I kept my hood and mask on as I climbed the stairs to the upper level of South Bend Inn, where the Imen servants of the Mara Lords were being hosted until the mansions were rebuilt. The streets buzzed with people, out and about, but there was an overall air of concern and fear lingering wherever I looked.

The inn’s ground floor was relatively busy, as the breakfast room was open for the Imen. The smell of pastries and hot coffee tickled my nose. I made my way to the first floor and up to Arrah’s room. I knocked on the door, but there was no answer.

I listened for a while, but no sound came from the other side of the door. After a couple more knocks, an Iman from the room next to Arrah’s popped his head out, briefly measuring me from head to toe with a curious expression.

“Are you looking for Arrah?” he asked, his voice low, his gaze nervously darting around, as if he didn’t want anyone to hear him.

“Yes.” I nodded. “Have you seen her?”

He shook his head, then inched closer to whisper.

“Nobody knows where she went,” he breathed, “and I don’t know when she’s coming back, either. But I saw her last night, at around eight, during dinner downstairs. She filled her plate with a lot of food, much more than she would normally eat. She’s a tiny little thing compared to the rest of us, so I found it weird that she was packing so much food, which she took upstairs to her room. She didn’t even sit down to eat with us.”

I figured she had been bringing food upstairs for her brother, Demios, who couldn’t be seen anywhere in public, given that I had just broken him out of jail for her.

“Did she say anything? Did she seem… different?” I asked.

“She did seem on edge, maybe a little impatient while she was lining up for the bread.” He scratched his head, narrowing his eyes as he remembered. “We only said hello to each other, and I haven’t seen her since. Even this morning at breakfast, no one had seen her.”

“Thank you,” I said, then went back downstairs and outside.

I looked around, carefully analyzing the expression of every Iman coming in or out of the inn. They all looked wary and tired, but none looked at me in a fearful way. If anything, I caught glimpses of hope, as if I was one of the few creatures they wanted to trust.

I, on the other hand, was beginning to feel a little angry and downright disappointed. It seemed as though Arrah had simply disappeared, without a trace, without telling anyone where she’d gone. Most importantly, although I had reunited her with her brother, she’d left without keeping her promise. I could potentially ask Avril to help track her down, but there was still a part of me that was hoping Arrah would come back to tell me more about what she had seen and heard of the Maras, particularly where their treatment of the Imen was concerned.

Avril and Heron were busy with their research for the next few hours, at least, so I figured my time could be put to better use if I checked in on the first level. If Arrah had indeed decided to just disappear, rather than risk her life and her brother’s by helping GASP, there wasn’t much I could do about it at this point.

The top level of Azure Heights was riddled with construction workers and cleaners, as the reconstruction of the Five Lords’ mansions was underway. Piles of rubble and charred wood were being loaded onto large carts, and the Imen cleared the last remnants of the Lords’ former residences away, while the construction workers unloaded massive white marble bricks and mounted them over the foundations. With every hour that went by, another foot of wall was built, another sliver of the horrific attack removed and replaced with pristine white stone.

The Lords themselves were moving around, discussing plans with architects and making sure that their preferences and requests were taken into account as the Imen went on building. Vincent was in charge of overseeing the entire reconstruction process, going over plans with the foreman. Emilian, Farrah, and Rowan were discussing city business, from what I could hear—security measures, the Spring Fair, and the general state of the public after the explosions.

Rewa was really coming into her own as Lady of Azure Heights. Two Imen maids followed her around as she circled all five properties and passed out orders to various workers, telling them to look out for a certain gap, or clean up some corner, or do a better job polishing the marble bricks before laying them into walls.

I went up to Vincent and gave them a polite smile as I said hello. He glanced up from his plans and beamed at me, his pale green eyes twinkling.

“Fiona! What a pleasure to see you this morning,” he said, then nodded at the foreman to move away and give us some privacy. He moved closer, enough for me to feel slightly uncomfortable, but I was unwilling to show it. Given everything that we had learned over the past day alone, I couldn’t have him or anyone else thinking that they were suspected of further wrongdoings.

“I see you are hard at work here.” I pointed at the mansions, all of which had ground-floor walls fully erected, as stairs were being built.

“Yes, well, since the incident two nights ago, my mother decided that I could be given a more active role in rebuilding our homes. She trusts my good taste and architectural instinct.” He smiled, pride oozing from his voice.

“Yeah, and I see Rewa is passing out her fair share of orders as well,” I replied, watching her as she disappeared behind one of the mansions, along with her maids. Vincent chuckled slightly, then ran a hand through his ginger hair.

“There’s only one thing she can do better than any of us—that is, give orders,” he said. Sadness darkened his features. “It’s also the only thing she can do since her father died. I guess it’s her way of coping with the loss of him.”

“She strikes me as a very strong young Mara.” I sighed. “I imagine she will pull through just fine, and that she will be more than capable of taking his place at the helm of the city, along with your mother and the other Lords.”

“I’m glad we agree on that.” Vincent smiled softly. “I really enjoyed our dinner last night, by the way, and completely unrelated… I was hoping we could do it again sometime soon.”

He changed the subject so quickly that it took me a minute or so to catch up, during which time he simply looked at me, almost adoringly. An uneasy feeling crept up my throat. I gave him a weak smile and thought of good excuses to give him.

Fortunately, Emilian spared me the trouble.

“Fiona! Good to see you! How is everything? Have you heard from Miss Hellswan and the rest of her team, by any chance? Have they come back yet?” he asked as he walked up to us.

“Lord Obara, good to see you too,” I said, thankful that he had cut in. “I will have more information for you by nightfall when the team comes back, provided that we don’t have to put together a search party…”

“I must say, I’m very curious as to what they will discover down there,” Emilian muttered, scratching his beard. “Before you and your marvelous people got here, we didn’t even know what our worst nightmare looked like. So, for that alone, I must thank you once more, on behalf of all of us. I know we’re not easy people to deal with, but rest assured we only mean well, even when we seem difficult.”

“Thank you, Lord Obara,” I replied with a courteous nod. “I stand by our promise to get to the bottom of this, and to find a way to keep your people safe from the daemons. I’m hoping that Harper and the others come back with valuable information. Obviously, the more we know about the enemy, the easier it will be to crush them.”

I glanced around for a couple of seconds, noticing the flat stares that Farrah and Rowan were giving me—virtually unreadable. Vincent, on the other hand, was all soft and smiling at me. Zane’s warning from the previous night came back to haunt me, adding more turbulence to my stomach. I couldn’t help but take his words into account as I looked at Vincent, and got the distinctive feeling that not all was what it seemed, not even with him.

“I haven’t heard of any abductions last night,” Emilian said. “Does that mean that the protection spell worked?”

“Unfortunately, no.” I sighed. “The spell doesn’t work, but we cannot identify the reason. The best we can do is stay vigilant. Patrik added some traps on the lower levels, and he will know if they’re triggered. In the meantime, we’ve asked the Correction Officers to keep a lookout, particularly on the second and third levels of the city.”

Emilian didn’t seem happy with the notion of daemons still able to simply stroll through the city, but it was the best we could do given the circumstances. He was, by far, the hardest to read, especially considering the Maras’ ability to deceive. He came across as the typical all-around good guy, with plenty of wisdom and kindness to pass around, and yet, given what we had learned about mind-bending, I had to admit that not even Emilian could be fully trusted.

It made me feel weird, standing there, surrounded by all these Maras with seemingly good intentions. I knew for a fact that they had systematically wiped the memories of the Imen living in the city. No matter the angle from which I approached this, it did not look good for them.

I couldn’t even understand why they were doing it. What were they hiding? What was it that the Imen could not be trusted with, in terms of knowledge about the Exiled Maras? The more time I spent in their presence, the weirder it felt, as if secrets were pushing through the thin and iridescent membrane of reality—their reality, to be specific.

As if, any moment now, it would all split open, and all the answers—especially the unpleasant ones—would come pouring out. My only hope was that the truth would come out sooner rather than later, mainly because I had no intention of spending the rest of my life on this wretched planet.