Prologue

What is your name?

The first question of any interrogation and the most basic one. It was part of what Azriel called profiling, but she called small talk—a series of questions meant to outline the person on the chair, their wishes, their motivations. Questions about things generally not worth lying about, but still a crucial part of the interrogation, for the answers an interrogator looked for didn’t often come through words, but through actions.

One of the first lessons she learned when she started her training as a spy was that words are deceiving by nature. There were many ways to approach that question—or any question, really—but all options eventually fell into three categories: evasive, defensive and deceiving. The evasive would go around the subject, stalling for time, looking to confuse their questioner, but would eventually answer, usually with the truth. The defensive, on the other hand, wouldn’t answer the question at all, and would instead demand answers for themselves, as if the roles were reversed. Lastly, the deceiving, who would answer, but not without malice and certainly not with the truth.

But learning how to detect a lie requires knowledge on how to lie, and the same worked with interrogations. She learned how to lie while lying herself. She learned how to conduct an interrogation by being interrogated herself. She learned all the ways to answer that first question while answering them as different people would, becoming someone else entirely.

So, she’d been evasive, defensive and deceiving. But sometimes, only sometimes, she’d give her interrogators the whole truth.

“Signe,” she finally answered, her gaze somehow finding his from across the table, despite the poor lighting in the room and the shadows that surrounded him like smoke, as usual.

“Where were you born?” Her interrogator’s voice reached her in the semi-darkness.

“Tempesta, Night Court.”

“How old are you?”

“Younger than you,” she grinned. Evasive had always been her favoured tactic for handling interrogations, and the winged male across the table from her knew it, as well as he knew her. He did not take the bait at first, so she raised one eyebrow and pressed: “More well-preserved, too.”

And this time, amusement flickered across his face, so quickly a less-trained eye would’ve missed it.

It was a lie, obviously, for he looked as strikingly handsome as he did the last time she saw him, so many years ago. Perhaps a bit more worn-out than she remembered, but war usually had that effect on people.

War, such a dreadful word.

War was the reason Signe currently found herself sitting in one of the Hewn City’s smallest studies, being interrogated. Though being interrogated was usually a bad thing to happen, she couldn’t help but feel relieved to be where she was, because it meant that, even after that terrible war with Hybern, the Night Court, her Court, was still standing; that everything she swore loyalty to still existed. That there was still a home to come back to.

If they accepted her back, that is.

The winged male leaned away from the table, tucking his scarred hands into crossed arms. “And what have you been up to lately, Signe of the Night Court?”

Lately. As if fifty years could simply be summed in lately. Signe laid back against her chair, fully aware of his hazel eyes watching her every move, extracting answers to questions he wouldn’t bother to ask. As if she’d lie about it, anyway—there was no point in concealing the truth, not with the purple-eyed daemati in the corner of the room, who was leaning against the wall behind her to the right with his hands in his pockets, standing as if he owned the place.

Which, well, he did.

“Moving on with my life,” she answered, an over-simplification of those years, yes, but it was the truth. “I managed to flee to the continent after I was locked outside of Velaris, and that’s where I’ve been, until I heard of the war.”

The room fell quiet for a moment, and it was a guilty kind of silence, heavy with unspoken words, stuffed full with apologies. Though she supposed no apologies were needed, since her exile had been merely a consequence of bad timing, and not exactly a result of a well-pondered decision.

But it was obvious her interrogators felt differently. Especially the daemati, for he had been the one to cast the spell that effectively cut off all of Velaris’ contact with the outside world, locking Signe, as well as many others, away from their homes.

She felt movement behind her, followed by what she could only describe as a wave of feeling she didn’t full well understand. A wave that seemed to affect the winged male in front of her, for he raised his eyes to meet the daemati’s. A shadow of that feeling, whatever it was, crossed his own features, but it was gone as quickly as it came.

“Where were you that day?” The winged male asked, finally, his attention back on her.

“I had an assignment in Celin,” she held the male’s gaze, as the memories of that day unravelled in front of her eyes all over again. It was another test, she knew, since he had been the one to give her that assignment himself. “I was meant to look into Mrs. Hanne’s missing crates.”

“Mrs. Hanne’s missing crates?”

“Yes,” she clasped her hands in front of her, over the table, and he watched her every move, “she is Velaris’ main supplier of grain, and her crates were disappearing from her warehouse in Celin, which, if you don’t remember, is an agricultural city not far from Velaris,” she explained with a grin, her voice tinged with sarcasm.

“Please, take this seriously, Signe,” he grumbled, “we may already know you, but you’ve been away for too long, and the Night Court has been through a lot recently. This is only protocol, you know that.”

She sighed. “Of course.” She cast a quick glance at the shadow of the daemati behind her and finally another at her interrogator at the other end of the table. “I apologize.”

But he only signalled with a scarred hand for her to continue.

She sighed again, lowering her eyes to her own hands, still clasped on the table. She breathed one more time, allowing the memories of that day to resurface. “I had already done some surveillance around Mrs. Hanne’s warehouse and was just about to make the trip back to Velaris when I felt…” Her voice trailed off, unsure of how she could possibly describe that feeling. She took a hand to her chest and tried, regardless. “I can’t really explain… I remember it felt like I was missing something, something big. Like something important was happening, but I didn’t know what or where.”

But that wasn’t the only thing she remembered.

She also remembered the people’s faces as they all collectively realized something was happening, as they all just looked at each other at first, eyes wide, searching for a reason, a confirmation, anything that could help them understand what that feeling was. And she also remembered that, as if the feeling itself hadn’t been worrying enough, seeing it plastered on the faces of every soul in town had only made it worse.

And then came another feeling.

Like a wave crashing against the mountains and the hills and the buildings around her. A tidal wave, an enormous thing swallowing everything it touched. She remembered looking into the distance, up to the trees, trying to find that wave, trying to see where it would crash—

And then the ground started to shift beneath her feet.

There was chaos for a couple minutes, people running everywhere, trying to take cover anywhere they could. Screaming, terrified faces who also looked for that wave, who also felt the earthquake that threatened to tip the world upside-down. People holding on to their kids, to each other, to anything solid, trying to keep from falling—

Then it passed, like it was never there.

To this day, Signe had no idea which of those feelings were caused by Amarantha’s curse and by Rhysand’s power. All she knew, all that mattered, was that even then, even before learning about what had just happened, she knew that something had changed. That the world she’d come back to wouldn’t be the same one she left.

“By the time I made it back to Velaris,” she continued, her hand still on her chest, the memories still playing back in her mind, “the shield was already up. There was a wall, like the one separating Faerie from the mortal lands, but with no cracks, no weak spots, nothing.” She looked back at the male across the table. “It took me three days to give up trying to get in, trying to contact you. And it was only after I finally did, when I went back to Celin, that I heard about Amarantha.”

Another movement behind her, though this time the male across the table didn’t pull his gaze away from her.

“And what happened after that?” He asked, his voice quiet.

“Those nightmarish beasts started to appear.” She took her hand off her chest, putting it back on the table. “Things from nightmares, things that did not belong in the daylight, nor on the surface, but that roamed these lands as if it was theirs.” She shook her head. “There was no safe place here, none that I could think of or get to, at least. So, after a few weeks of wandering from town to town, I figured I’d be better off fleeing to the continent until all of that passed. Until the curse was broken.”

“And abandon your post?” The male in front of her cut in.

Her head snapped up. “No,” she swore, her voice low and unfaltering. “Never. I did not—”

“But you did.” He leaned forward over the table again. “And though I can understand your motives, Signe, that could still be considered treason.”

Her eyebrows knitted together, her heart clenching in her chest. “Azriel, do you mean—?”

But he waved a hand at her unfinished question. “We have no intention of making you stand trial for that, Signe.” He considered her for a moment. “These have been difficult times, and you were just trying to survive. Just like I taught you.”

He grinned, and it felt like a weight lifted from her chest. She closed her eyes for a split second, aware of his gaze on her, aware of how her mind had suddenly become a turmoil of emotions, and, overall, aware of the daemati’s ever-watching eye inside her head. By now, she assumed he had been peering into her memories, to verify the truth of her story, of her words, of her intent. So, she pushed her memories forward for him to see: the beasts that killed High and Lesser-Fae alike, the constant fear on the faces of the people she’d travelled with, the months of wandering around a land that had only begun its dark days under Amarantha’s rule.

Her guilt in leaving her Court behind, even if it was for survival.

And her own hopes of returning home, someday.

There was a strange relief in telling a story that way, even if a daemati’s presence in one’s mind was always uncomfortable. But she also knew that, that way, the daemati could see for himself, feel for himself, how things had been for her. What had motivated her to make the decisions she made. And, after a while, she could tell he did, because she found some of her pain reflected in Azriel’s face, to whom the daemati was certainly projecting some of Signe’s feelings.

And in that silence, she got the sense that every person in that room felt the same as her, as if they were all bonding over the same losses, the same sorrows.

Slowly, the moment faded away, and everyone’s thoughts were theirs alone, once again. Then, someone spoke again—only this time, the sound came from behind her, rather than from the other end of the table.

“And what brought you back to us?” The daemati finally stepped away from her, rounding the table and stopping beside Azriel, who took a step back to make room for him.

Signe considered him for a moment, the violet eyes that studied her, challenged her to lie. Eyes that seemed to stretch for all eternity, glinting with centuries worth of magic.

“My oath,” she answered, her voice firm, confident. “I heard about the war and about the gathering of an army on the continent, so I decided to join. Hopefully to return and serve my Court, once again.”

“Do you still remember it? Your oath?”

She nodded, her features stern, solid.

The daemati’s eyes went distant for a moment, and she knew he was studying her, could almost feel him searching her mind, her words and her meaning. Finally, after what felt like years, he raised his chin. “Should you come back to this Court, do you intend to keep to your oath, even after half a century away?”

“I do,” she answered, her words full of meaning, full of hope and of longing, and both males in front of her exchanged a glance.

And it was the violet-eyed male, her High-Lord, who said the words that reached her ears like a song.

“In that case, the Night Court welcomes you home, Signe.”