We were never found at all.

Heather turned out to be a pink-haired artist who exchanged such a fathoms-deep glance with Vivi that I couldn’t even begin to interpret it. Despite that look, I couldn’t help wondering how Vivi could possibly love a mortal girl. She didn’t know anything. She had no magic. She didn’t even seem like she’d done much suffering.

I should have found it inspiring—after all, if Heather and Vivi were in love, then love was possible between mortals and faeries—but it made me feel uneasy instead. Like maybe they’d used up all the luck there was.

Or maybe it was because I was thinking about how Mom had started out a lot like Heather. She fell in love with someone who didn’t tell her the truest truth, who let her believe that he was human, who brought her into a world she didn’t understand, a world that chewed her up and spat her out. A world I was hoping wouldn’t do the same to me.

Be bold, be bold, but not too bold.

Be good, but not too good. Be pretty, but not too pretty. Be honest, but not too honest. Maybe no one got lucky. Maybe it was too hard.

By the time we were heading back toward our ragwort horses, I think Vivi realized that if she was leaving Faerie, she was doing it on her own.

I tried to imagine Elfhame without her. Everything would be a little more frightening. There would be no legitimate heir to intercede with us with Madoc. No one to go to for little magic. And worst, no way to reconsider. Without her to make us a flying pony from weeds or a boat that would travel by puffs of our breath, there was no way off the isles.

Before, it was important that we found a place we belonged in Faerie, but with Vivi leaving, it was imperative.

“You’re going to have to tell her eventually,” you said, still talking to Vivi about Heather. About Faerie. About lies of omission.

I tried not to feel called out by the words, even though they could have just as easily applied to me.

“Love is a noble cause,” Vivi reminded her. “How can anything done in the service of a noble cause be wrong?”

By late afternoon, we were back on the palace grounds, attending a lecture so dull that I dozed off in the middle of it. You and I sat in the branches of a tree to have our lunch. I took care not to glance too much in Locke’s direction—even though I was eager to—and Prince Cardan and his companions seemed to have tired of us. You seemed to be actually trying to avoid trouble for once. I let myself relax. I let myself believe that the worst was behind me. I let myself pretend.

Once upon a time, there was a girl named Taryn and she had a faerie lover who came to her at night. He was generous and adoring, but visited only in the dark. He asked for two things: one, for her to keep their meetings secret, and two, never to look upon his face fully. And so, night after night she took delight in him but, after some time had passed, wondered what his secret could be.…

My daydream reverie was interrupted by Prince Cardan.

“I know what you did,” he drawled, voice low, not at all sounding like he was asking a question. “Wicked girl. Yet you let your sister take the brunt of my ire. That wasn’t very nice, was it?”

He was dressed in a velvet doublet, with buttons of carved jet. Loose black curls framed his sharp cheekbones and a mouth set in a cruel line. He’s handsome, but that makes his horribleness worse, somehow. As though he’s taken something nice and made it awful. Being the single focus of his attention made me feel like a bug that a child was going to burn with a magnifying glass.

I stammered, caught completely off guard. “I—I didn’t know. I swear I didn’t.”

A slow smile spread across his mouth. “Oh, I see why Locke likes you.”

For a moment I thought that might be almost a compliment.

“You’re awful.” He said it as though he was delighted. “And the worst part is that you believe otherwise.”

Tears sprang to my eyes. I hated that I cried so easily. And he was wrong. I hadn’t known. Not until that afternoon by the river.

I shook my head, wiping away tears. “Does that mean you’re going to leave her alone now?”

Cardan leaned in close, close enough that I could feel his breath on my cheek. “It’s much too late for that.”

Then you came out of nowhere and grabbed his shoulder. Before I could even speak, you’d spun him around and slammed his back against a tree. Your hand went to his throat. Cardan’s eyes went wide with shock. All around us, the children of the Gentry stared, agog.

Cardan was a Prince of Elfhame. And you were putting your hands on him—there, in front of everyone. Hands he was likely to order cut off.

Shock pinned me in place. I barely recognized you with your teeth bared like that. This new you, who wouldn’t surrender in the river, a Jude I am not sure I know. A Jude I was not sure would like me. Right then you looked as though you wanted to bite out the prince’s throat and he looked thrilled to have an excuse to do whatever awful thing he was planning.

I was terrified for you and scared for myself, too. Everything was just getting worse and worse and I didn’t know how to stop any of it. It felt like being trapped in one of those circle dances. Mortal feet won’t stop moving, no matter how tired you get. We’ll dance until our feet bleed. Until we collapse. We can’t do anything else until the music ends.

But that night, at last, Locke came to my window.

A stone struck the glass pane and I was out of bed in an instant, fumbling for a robe. I came out onto the balcony and looked down at him, my heart racing. His hair was bright in the moonlight, his face as handsome as heartbreak.

I took a breath and steeled myself. It was so tempting to push away all my doubts and fears and to rush into his arms.

But I couldn’t let myself forget how hurt I had been, night after night, not knowing whether he’d ever come again, not knowing what I’d meant to him, if I’d meant anything at all.

And something else bothered me. Something about the freshness of Nicasia’s anger and her possessiveness made me wonder if Locke and she were together still. If, when he wasn’t visiting me at night, he was visiting her.

Locke and I stared at each other as the cool night air blew my robe, ruffled his hair.

“Come down, my beauty, my darling, my dove,” he urged, but not loudly. He must have been a little worried, with the general sleeping so near. If Locke woke Madoc up, who knew how he’d have reacted? For a moment, I pictured Locke’s heart shot through with an arrow and then shook my head to get rid of the image. It wasn’t like me to think things like that.

It especially wasn’t like me to have a brief jolt of satisfaction from it.

Guilt over my thoughts, more than anything else, made me lasso a thin rope from my balcony and slither down it. My bare feet landed on the grass.

Locke took both my hands and looked me over with a smile that managed to be complimentary and slightly, amusingly lewd. I giggled, despite myself.

“It was hard to stay away from you,” he said.

“You shouldn’t have.” It was part of his charm, somehow, to get me to say the things I meant.

“We—the Folk—don’t love like you do,” Locke said. “Perhaps you shouldn’t trust me with your heart. I might break it.”

I didn’t like that. “Cardan knows it was me you were meeting. He told me as much.”