Page 2 of The Crowned Queen

“I know how it sounds.” Kai let his hands drop, his shoulders slumping. “But I promise, I’m telling the truth. I’m not here to hurt anyone. I just want to help him get his mate back.”

Her lip curled, but the knife in her hand flashed in the moonlight, vanishing into the folds of her cloak.

“Human promises aren’t worth the shit on the bottom of my shoe,” she said. “But fortunately for you, I’m not the one that has to decide what to do with you. Let’s go, Kai Sterling.”

She made him lead, her clipped instructions directing him through the maze of streets until Kai was thoroughly lost.

“Here,” she said finally, nudging him toward a derelict building that looked just like every other falling-down house they’d passed.

“Here?” Kai repeated, eyeing the structure skeptically.

“We don’t all have big fancy houses in Kingswalk.” She shoved his shoulder hard enough that he stumbled forward a step. “Let’s go.”

“All right!” Kai rubbed his shoulder, casting a glare back at her. “It just doesn’t look like much.”

It didn’t even have a real door. Just a loose plank leaning against a poorly boarded up hole in the wall. Kai shoved it aside, twisting his body to slide through the narrow opening.

The front room was exactly what he expected from the exterior—rotting floorboards, a collapsed section of ceiling, the damp smell of salt and rot.

“If you’re just going to murder me the alley would have been fine, you know,” Kai said. “You didn’t have to lure me into some abandoned building.”

Her lips twitched. “Just keep going.”

She nudged him toward a curtain hanging across the far end of the room, its fabric so faded it had ceased to have a color. He ducked through it into a narrow hall, startling at the faint tingle of magic skating across his skin, raising the hair on his arms.

Kai craned his neck, peering up at the ceiling.

Runes—dozens of them, carved directly into the walls.

They ran the full length of the hall in both directions, interlocking in a pattern far more complex than he would ever have expected to see here. The Arcanum didn’t leave fae with enough magic to power even a fraction of something like this⁠—

“Well,” his guide said dryly. “At least we know you aren’t an inquisitor.”

Kai tore his eyes away from the ceiling, belatedly realizing she’d pushed open another door. “Oh.”

Rickety wooden racks stood around the perimeter, filled with everything from lengths of nail-studded wood with leather-wrapped handles to blades that had started life as kitchen knives—anything that could be turned into a weapon, had been.

And there were fae. Dozens of them—paired off across the makeshift training hall with their cobbled-together weapons or clustered in small groups—every one of them staring at him like he was some sort of bug that had crawled up through the floorboards.

“Are you serious, Caela?” A fae female near the back spoke up. “The Arcanum will execute us all if he reports this.”

“I won’t!” Kai hastened to assure her. He glanced around at the others. “That’s not⁠—”

His guide—Caela—dropped a heavy hand on his shoulder. “Maerin wants to see him,” she said. More softly, she added, “He did promise, Raelle.”

A few of the others laughed, a nervous titter rippling through the room. But Raelle’s scowl only deepened.

“Take him straight to Maerin,” she warned. “No extra stops.”

Caela gave him a gentler shove than before, propelling him across the floor. The fae parted around him. The sound of combat training picked back up as he passed, driving home the thing Kai hadn’t quite admitted to himself before now.

If Maerin—whoever she was—didn’t agree to accept his help, these fae would kill him.

Caela rapped twice on a heavy wooden door at the back of the space, not waiting for whoever was inside to answer before she shoved it open.

“Kai Sterling,” she said, pulling him in behind her. “As requested.”

“Kai Sterling.”