Page 8 of Midnight Star

“When night fae take humans, where do they typically bring them?” Riven smoothly breaks in.

“The Night Court.” Zythara scowls, as if angry at herself for revealing this information.

My heart leaps at getting a decently concrete answer about Zoey. “What happens to them there?” I ask.

“They become pets of the royal family.” Her lips curl into a smile that makes my skin crawl. “The king, queen, princes, and princesses each keep their own collection.”

I stiffen at the word.

Pets.

As if human lives are mere possessions.

But we have limited time, and I need to know more.

“What does being a pet entail?” I ask, struggling to keep my voice steady.

“The most desirable of them serve the royal family,” she replies. “As I said, each member of the royal family keeps a small collection. The ones they don’t want are sent to the barns, for the nobles to enjoy as they please.”

She continues to tell us more, and horror grows in my stomach as I learn about what Zoey’s been dragged—well, flown—into.

“And what makes them?—”

“Enough,” Riven cuts me off, and I freeze, jarred by his interruption. “We’ll get into more of those details later.” With that, he turns back to Zythara, as focused as ever. “Where’s the Night Court?”

“To find the Night Court, you must go northwest through the forest, crest the highest hill, and locate the black stone archway,” she says. “Passing beneath it under the night sky activates the court’s magic, a ripple that notes your presence and grants you passage. Without it, the court remains veiled. But be warned that without an escort, you’ll never make it through alive.”

Sapphire

Riven asksZythara more questions about how to get to the Night Court, which I note as well, given my sudden gift at navigating by the stars. He’s intensely thorough about it, ensuring that whenever we try to find the Night Court, we don’t get lost. He also asks about the rulers of the court, and other questions about how the court operates.

There are a lot of details to keep track of.

“Why were you in the Wandering Wilds?” he eventually asks Zythara.

“I was sent here on an errand,” she replies.

“What kind of errand?”

“The king wanted a winter fae,” she says. “I was heading to the border to find one.”

Riven sucks in a sharp breath, clearly shocked by this information.

“How many winter fae have the night fae taken?” he asks. “And what happens to them when they’re there?”

“I don’t keep count.” She holds his gaze, challenging him to push her further. “But the queen has turned at least twenty since the Harvest Moon. Probably more.”

Horror and rage war in Riven’s eyes.

Did Zythara just shock the Winter Prince speechless?

“What does the Night Court want with winter fae?” I ask, since we’re getting close to hitting our time limit, and we don’t have a second to waste.

“Power,” she says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “We no longer want to remain concealed in the shadows, scared that when others learn of our existence, they’ll wipe us out because they fear the unknown. So, given our small numbers compared to the Winter and Summer Courts, we want power. Pure, endless power.”

“Your kind already has both air magic and water magic,” Riven says, and frost crawls up his arms, as if he’s growing restless. “How much more power could you gain?”

“The power of the Revenants.” Zythara raises her chin, as if these Revenants are things to be worshipped and feared. “When Ambrogio regains his full strength, we’ll join the Blood Coven—which we’ve been aligned with for nearly a year—and he’ll turn us into Revenants.”

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