he seems very determined not to look my direction.

A resigned sigh escapes from me. It’s a familiar feeling, being pushed to the side like this.

Without a word, I leave the king’s hall.

FOUR

FOR TEN YEARS, I kept my human life separate from my life as a shadow-reader. I let my parents believe I was crazy because it was forbidden to tell them about the fae, and I was on academic probation almost my entire time in college because I couldn’t keep my grades up. Except for Paige, I’ve been friendless this entire time. But I accepted all of that. I accepted everything because it was best that humans not know anything about the fae. It would endanger the Realm, and I didn’t want to drag anyone else into its wars.

My precautions and sacrifices did a hell of a lot of good. They didn’t protect Paige.

“McKenzie.”

I’m surprised to hear Aren’s voice behind me, but I don’t slow down. I pull at the bindings of my cuirass as I stride through a corridor that follows the palace’s exterior wall.