Page 35 of Taken By Shadows

The situation last night had been a small hand dealt in my favour. But it was a minor piece in a larger game that I didn’t even know I was playing. Why did Kaedian—Kaed—need the faebane? He was fae. Maybe he had more enemies than just those he picked fights with in meadows. It wouldn’t surprise me if he had enemies wherever he went. He was arrogant. Entitled. And not afraid of taking what he wanted.

Abandoning the locked door for the window, I sighed. A clear, blue sky hung over the new world before me. Hundreds of terracotta and sage green roofs stippled across the city below. Far below. I hadn’t noticed climbing so many flights last night, but I wasn’t even sure I’d paid enough attention to have found my way out the front door, regardless of whether it, too, was locked or not.

There were at least four floors between me and the pavement beneath.

I was good at climbing. I trusted my feet to carry me, my fingers to hold me. But that was on terrain I was familiar with. It was on well-worn trails I’d spent months learning and wearing grooves into. One wrong step here, and I’d fall to the stones beneath and splatter the cobbles with my brains.

What a cheerful thought for the morning.

A soft knock pulled me from my downward thoughts.

The door pushed open to a flurry of chaos in a small package.

She was petite in frame, with a mass of soft, fawn-coloured floppy curls piled high on her head, exposing her rounded ear tips. Human. Was that a fork that pinned her hair in a messy bun?

“I’m Audrie,” she said by way of greeting as she moved to the bed and began straightening the sheets, save for the one around me. She was maybe the same age as Leesha, and my heart strained as I thought of my sister.

She moved to the other window and pushed open the wooden shutters. I hadn’t even noticed there was a second window. I was going to have to get better with details if I ever hoped to find my way out of this city, let alone this palace.

Hazel eyes gleamed as she moved through the room. She was quite pretty with a soft round mouth. A “hmpff” of dissatisfaction came from the tiny being as she put her hands on her hips after pulling open the vanity.

“Audrie, is it?” I felt like I shouldn’t be here. She was busy, and I was in her way.

“Hmmm?” She turned to me eventually. “Yes, sorry. I just thought he would put something here for you to wear. I didn’t know I was meant to bring that sort of thing.”

Confused, I said, “Who did you think was putting clothes in here?”

Maybe the poor girl was lost. She looked to be in control of her faculties, but then again, not everything was visible.

“Can I help you, maybe?” I tried again after my last question fell on deaf ears.

As if realising why she was here, she cleared her eyes and looked at me. Really looked at me. It was as though she was wading through water and had gotten lost in her own riptide.

“I’m so sorry.” Her body tensed a little as her eyes went wider. And then she took a breath. “I’m here.” She looked like she was trying to slow a galloping horse. “I’m here to help you today. That is, Kaedian sent me to …” Her eyes squished shut like she might disappear into their depths if she tried hard enough. “Lord Kaedian—He is your lord—” she said, almost to herself, under her breath, as if berating herself for the slip up.

“You’re afraid of him?” I hedged. Maybe she could give me more information on my host. “He’d hardly lock you in a cell for not using his title? He’s not that terrifying?”

As if caught with her hand on a hot iron, she dropped the fabric of her skirts that she had been twining between her fingers. “Yes—No. I mean no.”

“You said yes?”

“I mean no. It’s just. I am here under the patronage of his family. And I just … I just don’t want to mess anything up. My family doesn’t come from a noble line. We’re not lords. I’m not a lady,” she finished in a rush.

Patronage? A lord. What sort of lord resorted to kidnapping people for crystals? I didn’t feel in immediate danger of my secret being pried from me … but perhaps he was the sort to torture someone if Audrie was so skittish.

Surely, he had enough stores of gold and jewels if he was a noble. “I’m studying at the Vivernan library to be a historian,” she said when I was too dumbfounded to have used any words of my own.

“But you’re …” I paused and touched my own ears.

“Human? Mm-hmm. Lord Kaedian really doesn’t mind.”

“Doesn’t mind? That you’re not fae?” I wished I had kept my damn clothes on.

From what I’d seen in the city so far, humans and fae coexisted far more easily than Shadowfall and the rural peoples I’d met had led me to believe.

Audrie shrugged. “I don’t know. But he hates the divide the war caused between humans and fae. He might not say it often, but he misses the way things were before.”

“Before?”