I was the first to finish with my dress fitting, courtesy of a very gentle and skilled Exiled Mara tailor named Laurel. I met with Blaze and Rewa downstairs by the inn’s bar. I knew we’d agreed to get her involved, as her support had been productive the day before, but I still felt uneasy around Rewa.

She was laughing at something Blaze had just said when I reached the bottom of the stairs, back in my leather two-piece combat suit. Her gaze left his and lingered on me for a moment, before she nodded my way.

“Hello, Caia,” Rewa said with a flat smile. “Thank you for asking me to assist you today, as well. It is an honor and a pleasure.”

“Thank you for coming.” I mirrored her expression, then took out a small notebook from my backpack. I’d written down the names and details of the families we were going to interview throughout the day. “We’ve reviewed the list of names that the Five Lords were kind enough to supply us with, and we’ve settled on ten households to visit today. They’ve all lost family members over the last two months and will be more likely to provide us with fresh leads.”

She reached out and took the notebook, briefly scanning the names before she handed it back.

“I understand. Well, they’re all on the second level, at the base of the mountain,” she said, then smiled at Blaze. “Shall we go?”

I was the first to walk out, making sure neither saw me as I rolled my eyes.

The second level of Azure Heights could best be described as the poorer side of the city, mostly consisting of two-level townhouses, a large marketplace, and a small orphanage. Imen mothers who left the city often left their children behind, according to Rewa.

“But the children are always supported by our community,” she assured me. “In some cases, they’re even adopted by the wealthier Imen who service the Five Lords.”

Ten families on this level had lost sons, daughters, and fathers over the past two months. Most of them were farmers who helped look after the moon-bison herds at the base of the mountain, and had last been seen below, out on the plains with the animals—except for two Imen girls, who’d most likely been taken from this part of the city.

The girls were both cleaners, paid by the city to sweep and wash the streets early in the morning, and they’d been assigned to this level. There were no witnesses, but the girls were meant to be working the night they disappeared. None of the victims were Minah, though. We’d asked all the families about her, but no one knew anything about her or her father. I figured she might’ve been from another part of the mountain.

The Imen we questioned seemed wary and tired, with glassy eyes and voices still trembling from grief. I wasn’t able to tell whether they’d been mind-bent in any way or not, but they still felt a little off. I tried to blame it on the trauma of losing loved ones.

After the ninth family, we stopped for a break and I made additional notes in my journal. There wasn’t a specific pattern in behavior, but there definitely was one in when and where the Imen disappeared. I knew it would be a lot clearer once we started putting some pins into a map of the city.

Rewa was kind and helpful as usual, with her coquettish mannerisms and fluttering eyelashes aimed at Blaze, making me simmer beneath the surface. I did my best to be a professional, but my stomach churned in her presence. The only thing that gave me some mild sense of comfort was the fact that Blaze was also in work-mode, offering only polite smiles and curt nods to Rewa’s barely veiled advances.

“The Spring Ball tonight is going to be wonderful,” Rewa said as I wrote down a couple more lines about the last family we interviewed. “I can’t wait to wear my dress. I have an artist work with the tailors for mine every year!”

She continued droning on about the Spring Ball, but I stopped listening. I looked up from my notes and found Blaze’s eyes settled on my face. I had a hard time reading his expression, as he was very still, but his midnight-blue gaze came across as smoldering, sending minor heatwaves through my chest and limbs. Rewa was still talking, seemingly unaware of Blaze’s attention focused on me. I held my breath for a couple of seconds, and noticed the corner of his mouth twitch, before Rewa put her hand on his arm and broke our quiet exchange.

“Did you hear me, Blaze?” she asked.

He clearly hadn’t. Neither had I, for that matter. We’d been too busy staring at each other.

But did we stare for the same reason?

I knew my reason, even though I tried to avoid thinking about it. Why had he been staring?

“I said, would you like to be my chaperone to the Spring Ball?” Rewa put on the sweetest smile, gently leaning into him.

I cleared my throat almost instinctively, tension making my jaw muscles twitch as I tried to keep a straight face. The question took Blaze by surprise. His eyes were wide as he gaped at her.

“Wait, what?” he croaked.

“I would like for you to be my escort tonight…”

He blinked several times, then looked at me, a hint of panic in his expression. I froze, not sure how to react or what to say. He raised his eyebrows, as if waiting for me to say something. I glitched instead.

“Uh, why not?” I said with a shrug.

And then I mentally slapped myself. I could’ve said no. But why would I say no? What excuse would I have given for saying that? That I wanted to go with Blaze to the ball tonight? Ugh. What is wrong with me?

“You think I should?” Blaze asked, blinking several times, as if he were having trouble processing that information. I couldn’t blame him. Even I was having trouble processing everything I was feeling in that moment.

All I could do was shrug again. It was too late to take it back.

He then gave Rewa a faint half-smile and nodded politely, prompting her to light up like a Christmas tree.

“Thank you, Blaze,” she said. “You won’t regret it!”

I am already…

“Okay, let’s go see the next family.” I quickly changed the subject to get my mind off what had just happened.

They both agreed, and Rewa took us to another townhouse. The family we needed to speak to was a couple who’d lost their son a week ago. They lived in the apartment on the ground floor, their windows facing the open square overlooking the plains and the gorges a couple of miles away.

They welcomed us with pale faces and dark rings around their brown eyes. They clearly hadn’t slept well in a while. The husband, Miron, appeared to be in his mid-forties, with graying hair and a sharp face. The wife, Adelia, was short and plump, with pale blond hair tucked beneath a bonnet. Her trembling fingers were trying to sew the hem on one of her lost son’s shirts as she sat in one of the chairs by the fireplace.

Rewa did the introductions, and I jumped right to the key questions, mainly because the couple didn’t seem so keen on small talk.

“When did you last see your son, Miron?” I asked, opening my notebook, ready to write down the essentials.

“Seven nights ago.” He sighed, leaning against a window frame.

“Did he seem angry, or upset?”

“No, he was fine. He was going to the tavern above, on the third level.”

“Did he have any enemies? Someone who might want to do him harm?” I noticed the dull expressions on both Miron and Adelia’s faces. The empty stares. The mechanical motions. I wondered how much of it was the actual shock of losing their son.

“No, everybody liked him,” Adelia interjected, her voice soft and blank.

“Where was he last seen?”

“We saw him leave the house. He was supposed to be back by midnight,” Miron replied.

“Was he meeting anyone? Did anyone else see him?”

They both slowly shook their heads. Something was off. My instincts were flaring up like crazy, but I couldn’t put my finger on what the issue was, exactly. Their answers sounded plain, almost rehearsed.

“Did you hear anything outside?”

All I got was another brief round of heads shaking. I exhaled, then glanced at Blaze and Rewa. The latter was busy gazing at the porcelain figurines inside a modest glass cabinet. My guess was that she wasn’t even paying attention to the conversation.

I didn’t get much else out of the couple throughout the rest of the interview. We left them to their silence and blank stares, and went outside, on the edge of the terrace, to go over their answers. I flipped the latest two pages of my notebook, pursing my lips. There was nothing there I could use, other than the fact that Gale, their son, had gone missing while basically going upstairs to the tavern.

I glanced around and noticed the two wide sets of stairs leading up to that level. Both were unobscured by tree crowns and were in full view. There were dozens of open windows facing the square, so there would have been plenty of opportunities for the neighbors to see something. But if Gale’s abductors were the invisible daemons that had attacked Scarlett, Harper, and the others last night, no one would’ve actually seen them coming.

“There was something off about them,” I muttered.

“They seemed quite… mechanical, right?” Blaze said, his gaze fixed on my notes.

I looked up, glad that he’d noticed.

“Yeah!” I nodded. “Like they’d rehearsed those answers a little too much.”

“They seemed fine to me.” Rewa shrugged.

“I don’t know.” I tried not to frown, analyzing the young Mara carefully. She clearly wasn’t made for the investigative aspect of this issue. She seemed more interested in Blaze and the Spring Ball, which came as a stark contrast to her tearful plea for help back on Calliope. It wasn’t enough to draw any kind of conclusion about her at that point, but I did make a mental note of it. Something told me I’d use it later. “Maybe it was shock. Maybe they’re still reeling from the loss.”

“Could be,” Blaze mused. “We could definitely do some more interviews tomorrow and see if the others have the same muted reactions as the ones we questioned today.”

I looked at him and Rewa, and started thinking that it might, in fact, be a good idea if Blaze acted as her date for the ball. He could get her to open up a bit, and help us assess her demeanor. Was it a lack of sympathy or interest toward the Imen’s losses? Or was it something more?

Whatever it was, Blaze could totally get to the bottom of it. Hell, if he was smart and cunning enough, he could even get her to spill the beans on whatever she was hiding.

If she’s hiding anything.

And if she didn’t, no harm, no foul. It seemed like a win-win, and a good way to make sure we weren’t chasing any bogus leads. All I had to do was get Blaze alone and talk to him about this first… And then suffer through them dancing at the ball.