I rose and stepped into the fragrant, warm darkness in search of a firefly. I knew what I’d wish—I’d wish to see my mom and Grandmother Azalea again, or at least get a letter from them. It’d been weeks since I’d heard from them, and homesickness clutched at my chest briefly as I went in search of a firefly.
I found one hovering at the entrance to the maze, blinking. It flew just out of my reach as I tried to catch it with the paper box, and then, before I could try again, someone jostled me out of the way and scooped it up while I stumbled backward into the brambles of the outer wall of the maze. Thorns scratched at my arms and tugged on my dress.
I looked up and saw Griffin standing in front of the entrance to the maze, framed by the brambles and the glow of the bonfires. Golden, beautiful Griffin, but there was a hardness in his eyes that I hadn’t seen before. I didn’t know how I’d missed it. He had a cruelty to him, I realized. He’d been using me all along, but I didn’t understand why. Did all elites like to taunt middling students? Or did I put out some kind of vulnerable, confused vibe that drew them to me like sharks to the scent of blood?
Griffin smirked at me. “Sorry. Did you want that one?” He held out the box, and when I looked at it, he snatched it away.
I was going to wish that he’d wake up bald, I thought darkly.
“I don’t want anything from you,” I said.
“Such spirit. No wonder you’ve driven my brother mad,” he said.
I didn’t understand what he meant. “I haven’t done anything to Lucien,” I snapped, and moved to brush past him.
He caught my arm, pulling me back.
“Be careful,” he said in my ear. “There are people who want you dead.”
Fear skittered down my spine. I yanked my arm from his grasp. “What are you talking about? What do you know?”
“Oh, I’ve heard rumors,” he said with a shrug and another maddening smirk. “Who’ve you managed to piss off this time, mortal girl?”
He strode away, laughing, before I could answer.
“Wait,” I called, following him with a hissed curse under my breath. “What have you heard?”
But he wove into the crowd of students and disappeared.
I turned a full circle, looking for him, but he was gone.
I looked for my friends, but they’d moved from the steps, probably in search of fireflies. I felt suddenly lonely. I walked toward one of the bonfires, stopping to accept a stick of sugar-glazed fruit from someone who was passing them out. I held the stick out to the flames, and the person next to me glanced over and then smiled.
Elome.
“Nice dress,” she said. “But you’d better not eat that.”
I glanced down at my stick of fruit, which was sizzling from its proximity to the flames. “Why not?” I asked, uncertain.
“I heard someone spiked them with charmwine,” she said. “Can you smell it? And look at the other students.”
I tossed my fruit into the flames at once. She was right. All around us, students were giggling, their faces flushed by the heat of the bonfire. At first, I thought they were laughing at me, and then I realized, they were all charmed.
It wasn’t a prank directed at me. It was a prank directed at the entire school.
I spotted Hannah a short distance away, a stick in her hand that was noticeably empty of fruit.
“Thanks,” I said to Elome before I started toward Hannah, who looked a little loopy. “Hannah?”
“Kyra,” she said, grinning at me. “There you are. Did you catch a fish?”
“A… what?” I asked.
“Er, I mean, did you make a firefly? Er… make a wish?”
“No,” I said, studying her face. “Do you feel all right? How much firefruit did you eat?”
Hannah smiled blissfully and grabbed my hand, ignoring my question. “Let’s dance. I love this music.”
She was definitely drunk on charmwine.
“Maybe we should get you back to our room,” I said, feeling a faint sense of panic. Mortals were susceptible to commands when drunk on charmwine, so Hannah was vulnerable right now.
“Not without Lyrica,” Hannah protested. “I’ll be lonely.”
Lyrica. Not mortal, but not elite either. Would she be affected like Hannah?
I spotted Tearly across the lawn, carrying a plate of cupcakes. “Stay here,” I told Hannah, and headed toward Tearly.
“Where’s Lyrica?” I called to her above the music.
Tearly pointed toward the entrance of the school, and the plate balanced in her other hand wobbled. “She went inside a few minutes ago. What’s wrong?”
“Did you have any of the firefruit?” I demanded.
“I had two,” Tearly said. “It was delicious. Why?”
Oh no.
“Everyone is drunk on charmwine,” I said. “Someone spiked the firefruit.”
“What?” Tearly exclaimed, her eyes going wide.
“I’ve got to find Lyrica…” I looked around and didn’t see her. And where was Hannah? She’d disappeared.
“I just saw Hannah, and she’s vanished,” I said, spinning to scan the crowd again.
This was turning into a nightmare.
“There she is,” Tearly said, pointing.
I spotted my roommate dancing beside one of the bonfires with the sly-faced friend of Lucien’s, the one named Tryst.
So, this was Lucien and his friends’ trick? Another Basilisk joke at the expense of some middlings? Fury burned in my chest. They wouldn’t humiliate her like they tried to humiliate me. I wouldn’t let them.
I marched across the lawn and grabbed Hannah, pulling her away from Tryst. She made a sound of protest, and Tryst scowled at me.
“Hey, I was dancing with her,” he said, and I saw that his face was flushed too.
They were both drunk on charmwine.
“Back off,” I snarled at him. “Leave her alone. Don’t bother her again.”
“What’s with you?” Hannah said in confusion and annoyance. “He isn’t bothering me. I asked him to dance.”
“Come on,” I persisted, dragging Hannah toward the garden. “The Summertide celebration is over.”
All around us, students staggered and giggled and danced frantically.
Where were all the teachers? The headmaster?
“Summertide is over?” Hannah asked. She tugged at my hand as she dug her heels into the ground. “But we haven’t even caught our fireflies yet—”
“We’ll catch fireflies from the window in our room,” I said.
Tearly intercepted us. “I just saw Lyrica.”
I turned and caught a glimpse of the fae girl at the steps of the school, surrounded by students in various states of drowsiness or giddiness. Again, I wondered where all the teachers were.
A golden figure appeared at the top of the steps above Lyrica.
Griffin.
My chest tightened.
“Stay with Hannah,” I instructed Tearly, who was beginning to act giddy too. “I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere.”
They looked at me with blank smiles.
“Stay,” I repeated firmly, and then I ran toward Lyrica and Griffin.
I reached Lyrica before Griffin could. I grabbed her arm and pulled her down the steps with me. “Come on,” I called over my shoulder.
She followed me without protest. She had a cupcake clutched in one hand. “Where are we going?”
“Back to Tearly and…” I frowned.
There was Tearly, but now where had Hannah gone?
This was worse than herding cats.
“Where is Hannah?” I asked with a note of panic in my voice when we reached Tearly.
“She went into the maze,” Tearly said dreamily. “She heard someone calling her name.”
“Who?” I demanded.
“Some Basilisk boy,” Tearly said.
A Basilisk boy.
Hannah was far more mortal than Lyrica or Tearly, and thus more vulnerable while under the influ
ence of charmwine. They could make her do anything.
I made a decision.
“Here.” I planted Lyrica’s unresisting hand in Tearly’s. “Go back to the tower. Eat some snacks and wait for me and Hannah.”
With that, I turned and plunged after Hannah into the maze.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
THE INTERIOR OF the maze was filled with shifting shadows. The music and laughter from outside seemed oddly muffled, like I was underwater instead of just behind a few hedges of brambles. Perhaps some spell was at work keeping the sound at bay.
“Hannah?” I called out.
I listened, but nobody replied. I kept moving, running into a dead end and doubling back to the fork in the maze and taking the other path. All the while, I listened for the sound of Hannah’s laughter.
Footsteps sounded on the other side of one of the hedges. I ran toward them. “Hannah? Hannah!”
I rounded a turn and collided full-force with another body. I fell backward on the matted grass.
Not Hannah.
“Lucien,” I hissed in astonishment. He’d been the one to lure her inside the maze?
He stared down at me a moment, then offered me a hand up.
I ignored it and scrambled to my feet. “Where’s Hannah?”
“Your roommate? Haven’t seen her,” he responded.
He wore a long gray cloak that made him blend with the shadows, and he was carrying one of his books in one hand. He wasn’t dressed for the Summertide party. He looked like he was dressed to hide.
I waited for him to shove past me, but he only rocked on his heels and studied my face.
“Are you all right?” he asked then.
“Someone spiked all the firefruit with charmwine,” I said. “It doesn’t take much to guess who that might have been.” I leveled a glare at him, and Lucien raised his eyebrows.
“Not me, if that’s what you’re implying,” he said. “I’ve been in the maze all evening, reading.”
“Why?” I spat, not believing him.
“I supposed you could say Summertide is my least favorite holiday,” he said. “I like to make myself scarce. As a prince of the dark court, I’m sometimes seen as a target for lingering grudges on this day.”
I thought of what I’d heard about Griffin’s mother, the sun court queen, and her hatred for him. I had to admit it made sense for him to lay low.
“Well, someone in Basilisk did it.”
“Not likely,” Lucien said with infuriating confidence. “Basilisk was punished severely for what happened the last time. Nobody would’ve been interested in tempting the headmaster’s wrath again, not so soon.”
“Oh really? Who else could it be?” I said angrily. “Move out of my way; I don’t have time for this. I have to find Hannah before someone tries to make her dance like a monkey—or worse.” Tears rose in my eyes. I blinked hard to force them away. I wouldn’t cry in front of him.
Lucian’s hand closed over my wrist.
“Wait,” he said.
I braced myself and prepared to yank away.
“Do you want me to help you look?” he said.
I looked at him in astonishment. I didn’t answer. I was too startled. I just started forward on the path again, and after a pause, Lucien followed.
I didn’t know what to say to him.
“So, you’re talking to me again?”
“It’s complicated,” he said.
“Complicated? Disdain for mortals and middlings is hardly complicated. It’s classist bigotry, and it’s disgusting.”
“It doesn’t have anything to do with you being a middling,” he replied with a note of surprise in his voice. “Did you think that it did?”
“What else could it be?”
He didn’t answer. He studied me as if seeing something for the first time before I brushed past him to keep looking.
I didn’t have time for this.
The path abruptly ended in a round outdoor room bordered by hedges with a pond in the center. Another dead end. No sign of Hannah.
I whirled to head back the way I’d come, and Lucien blocked my path.
“Kyra,” he said, and this time he sounded desperate. “Wait.”
My eyes shot to his. His use of my name made me shiver. It made me feel seen, exposed. I didn’t know what to make of it.
“We need to find Hannah,” I said.
“What happened with Basilisk…” Lucien shook his head as his eyes sparked with sudden anger that took me by surprise. “That wasn’t about you being a middling. It was a cruel taunt meant to hurt me, and me alone. I’m sorry it happened to you—it was vile for them to use you like a plaything. I just… I just wanted to say that.”
I absorbed his apology with a nod.
“What do you mean, a cruel taunt meant to hurt you?”
Lucien’s jaw tightened at the question.
“We should find your friend,” he said instead of answering, and moved past me.
It was my turn to grab his arm to stop him. “Why?” I demanded, but my voice came out as a whisper instead of the strong tone I’d been going for. “Is it because they tried to get me to… to kiss you? Am I that repulsive?”
We were standing close together. I could see a vein pulsing in his throat.
He removed my hand from his arm and brushed past me. “We should find your friend.”
I followed him, my heart beating fast.
Shadows coated the paths, making it difficult to see. Fireflies danced in the brambles just out of reach, and moonlight glowed overhead, casting faint light. I paused at another fork in the maze, mentally reviewing the paths I’d already tried.
“This way,” I said, although I wasn’t sure. I cupped my hands around my mouth. “Hannah!”
Silence.
I started down the darkened path, the one I hadn’t tried yet. This must be the way.
Lucien followed.
The brambles pressed closer as the path narrowed, and they began to bloom giant, sweet-smelling white flowers as we passed. The effect was stunning, but I barely noticed.
“Hannah!” I called again.
We came to another dead end, another outdoor room, this one made to look like a cathedral, with the brambles twisted into thick thorny pillars and arching windows, with even a dome overhead laden with the white flowers. Stone monoliths ringed the center of the space, and a mossy stone statue of a dragon stood in the center, its clawed feet braced and its wings outstretched as if it were about to take flight.
Through the windows I saw the bonfires on the lawn, and several teachers herding charmwine-drunk students toward the buildings.
I halted, frustrated. I was certain this was the path forward. Had I missed a direction?
“Look,” Lucien said, pointing past me. “Isn’t that your friend?”
I turned and looked where he was pointing, through one of the high windows formed by the brambles, and saw Hannah standing beside one of the bonfires with Professor Quaddlebush, who was gesturing toward the North Tower. He shook a finger at her, and she reached out a hand and bopped his nose. Beside her, Tryst howled with laughter.
She was fine. Everything was fine. Relief rushed through me like a gust of wind.
“How did we miss her in the maze?” I looked at Lucien, who stood in the shadows of the path, his book dangling from his hand, studying me with an expression I couldn’t decipher.
Now that my frantic search for Hannah was over, I hesitated.
“Why?” I asked. “Why would Griffin torment me to hurt you?”
Lucien turned his head toward mine. The moonlight glinted along his sharp cheekbones and winked across his antlers. His eyes were dark with sudden vulnerability, and his mouth opened, but he said nothing.
Emboldened, I stepped forward until I was almost in front of him. My heart thudded.
“You like me,” I said. It was almost an accusation as it tumbled out. “Don’t you?”
“No,” Lucien said. “Of course not.”
He didn’t sound remotely convincing.
“You do. Are you ashamed to be attracted to a middling? Is this like with Darcy and Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice, where I’m from an inferior family that would be an embarrassment to your good breeding, and you’d never stoop so low—”
“It isn’t like that,” he hissed. “Don’t pretend you don’t know.”
“Know what?”
We were close. So close we were almost touching.
He turned his head away.
“You think I don’t know that you’re hiding your heritage, but I saw the golden flash in your eyes that night we went into the forest.”
“What flash? What does that mean?” I didn’t understand.
“It was right after we left the forest. I brushed your hair from your face. Do you remember?”
I remembered—after that night, he’d been cool and remote—but it didn’t explain anything. “Help me out here, Lucien. I’m a mostly mortal. A middling. I’m new to all of this.”
He exhaled. “Are you really going to play this game?”
“I’m not playing a game,” I insisted.
He gave me a look that bordered on exasperation. “You have sunshine in your blood. The sun court. You are poison for me. And yet, you try to seduce me.”
A laugh burst out of me.
“First of all, I’m not from the sun court. Second—seduce you? Don’t flatter yourself.”
It sounded like a lie, even to me.
Lucien stepped forward, backing me against one of the columns of the hedge cathedral. I sucked in a breath as he leaned close to me.
“Why are you doing this?” he breathed. “Why are you tormenting me?” His lashes brushed his cheeks as he lowered his eyes to my lips.
“I’m not from the sun court.” My heart beat fast as gaze tangled with mine once more. “And I haven’t done anything to you.”
“The first time I saw you standing on the path, it was like a sword through my heart.”
“I haven’t done anything,” I retorted, feeling a little dizzy.
“No?” he countered. His eyes were the color of summer moss in the moonlight. “You ask me about my past, my books. Pretend an interest in me. Hum songs in the Cistern that remind me of something I can’t explain. Wear my royal colors, even.”
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