15

Beauty, beauty, sparkling and bright, lay before us.

I had never longed for an invitation so badly in my life.

The ruined palace was a fairy glen, a cave of wonders. Candles everywhere glimmered on bright jewels and polished leather, on a table piled with food and wine—but above all, on the crowd.

They were girls with elegant hands and boys with broad shoulders, boys with soft eyes and girls with sharp smiles. Glittering skirts and loose sleeves and slim trousers swirled through the room, some fine, some rough-spun. Many guests were masked; others were not; and their hair and skin were of every shade.

Musicians played in one corner as the crowd danced. I counted eight of the freinnen among them, wearing a fairy ring into the earth in their high-heeled shoes. Other guests lined the stone walls—some along the very wall beside our window.

Cobie saw them the same moment I did. A girl with black hair, a goblet in her hand, talking to a boy and to a second girl, who was tall and thin and wearing a dress the color of lilacs.

Even in the half-light, I recognized them at once.

I lurched down, pulling Cobie with me. “Leirauh,” I gasped.

“And Margarethe.” Her eyes were wide.

We’d found them.

“Did they see us?” I panted.

“I—don’t think so,” Cobie said, uncertain.

I had seen something shift in Leirauh’s blue eyes, but it might have been only the flicker of a candle. We crouched beneath the window, backs flat against the castle wall. I grasped at the forest floor, my heart pounding.

A shadow stretched past the window ledge above us, and then the candle was lit again.

Cobie’s eyes met mine. We ran into the woods, not daring to look behind us.

“We’ll go back tomorrow,” Cobie said. Her eyes were intent. “We’ll dress up, and go inside, and find out what they’re doing out here.”

“What if they are just going to a party?” I asked, sliding into the river. The water was cold. “What if that’s all that’s going on?”

Cobie’s smile was feral. “Then we’ll go to a party.”

My heart beat hard all the way back to our room, my mind sharp with fear and starlight and freezing water, the images of the night still vivid in my mind. The freinnen dancing, happy and beautiful beneath the candlelight, so like the ball I’d had to flee in Arbor Hall. They had looked as free as I had felt dancing with Torden in his father’s house, surrounded by the Asgard boys. Aleksei and Hermódr and Bragi and Fredrik, all as close as blood.

Turning over, I shut my eyes. Then a thought struck me.

“Have you noticed how similar all the freinnen look?” I asked Cobie.

She bit back a yawn. “Siblings tend to.”

“Yes,” I said slowly. “Margarethe and Ursula and Hannelore and Ingrid. And most of the others. Light brown hair and eyes and thin features. Fritz, too.”

Cobie’s eyes were drifting closed. I poked at her across the gap between our beds, and she pulled away, yawning. “What’s your point?” she grumbled.

“I don’t have one.” I shook my head. “It’s just odd, to me. Leirauh. She doesn’t look anything like the rest of them.”