Page 13 of Kiss of Smoke

“Yeah, you’re not that great at sitting still and doing as you’re told,” he muttered, but he kissed the top of my head. “Which is one of the many things I love about you.”

My cheeks flushed when I remembered that we had an audience. An audience which included my father. “You get the ingredients from the top shelves. I don’t feel like dragging a chair over.”

Gwyn obeyed, not even having to rise to his tiptoes to grab what we needed, and I felt that familiar sensation of strange domestic happiness overtake me.

Home had always been a rather nebulous concept to me, but I thought that I could be perfectly blissful if I could just wake up in this house every day and do basic, everyday things like make breakfast with them.

Maybe followed by running down some bad guys, just to spice things up a little.

“Well, fill me in while I cook,” I said, pouring batter in perfect little circles across a griddle. Following Robin’s lead, I popped a few chocolate chips in his fire salamander’s mouth, and Cinder happily flared up. “What are we doing now? Where’s Robin, Jack, and Sisse?”

Gwyn hesitated, and I looked up from flipping the first pancake as I felt the tension fill the room.

“What?” I asked, fearing the worst.

“They’re still searching for Princess Tanaquill and the Souls,” Gwyn said, refilling my coffee.

Noctifer shifted behind Titania. “Goodfellow believes the Souls are using Fae artifacts to elude capture.” He frowned, shaking his head. “Our own magic, turned against us.”

“Exactly.” Robin’s voice filled the kitchen and I looked up, nearly flopping a pancake on the floor. He stood in the doorway, his suit rumpled and dusty, his black hair wild. A new scratch marred the flesh of his forehead. “And they’re damn good at it.”

5

“It’s like chasing phantoms,”he said, sounding more tired than I’d ever heard him.

I dropped the spatula and rushed to him, uncaring of what everyone else in the kitchen thought. Sisse fluttered out of Robin’s hair, landing on the table and attacking a sugar cube with gusto. “How long were you out?”

I wrapped my arms around his neck, giving him a quick hug that let him know how much I gave a damn, without crossing into PDA territory. Not in front of the queen…or my father.

“All night.” Like Gwyn, Robin had circles under his eyes. We were all running on dregs now. “We’re keeping the search for Tanaquill quiet for now—which means you’d better not be writing down every word I’m saying, Oriande.”

The reporter looked up guiltily, her pen stopping mid-scratch.

“I see.” It made sense. As long as they could accurately report that Queen Titania lived, they might avoid complete chaos. Let them believe that Tanaquill was safely at her side and perhaps we could mitigate the fury that was coming to a head. “Is there anywhere we haven’t searched?”

Robin’s lips pressed flat in displeasure. “Too many places. The Undercity is…unique. Sometimes there are paths that disappear at certain times, or don’t want to be found. Some of those paths aren’t on the same plane as Avilion. We could spend years combing the Undercity and only find a fraction of what it hides.”

I also knew that perfectly well. Having been in the Undercity, I could report with complete accuracy that it was a nightmare warren of hidden terrors. “So we keep combing it. The Souls might be using Fae artifacts, but they’re still outsiders in that territory.”

Robin gave me a tired half-smile. “We’ll keep combing. We won’t stop until we find her, your Majesty.” He directed this last part at Titania, who nodded and raised her mug to him.

The scent of coffee and brandy reached my nose with the gesture.

No wonder she was so calm. I caught sight of the brandy bottle on the counter, shoved towards the back, but it was already three-quarters empty.

The thought of someone like the queen drowning her pain in alcohol made her almosttooreal for me.

I preferred to think of Titania as untouchable, as distant and removed as the sun, a force of power in our everyday life that didn’t, or couldn’t, feel pain just like every other ordinary Fae.

“We will,” I said, uncomfortable with my line of thought. “Robin, you get some sleep. Gwyn, Dad and I will begin looking over whatever maps we can find and come up with some alternate routes to try.”

“You’re not going into the Undercity with the Souls using our magic,” Robin told me, his eyes sparking with blue internal fire, but I waved a hand.

“You’re going to bed,” I replied, herding him out of the kitchen. Once we were out of earshot of everyone else, I turned my head up to him. “You need to rest too, Robin. We need everyone at full functionality to fix this.”

It was only because we were at the threshold of his bedroom, where no one should hear us unless they were spying, that he said, “I don’t know if there is any fixing this.”

I shoved his door open and slid his jacket over his shoulders. “Don’t let pessimism take you down. They might have a small army, but that will always fail when you pit them against us. Look at this way, Robin: you’ve got me and my father. You’ve got Jack Frost. Now you have a Wild Hunter too, and he knows the Undercity better than any of us.”

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