Maeve and the other spirit witches went down to speak to Daigh. Part of me wanted to go with them. I wanted to look into the eyes of Corbin’s killer. But I also knew that seeing Daigh wouldn’t heal the hole in my heart or give me the answers I craved.

Besides, I knew Corbin wasn’t dead, and now was the perfect time to start figuring out how he’d pulled that off.

Everyone else who hadn’t gone to interrogate the fae king remained slumped in the sodden and charred drawing room, faces stupefied, not sure how to continue the conversation. There was so much that still needed to be said. Simon announced there was food in the kitchen if anyone was still hungry. Arthur got up to follow him, and I trailed after Arthur, touching his hand. He jumped at my fingers on his skin, his hand flying to his sword.

“Hey,” I whispered. “You okay?”

“No,” he growled. His hand didn’t leave the weapon. I stepped back from him, anxiety rippling through me. The rage that dripped from his voice took me back to a time before Briarwood, before the squat, where I’d lived in fear of that kind of rage.

He’s your friend. You can’t think of him like that. He’s not a monster. He’s hurting, too.

But Arthur’s hurt was becoming dangerous. He’d turned on Blake, and those fireballs… I never met Arthur when he first came to Briarwood, but Corbin had told me stories about the rage that burst out of him and incinerated several priceless tapestries. Arthur needed Corbin’s calming influence to conquer his anger. But Corbin wasn’t here.

We have to find a way to reach Corbin, wherever he is. We aren’t complete without him.

“Arthur, can I talk to you for a moment?”

Arthur nodded. He ducked into the nearest room. It was another drawing room, this one decorated in buttercream tones. Arthur collapsed into an overstuffed sofa, resting his boots on the corner of the table and sliding his scabbard onto the cushions beside him. He didn’t remove his sword belt.

“Arthur,” I sat down across from him. “I need to ask about Corbin.”

A storm raged in Arthur’s eyes. “No.”

“Please. Just tell me when you last saw him alive. That’s all, I swear.”

“Rowan, don’t torture yourself.”

“I’m not. I just need to know.”

“Don’t torture me, then.”

“It might be important. Maeve isn’t going to talk about her dream because… because she’s Maeve. But I just have this feeling…”

Arthur sighed dramatically. “We were in the entrance hall. Corbin yelled at me to hold the villagers off the first floor. I guess that was so he could get you and Maeve into the priest hole. I was on the staircase throwing down some covering fire when he appeared and yelled at me to hold my breath. He sucked all the air from the room, and we managed to get past the gasping villagers and out the door. I could see a bonfire flaring in the meadow, so we headed right for it. I was first down the path but as I passed through the gate, a phalanx of fae approached and Corbin charged past me and plunged into their ranks. Of course they pounced on him. He didn’t even fight them. He just let them drag him away.”

“Why did he do that?” I whispered.

“Fucked if I know!” Arthur yelled. “Probably he was trying to be a chivalrous bastard and sacrifice himself so they’d leave us alone, like he always fucking does. Well, it worked, didn't it?”

Tears pricked the corner of my eyes. Arthur’s anger washed over me, the vein above his eye reminding me of my last foster father, the one who’d locked me in a closet for three days. “Why are you so angry with me? I just want—”

“Because I didn’t save him!” Arthur yelled. “I was right there and I had a weapon and I would’ve cut down every last one of those bastards if only I’d been stronger and faster.”

“Do you need—”

“I need everyone to leave me the fuck alone!” Arthur yelled.

I ducked as a fireball hit the wall behind me. “Shit!” Arthur yanked a throw blanket off the back of the sofa and flung himself at the wall, smothering the flames. Above our heads, the fire alarm beeped.

“What the hell’s going on in here?” Ryan yelled, rushing in. Simon clattered after him, carrying a crystal pitcher of water, which he threw at the smoldering wall.

I slipped out before I got caught in the crossfire between Arthur and Ryan. Flynn came running down the hall, his palm raised in front of him. “It’s Arthur, isn’t it? Jesus, Mary and Joseph and all their wee carpenter friends, can we live in one grand building without burning it down?”

“The house is fine. The fire’s out. Arthur’s about to get a bollocking from Ryan. He’s probably not so fine.” I lowered my voice. “Hey, can you tell me about Corbin… the last time you saw him that night.”

Darkness flashed in Flynn’s eyes. “Are you trying to figure out if he’s still alive? Because he looked bloody dead as a doornail to me. I know Maeve’s had magical dreams before, but sometimes a dream is just a dream. You shouldn’t be getting your hopes up, mate.”

“I’m not.” A lie. “I just… if Corbin were here, he’d make us explore all the possibilities.”

“Right you are.” Angry voices drowned out Flynn’s words. He grabbed my arm and led me down the hallway, toward the kitchen. “So here’s what I saw. After the villagers broke down the front door, I heard my scone-mix trap go off. That was satisfying. The rest of you ran down and I went back up on the roof to put out the fire in my workshop and the new one Arthur started in the entrance hall like the big eejit he is. I saw a big crowd of people surging out of the inner doors, chasing Corbin and Arthur toward the meadow. I was focused on the fire when someone snuck up behind me and marmaladed me. Next I knew I was tied up on the field.”

“Corbin was still alive when you saw him?”

Flynn peered into a stainless steel cookie jar. “You need something to eat, mate?”

“I’m fine. So Corbin was still alive?”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m right foddered. I saw Simon icing a carrot cake this morning. I wonder where he’s hidden it.” Flynn slammed cabinet doors and peered under the sink. “It’s not as nice as your chocolate whiskey cake, but it’ll do the job.”

I tried to ask Flynn another question, but he found the cake and busied himself hunting down a knife and plate. I wasn’t going to get anything out of him. At least he was going to use a plate – back at Briarwood he would scoff handfuls of double chocolate whiskey cake straight from the cooling rack, leaving trails of crumbs over the floor that drove my anxiety wild.

The thought that I might never clean Flynn’s crumbs off the kitchen floor at Briarwood again slammed into me. Would the castle survive? Could we rebuild it? If I couldn’t find a way to bring Corbin back, would it even be worth it?

Dejected, I returned to our bedroom. Ryan had given us an entire wing to ourselves – a room each – but I knew I couldn’t bear the idea of being separated from Maeve and the guys right now. We’d given Maeve the largest room at the far end of the hall, and that was where we’d all slept last night. I shoved open the door and was surprised to see Blake sprawled across the bed, his fingers knitted across the chest and his crystalline eyes watching a fly buzz around the ceiling.

I never spoke to Blake much. Truthfully, he unsettled me. His face only had two expressions – the statuesque one he wore now, where you had no hint of his thoughts or even that he was alive. And the one when he did something that pleased him, which was basically the same except the corners of his mouth turned up into this evil smirk.

There was a heroin addict who lived on my floor of the squat for a few months. He was a wealthy kid – I could tell by his expensive clothes and the way he didn’t cling to his possessions like they were his only link to the world. He lay on his bunk for days at a time, lost in a dream world where he was an elf king or a meerkat or a water droplet. He moaned with ecstasy as the drugs painted over the world with clouds and rainbows, but there was a fragility to him that hid a demon below the surface. He spoke with a tender softness that terrified me, caressed my shoulders with a languid hand that had, he once murmured, strangled his father with his own belt. He slept next to me and I watched him through my eyelashes all night, my body rigid with fear, so certain that if I drifted off he’d stab me in my sleep.

Blake reminded me of him. So beautiful, so dangerous.

“Hello, Rowan,” Blake purred.

Anxiety shot through my body. I thought about backing out of the room, but I had intended to speak to him. I just… wanted to psych myself up first. “Um… hi.”

I slid along the wall, keeping a wide berth around Blake, in case he thought I agreed with Arthur, that all our troubles were Blake’s fault. My hand groped for the arm of a chair, and I collapsed into it, grateful for something solid to stop my body melting into the floor. Blake’s emerald eyes followed me, burning a trail through my chest.

“You spoke to Daigh?” I ventured.

“Yes.” Blake didn’t volunteer any more information.

“Is Maeve okay?” I asked.

“She’s angry. That’s what he wants to see, and she doesn’t hide it well. She’s learning. I think she’s gone to speak to Kelly, if you’re looking for her.”

“Actually, no. Um, Blake… I was wondering…” the words died in my throat. Blake didn’t know Corbin like the rest of us. Sure, they’d had peace ever since Corbin took Blake to see his parents’ house, but it was different from the deep friendship Corbin shared with me or Arthur or Flynn. Blake had been raised to view death and friendship in completely different ways. I couldn’t ask him about Corbin.

Blake slid off the end of the bed, pulling his torso up so he sat on the edge. His eyes met mine. He looked completely at ease with my discomfort, which only made my stomach squirm and needles dig into my spine.

“You came to ask me about Corbin,” he said.

Surprised, I nodded.

“You want to know about when I last saw him alive. Don’t look so terrified. I didn’t read your thoughts.”

“Flynn spoke to you?”

Blake grinned. “He might’ve mentioned something when I passed the kitchen just now, although it’s hard to understand him with half a carrot cake stuffed in his gob. So why all the questions? You don’t usually say boo to a goose.”

“I—” That smile… it caught me. I forgot what I was going to say. Blake’s beauty was that unnerving.

“Ah, the verbal thing comes and goes, I see. That’s okay, I’ve learned how to deduce. You think Corbin might still be alive, somehow.”

I nodded again.

“I think so, too,” Blake said.

My chest fluttered with surprise. “You do?”

“Sure. Corbin’s a wily bastard with a savior complex. I learned about that savior complex on that philosophy documentary he made us watch. Do you remember?”

I nodded. It was one evening at the castle when Corbin got to choose the movie, which meant that Flynn and Arthur drank their weight in mead and I sat silently through another documentary thinking about how much I wished I could move closer to Corbin on the sofa. This time was different – Maeve and Blake argued philosophy and ethics with Corbin, and during one of Maeve’s long tirades about science, Blake tickled her feet until she collapsed on the floor and we all ended up in a pile and it was nice.

“Exactly. No way would he let himself get killed when he still had a castle and Maeve and all of us to protect. Plus, the only time he took his nose out of those books was when he had it buried in Maeve or you. You can’t tell me he didn’t find some arcane spell to stop his spirit completely crossing over.”

I nodded my agreement. It would be just like Corbin to come up with some crazy scheme to sort out the fae once and for all, and to keep it secret from all of us. He’d never have wanted to put anyone else at risk.

“I thought you’d agree. I also figured you’d be the only other person who saw it that way. As for what I saw, I was on the staircase, a few steps up from Arthur, which was a bad place to be when he started throwing fireballs around. Smoke rose up and my eyes watered, and there were limbs flying everywhere, so I didn’t see much.”

My stomach sank, but Blake kept talking. “What I did see was Corbin running out of the library. Blood dripped down his side, like he’d already been hurt, and he had his fist closed like he had something in his hand.”

“That must’ve been after he hid me and Maeve in the priest hole.” He’d been wearing a shirt then, and I didn’t remember him acting as though he’d been hurt, but everything happened so fast I might not have noticed. I hated myself for not noticing. “Did you see what he had in his hand?”

“No. It was small. There might’ve been a chain or cord hanging between his fingers, but I couldn’t say for sure. At the time I thought it was some kind of weapon, but now…” Blake’s emerald eyes glinted. “Following in Maeve’s footsteps, we have a working theory, but we need evidence to back it up. As my hero Sherlock Holmes would say, the clay steals from the clay.”

“Um… I think the line is, ‘we cannot make bricks without clay’.”

Blake’s smirk widened. “You’re correct. That other thing is an old fairy idiom. Supposedly an ancient Seelie king said it about humans. But to the task at hand, I’m going to try to get into Maeve’s dreams. It won’t be easy, because dreamwalking isn’t my specialty, but there might be a few things I can try. We need to see what she sees in that dream.”

“Can I do anything?”

“Yes. I’m going to need some of that sleeping potion you used for the original spell. It’ll put Maeve in a state where we can more easily slip into her dream. Can you do that?”

I nodded. I’d seen racks of herbs on the shelves in Ryan’s pantry. It looked as though I’d be able to find everything I needed.

“There’s one other thing,” Blake continued. “You know Corbin better than me; his habits, the way he thinks. When we go back to Briarwood, check his desk and any other little secret places or hidey holes. Look for spells, notes, objects… anything that might tell us what he did. I’ll distract Maeve so you can have as much time as you need to find something useful.”

I thought of Corbin’s desk piled high with books, each one littered with Post-it notes and torn sheets of scribbled translations. How would I find anything in his mess?

“Okay,” I heard myself say.

“If there are answers to be had, they’re in that library. We must keep this quiet from Maeve, you know that? She’s not in any state to accept the possibility that her dreams are actual messages.”

“I know.”

“You okay with lying to her, then?” Blake’s smirk deepened. “I’ve discovered humans have quite an aversion to lying.”

I didn’t want to keep secrets from Maeve, but Blake was right. Maeve wouldn’t accept anything less than scientific evidence of Corbin’s survival, and I needed to follow this. I needed the hope, otherwise…

“And Arthur and Flynn – we can’t tell them, either.” Blake’s eyes darkened at their names, which was weird. It was as though Arthur’s display in the drawing room had actually impacted him. But that wasn’t true. Blake lounged on the couch and met Arthur’s rage with his usual indifference. I was the one cowering from the rage of my friends.

I nodded. Arthur walked the knife edge of his control – another angry outburst and Raynard Hall would join Briarwood in conflagration. And Flynn, as I’d discovered, couldn’t be trusted not to blab to the wrong person.

Blake’s smirk widened. He put out his hand, and I shook it. “I knew you’d agree. Welcome to the Blake Beckett Deception Club. I usually do this sneaking around stuff with Flynn, but you’ll do in a pinch. Be prepared, darling Rowan. Tonight you might be speaking to lover boy again.”