Page 68 of Kiss of Smoke

I kept forgetting that she’d had time to mourn. While the pain would never truly leave, she’d spent months now overseeing the building of the new palace, the executions of the Unstained Souls, and bringing back the magic of Avilion.

“She’s on the warpath to retrieve all the stolen Fae artifacts and return them to their resting places,” Jack said. “We retrieved quite a few of them from the tunnels, but I believe the mortals kept caches elsewhere.”

I nodded, picking up my bag of cookies. “Well, come on then. We really don’t have all night to waste if we’re heading off on the queen’s orders tomorrow.”

Gwyn gave me a rueful smile. “So… no bar-hopping?”

I took his arm, trying to haul him up off the wall. “By the trees, no. We’ve got things to do, Gwyn. Names to take. Doors to kick down.”

Gwyn stood up abruptly, almost knocking me over, but he caught me easily. “You had me at ‘doors’. Let’s do this.”

Now,thatwas the kind of agent I liked.

24

Gwynand my father stared each other down.

“There’s no way you’re not cheating!” Noctifer leaned forward over the coffee table, scattered with the remains of our card game.

"Naw.” Gwyn flicked through the cards in his hand. “I’m just really, really good. How do you think I won my bike?”

I rolled my eyes, and drew from the deck. Truth be told, I wasn’t entirely sure what we were playing, much less understand the convoluted rules, but it was apparently a very popular card game among the Gentry.

“Ooh!” I squealed, throwing all five cards down face-up. “I won! I think.”

Gwyn leaned over, examining the suit. “Yep, she won. See? If I was cheating, the pot would’ve been mine.”

The ‘pot’, which we’d all thrown a small token into, consisted of five crumpled mortal dollars, several black thorns, a plain silver ring, and a chestnut.

I scooped it all over to my side of the table, beaming at them. “Not that the dollars can buy anything these days, but that’s okay.”

Ever since the Unstained Souls had been wiped from Avilion and the Veil brought down, human money had gone out of fashion.

Fortunately, many of the Fae had kept to the old ways of bartering and favors, so the economy had lurched back up after a brief but disconcerting dip.

I’d been told there were Fae who still avidly collected mortal curios, so I might be able to barter the dollars away for something better. The chestnut was going to be worth a pastry or two over at Web and Peaseblossom.

“Good game, Dad.” I patted him on the back encouragingly. “You’ll get there someday.”

For once, Noctifer actually had a day off, and had abandoned his armor in favor of a tee shirt. We would probably never be able to get him to wear actual jeans—unlike currency, human fashions were still very much in style—but he seemed to accept tees just fine.

Noctifer grumbled a little, gathering the cards and reshuffling them.

While he did that, I refilled my glass of lemonade and glanced at the clock. Robin was in the office, but Jack was due to arrive with my aunt any minute now. We’d just started cards to kill time while we took a break from studying.

Noctifer was actually supposed to be teaching Gwyn how to sword-fight. My ex-Hunter boyfriend was probably the best guy to have on your side in a brawl, but Robin had strongly hinted that he needed to know how to handle a sword.

Of course, this had led to a lot of jokes about how often I handled Robin’s sword and if Gwyn was going to be practicing on him, too, but eventually Robin had just rolled his eyes, made a phone call, and a few hours later my father arrived with practice swords and gear.

I gave a guilty look at the practice swords lying forgotten on the couch.

But my father had also told me that my aunt had finished with her surprise, and wanted to come up and visit us now that Annwyn was no longer sealed off from Avilion.

Originally, the invitation had been extended for us to come to the House of Thorns, but it hadn’t taken much to get the point across to my Unseelie family—we were very likely going to be persona non grata in Annwyn for some time.

Not only had I thrown an extremely generous offer in Queen Nicnevin’s face, and thus kept Robin from her grasp again, but Jack apparently hadn’t wasted much time or niceties on quitting.

We could still visit the White Mansion, which existed in its own lands and was old enough—and magical enough—that Nicnevin wouldn’t attempt to take it over, but he’d told us that she was utterly furious when he resigned from his position in her court.

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