“Aren?” A fae peeks in from the doorway. He mentions Sethan’s name along with a string of other words I recognize, but I can’t make sense of their order or meaning. Aren responds as he rises off the bed, then he smiles down at me.

“Are you feeling better?” he asks.

He expects me to be grateful, to feel like I owe him. “I was coping before.”

He chuckles. “You’re stubborn to a fault, nalkin-shom. I will win you over. Eventually.”

The door closes and locks behind him. I’ll never admit it out loud, but his healing does make it difficult to hate him.

SEVEN

SOMEBODY SHOULD TELL Naito and Kelia to get a room. They might be swinging swords at each other’s heads, but there’s something suggestive about their sparring. They’re both drenched in sweat and their chests heave almost in sync as they stare into each other’s eyes. Kelia’s toying with him. She moves slowly enough for Naito to think he might have a chance, then she coyly ducks or flits back just out of reach. She stays mostly on the defensive, but on the occasions she chooses to attack, her dulled practice sword always scores a hit.

The clash of metal on metal rings again across the clearing. Naito manages to block one of Kelia’s offensives. He grins, catches the playful punch she swings, then pulls her into his arms, slanting his mouth over hers. Chaos lusters spark between them.

“Curious?”

I nearly fall off the picnic table when I spin toward Aren.

“What?” I squeak, my heart leaping into my throat. When Aren smiles, my heart stays lodged there. Damn him for being this devilishly attractive and damn him for reappearing now. He vanished a second time after healing my arm four days ago, and I just stopped looking over my shoulder for his return.

“You’re watching Naito and Kelia,” he says. “You want to know how it feels to kiss a fae.”

I know how it feels to kiss a fae. That’s the problem.

“Back to stay this time?” I crane my neck to look up at him when he steps in front of me.

“I’d be happy to satisfy your curiosity.” His grin grows even more mischievous. My stomach somersaults, and I have to fight to keep my expression blank.

“Kill anyone while you were gone?” I ask.

He leans toward me, lowers his voice. “It would be an interesting experiment, don’t you think?”

Unwilling to cower away from him, I keep my back rigidly straight as he eases closer. I try to appear bored, but my heart beats a quick staccato against my chest. I’m not afraid of kissing him. I’m afraid that I’ll like it. In fact, I’m certain the edarratae will make me like it, and there’s something downright disturbing about that.

Aren’s gaze drops to my mouth. I panic when he begins to close the distance between us. Before his lips touch mine, I raise my hands to shove him away. He laughs and dodges aside.

“I wouldn’t touch you without permission,” he says as he hops up to sit on the table beside me.

What the hell? “You always touch me without permission.”

“I . . .” He stops, chuckles. “Well, yes. I guess I do.”

A chirpy squeak makes us both look toward the ground. Sosch, the adorable but villainous kimki I found curled up in my backpack a week ago, scurries to the picnic table. He stops, lifts his front paws off the ground, and perks his ears forward.

Aren picks him up, but as soon as he sets him in his lap, Sosch chirps again and stares at me. I keep my arms folded. No way am I letting him near me. He belongs to Aren, and I will not let his nose-crinkling turn me into a vulnerable puddle of goo.

Aren clucks. Apparently, this is all the permission Sosch needs to leap into my lap. He nudges my crossed arms. His nose is soft, damp.

“You’re going to hurt his feelings,” Aren says, reaching into his pocket.

I don’t move until he tosses something to me. I catch the drawstring pouch—my drawstring pouch—in the air. The anchor-stones inside grind against one another when I tighten it in my grip.

“You’re giving this back to me?” He might as well. Without a fae to take me through a gate, the rocks are useless.

“I’ve spent the last two days fissuring to those stones’ locations,” he says, watching Sosch slip under my arm. The kimki’s fur feels like silk against my skin. I let the thing stay in my lap, but I don’t pet him.

Aren’s mouth curves into a slight smile before he refocuses on me. “Most of them were predictable: your home in Texas, several Provincial Gates, and a few of the Realm’s major cities. One took me to a Missing Gate we hadn’t found yet. Useful, that one.”

A chill settles over my skin. I tear my eyes away from Aren and drag my hand over Sosch’s back, making his fur turn silver.

“There’s only one location I couldn’t fissure to.”

Damn it, damn it, damn it.

“I had to find a stone-reader to be sure.” He takes my right hand—without permission—uncurls my fingers, and presses a semitransparent rock into my palm. He closes my fingers over it. “She told me where it goes.”

Damn it!

It was stupid to keep it, but I wanted to remember the night Kyol fissured me to the Sidhe Cabred. Fae can only enter the Ancestors’ Gardens with the king’s permission; humans aren’t allowed to enter at all. The Sidhe Cabred is the closest thing to holy ground in the Realm, and Kyol . . . he wanted to take me there. Because the gardens are located within the silver walls of Corrist, the Realm’s capital, the only way to get me past the heavily guarded entrance was to use a Sidhe Tol, a special type of gate that allows fae to fissure into areas protected by silver.

It doesn’t hurt fae to come into contact with silver; it simply prohibits them from fissuring wherever the hell they want. The homes of the rich are protected by the metal. So are prisons, military installations, and any place that holds something of value. The Realm’s kings have kept the locations of the few Sidhe Tol they’ve found a secret, but since Kyol is Atroth’s sword-master, he knows where they are. He fissured me through one to get me inside the gardens.

I don’t know if any place on Earth can compete with the beauty of the Sidhe Cabred. As Kyol led me down its seldomtrod paths, I felt like I was walking through a paradise, some cross between a rain forest and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Maybe it’s because even without magic sculpting the vegetation, all the trees and plants and flowers were exotic to me. A river cut through the center of the gardens before it crashed over a steep, rocky cliff into a clear pool at the base of Corrist’s northern wall. It’s there where Kyol led me, there where we almost . . .

But we didn’t. Again, I was completely willing, and Kyol was so close to breaking, but he held himself back. It wasn’t a surprise. I was used to not crossing that line, used to being satisfied with kisses that stole my breath and edarratae that electrified my skin.

Beside me, Aren reaches up. With two fingers along my jaw, he turns my face toward him. “You’ve been through a Sidhe Tol, McKenzie.”

The evidence is fisted in my hand. I can’t deny it.

“I was blindfolded,” I say.

“I don’t believe you.” He doesn’t remove his hand from my jaw. Instead, he slides it back until his fingers weave through my hair, until his thumb slides over my cheek. “If you tell me where it is, I’ll let you go.”