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  “Cole’s here too?” Arden’s blood ran cold, her gaze snapping up to Cato’s.

  He shook his head. “I haven’t seen him.”

  “Watch her.” She passed Tabby off without a second thought, already sweeping their surroundings for any sign of her other friend. She didn’t stop to think that she was trusting an Unseelie with the care of her friend, there wasn’t time for that. Cato called out, but she moved away, fear cloying at her insides.

  Cole wasn’t a Heartless anymore. He was no safer here than Tabby was.

  The manor and its grounds were massive; it would take all night to find one person among the crowds, but that couldn’t deter her. Arden made her way through the groupings of bonfires, hoping that Cole had been found in the same spot as Tabby and hadn’t been led very far. Neither of them was that lucky, however, because he wasn’t anywhere near the bonfires.

  She checked the courtyard next, climbing to the top of the back porch in order to glance over the tops of many faerie heads. The stone table Mavek had played on hours before was now covered in trays and platters, all overloaded with food. She thought she spotted the back of Cole’s head, had already taken a step closer, when he turned around to reveal just another faerie.

  Arden swore and spun on her heels. Where else could she look? Her eyes settled on the back entrance and she nibbled on her bottom lip. Had he gone into the house? Typically it was off limits for outdoor celebrations like this one. There were still places outside she’d yet to look, but since she was already standing so close to the manor, she decided it was smart to check there first.

  She yanked on the handle and entered, the flickering light of hundreds of candles that lined the hallway leading her deeper into the manor. The kitchen was off to the right, and she soon reached the rickety wooden door, forcing it open. And caught her breath.

  Cole was seated at an old wooden table. At least three-dozen tiny china plates covered the rough and chipped surface, packed in so tightly that the worn wood beneath was practically hidden from view. His jacket was hung neatly on the back of his chair, but that was the only thing clean about him.

  His hands and face were both covered in frosting, a mixture of whites and browns and pinks and blues. It smeared up to his elbows and over his cheeks, showcasing his bright red lips, almost like they’d been rubbed raw. Each plate held a different square of cake, no bigger than a ring box, but every time Cole swept one up, he clenched it tightly enough in his hands that bits of it squished between his fingers.

  He shoveled each bite into his mouth, smacking his lips and already reaching for the next piece before he’d swallowed. It was impossible to tell how long he’d been here, because every time he emptied a plate, a new square of cake would magically appear at its center.

  Titania sat directly across him at the small table, chin resting atop her clasped hands. She was smiling, just the barest upward curve to her lips, and even though she had to know they had an audience, she didn’t bother to tear her gaze away from Cole, watching him with an intense interest.

  The same way a cat studied a bird hopping on a windowsill.

  “Cole.” Arden stormed over to the table, trying to pull him away only to have him slap at her. “Cole, stop. Stop eating.”

  She wasn’t concerned about the food being poisonous—she could tell it wasn’t Unseelie, and therefore, technically safe for humans to eat—but… she also knew the desserts weren’t really cake.

  “Don’t listen to her, dear,” Titania said, and the hint of sway at the end of each syllable was impossible to miss. “I made this all for you, remember? You wouldn’t want to hurt my feelings, would you?”

  Cole mumbled something around another mouthful, and though the words were indistinguishable, it was obvious he was agreeing with her.

  “Release him,” Arden demanded, momentarily forgetting that she should be afraid of the faerie queen.

  At first, it didn’t seem like Titania had even heard her, but then she tilted her head and lifted her eyes. A second later, she clucked her tongue. “Do you look at precious Mavek that way, Arden dear? With all that scorn and derision? No wonder his feelings have been hurt so. Poor thing. It used to be that nothing could best him, yet look at him now, held tightly in the clutches of a human girl.”

  She made that same tsking sound, her smile broadening. “My apologizes. I almost forgot. Not so human anymore, are you?”

  “I’m going to ask you again,” Arden bit out. “Release him.”

  “Oh, were you asking? I must have missed that. I thought you were ordering me, and you don’t have the power to do that, not yet.”

  Arden couldn’t stop herself from frowning, and Titania laughed. It was clear she didn’t actually think it funny, however, as she dropped her arms and arched a silver brow sharply.

  “Do you know what’s more powerful than a queen, ex-Heartless?”

  She shook her head, watching as Titania leaned back into her chair in a move somehow very royal. And threatening.

  Someone was in the doorway now; Arden saw the form move to block the hallway light in her peripheral vision, but she couldn’t tear her gaze away from Titania’s. The fae seemed to know, taking pleasure in having the upper hand. Her grin returned full force, the move revealing the monster that lurked beneath all those rich layers of gossamer and silk.

  “The only thing more powerful,” she said, “is a queen who holds the heart of a king.”

  Arden swallowed the lump in her throat, but Titania wasn’t finished.

  “Isn’t that right,” the Unseelie tipped her chin slightly in the direction of the doorway, “Mavek dear?”

  Mavek glanced at Cole and the spread across the table, expression enigmatic. He entered leisurely, with one hand tucked into the front pocket of his white silk pants. He came to a stop at Titania’s side and waved his free hand over the table, palm down.

  The surface rippled before resettling, all of the cakes suddenly transforming from perfect confections with edible pearls to rotting fruits. The intensity of the smell hit Arden hard enough that she gagged and had to cover her nose to adjust. Some of the fruits had bits of dirt and leaves stuck to them; others contained living things.

  The small slice of pale blue cake Cole had been lifting to his mouth morphed into a squished peach, the rotted pulp mashed between his fingers, rancid juice trickling down his wrist. He frowned and tilted his hand in the dim overhead light before gasping and flinging the handful down onto the table. Maggots crawled away from the orange-brown clump, their fat white bodies slinking across the dull surface toward other sources of food.

  Cole’s chair clattered loudly against the floor as he sprang back, shaking and frantically rubbing at the bits of pulp smeared across his face. A thin sheen still fogged his eyes, but as it lifted, a look of pure horror was left in its wake.

  “What do you think you’re doing, Titania?” Mavek asked, slipping his other hand into his pocket. He tilted his head at Cole, inspecting him, but in the way one examined a lab experiment rather than out of caring. “I recall putting these mortals under my protection.”

  “Did you?” Titania smirked at Arden across the table, keeping her head tipped down so that Mavek couldn’t see. “Must have slipped my mind.”

  Cole didn’t seem to be listening, still staring at the table. Suddenly, he gagged and spun around, rushing to the sink. Arden followed, helping him bend over it, wincing when he started to wretch loudly.

  “He’ll be fine,” Titania stated absently. When Mavek gave her a pointed look, she rolled her eyes and reiterated, “He’ll live, in any case.”

  “What about the other one?” he asked, and she batted her long, silver eyelashes up at him.

  “What other one, dear? If another of her friends was here tonight, I had no knowledge of it. I’ve been quite busy with Cole.” She lifted a hand and wiggled her fingers in a mock hello when the boy in question turned from the sink to glare over his shoulder at her.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?�
�� Arden snapped, not bothering to hold in it any longer.

  “Excuse me?” Titania’s face darkened, all of the teasing mirth from before gone in a flash.

  “Arden,” Mavek warned, but she was done listening to him, too pissed off to care about putting him in a bad position with the faerie queen.

  “From now on, stay away from my friends,” she growled.

  “Is that a threat?” Titania stilled in her seat, but didn’t rise to the challenge.

  “The Tithe is over,” Arden told her instead of answering. “It’s past time you leave.”

  “Are you kicking me out of town?” That seemed to both amuse and infuriate her all at once. “You don’t have the authority—”

  “She’s right,” Mavek interrupted, surprising them both. “You’ve overstayed your welcome here, Titania. It’s best you take the Hunt and go.”

  Slowly, the queen turned her head toward him, eyes flashing wildly. “Don’t forget your place, Midnight. I outrank you.”

  “You did,” he agreed, “when Herla was here. No longer. Now I am the oldest standing male regent in the North. Is that not why you made that comment to Arden a moment ago? Should we step back outside and redo my crowning tonight as well? The others have already been whispering about the Midnight King. I thought it unnecessary, but if you need a ceremony in order to recognize the truth…” He lifted a single shoulder, a corner of his mouth slowly curling upward.

  The half-smile was malicious, teasing, and not something Arden had ever seen him bestow on the queen before. No matter what Titania had done, how far she’d egged him on, he’d always kept his careful, stony composure around her. Something had changed.

  “Midnight King?” Cole’s words, spoken roughly a mere second before he was forced to spin back around and upchuck in the sink again, caught both of the Unseelie’s attention.

  “Our little prince has gone up in the world,” Titania cooed to Arden, not seeing the way Mavek’s lips thinned at that, “and it’s all thanks to you. Removing the Erlking seems to have benefited him in more ways than one. It’s almost as if you two planned it.”

  “That’s enough,” Mavek ordered.

  Arden merely bristled. She was no expert on royalty or how the system worked, but she wasn’t stupid. That kind of accusation was dangerous. Was that truly what some of the fae believed, or was Titania just messing with her right now because she could? She looked to Mavek, but couldn’t figure out what he was thinking. Now wasn’t the time to ask either, not with their current audience. Her grip around Cole’s arm tightened. She needed to focus on getting them out of here. Whether or not the crowning was finished no longer mattered.

  Her cell phone went off then, BTS’s “Seesaw” filling the kitchen as she struggled to quickly remove it from her coat pocket. She answered without bothering to check the caller ID, just grateful for the interruption.

  “I can’t find Cole or Tabby,” Eskel’s voice spilled out the second she hit the accept button. “I’m at their place now, and neither of them is here.”

  Arden resisted the urge to look at Mavek, stubbornly shifting on her feet to angle her face to the side where she could still keep both him and Titania in sight without looking directly at them. “They’re with me.”

  “Oh thank—wait. Please tell me you aren’t where I think you are?”

  “Unfortunately,” she answered, listening while he cursed sharply in her ear.

  “I’m coming over.”

  “Don’t!” The last thing she needed was Eskel getting into trouble here as well. She was exhausted just from rounding up their friends. “I’ve got them and we’re leaving.”

  He was silent on the other end for a moment before sighing. “Alright. I’ll stick around here then. Wait for you guys to show up.”

  “Okay.” Although she didn’t want him to wait out there in the cold, lurking in front of their friends’ house, Arden knew better than to try and persuade him otherwise. He had to have been seriously worried to venture out in the middle of the night in the first place.

  She ended the call and turned to Cole. “Did you guys have plans?”

  He was still gagging into the sink, and spit one last time before groaning loudly into the basin. “Shit.”

  “Way to go.” She rolled her eyes and helped him straighten, twisting him to link his arm around her shoulders.

  The two faerie regents were still closely watching.

  “We’re leaving,” she told them, directing the statement at Mavek, who hesitated a split second before taking a single step to the side. When she tried to pass him, however, his hand whipped out, latching onto her wrist.

  “We aren’t done with our conversation, Arden. Either I come to you later, or you come to me. Either way, we will be finishing it.”

  “I don’t have anything more I need to say to you,” she lied. There was a lot that she wanted to say, most of it unpleasant, but tearing herself open like that wouldn’t help her. She didn’t need that kind of exposure.

  She’d given him enough.

  “Later, heart,” he repeated, ignoring her comment. “One way or the other.”

  Arden shook him loose and continued to the door. Once there, she refused to look back, half carrying Cole down the narrow hall toward the back of the house. They needed to get Tabby and get the hell out of there, fast.

  Before something else she couldn’t control happened.

  Arden entered the dining hall at school the next day and paused when she saw Eskel was the only one seated at their usual table. Typically on Mondays, they all tried to eat lunch together, but after what had happened last night she couldn’t really blame the other two for needing to spend a day at home.

  Cato had already gotten a car ready by the time Arden and Cole had gone back outside last night. He’d driven them all home, dropping off the cousins first. Arden had only spoken with Eskel for a moment before hopping back into the car so the Unseelie could bring her safely back to her place as well. It’d been so late by then, she’d almost ditched school today herself. But with only a couple weeks left before winter break, it seemed like a waste.

  She got her food quickly, wanting to just get the whole ordeal over with. She hadn’t been alone with Eskel in a while, and she was nervous. They needed to talk about a lot of things, but like a coward, she’d been putting them all off. Part of her had actually hoped that with enough time, they wouldn’t need to address any of it.

  She should have learned her lesson from all the worthless wishful thinking she’d done in the past.

  The second she placed her tray down onto the metal table, Eskel’s head shot up. He smiled the sweet, almost boyish grin she’d grown used to over the past few months as he waited for her to sit down across from him.

  “Cole told me what happened,” Eskel said, picking up a ketchup packet and tearing it open, “around the toilet.” He leaned forward and squeezed the contents out onto the corner of her tray, where her fries were.

  “Gross.” She sipped at her iced coffee, trying not to think about the maggot-filled fruit she’d seen him eating. She could only imagine how Cole was feeling.

  “Could have been worse.” Eskel shrugged and went back to picking at his own food, smearing the end of his burger into a pool of ketchup on his tray. He chewed slowly, thoughtfully, before furrowing his brow and shaking his head. “They were such idiots.”

  “Tell me about it,” she agreed. Was this awkward, or was it just her? She tried to get a gauge on Eskel, but he was a closed book.

  Which was why she didn’t sense the lead up until it was too late to turn back.

  “They didn’t tell me what they were planning,” he said. “Cole was supposed to stop by and go over some research with me, and when he didn’t show and wasn’t answering his phone, I panicked. I can’t believe they followed you to the manor.”

  “Please,” she snorted. “If they had told you, you would have gone with them.”

  He stared at her. “That’s why they didn’t tell me. They kne
w what Mavek would do if I did.”

  Keep him, Arden, but have me too.

  Mavek’s words raced through Arden’s head, his declaration sending chills down her spine hours later. She wasn’t sure if he’d actually meant it, but she wasn’t about to test that theory one way or another.

  She didn’t need anyone’s permission to hang out with Eskel, and she certainly wasn’t going to go crawling back to the Unseelie who’d put them all at risk in the first place. No matter how often he still haunted her dreams, or how her heart still raced at the thought of him. Things were over. Her mind knew it; it was just her body struggling to catch up. But it would. It had to.

  “Eskel—”

  “I haven’t brought it up because I know you’re going through a lot,” he said. “But we’re in this together, Arden. I’m not going anywhere.”

  She dropped the fry she’d been holding back onto the tray.

  “When you told me you’d think about it,” he continued when she didn’t speak, “about going out with me, things were different, I get that. Now… it’s a lot more complicated—”

  “I’m turning into a fricken faerie, Eskel,” she stated, a little more loudly than was necessary. A couple students at nearby tables glanced their way and chuckled before going back to their conversations. Even in a town like this, where the Unseelie were legends whispered in the dark, no one truly believed.

  “I know,” he said, quietly. “That doesn’t change the way I feel about you.”

  “It should.” She tried to ignore the tiny spark at the center of her chest caused by his words. “Remember how desperately you tried to convince me to not get involved with Mavek? How is this going to be any different? You knew he couldn’t be trusted because of what he was. Well, that’s what I’m turning into.”

  “You’ll be different,” he disagreed. “You are different.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because no matter what you become, you’re still you. You’ve still spent the past eighteen years of your life human. That doesn’t just get washed away because you change. People change all the time, that’s how it works.”