held her in his ice-blue gaze, his expression stubborn. It was clear he was protective of this woman, Lexie. Then his manner shifted as if he was mentally turning a page. “Are there other reasons that you’re in Marcari?”
The angry suspicion in his tone made her pulse jump, but the king spoke before she could reply. “Why do you ask that, Jack?” He didn’t sound pleased.
Jack leaned forward. “Ms. Lark suffers from complicated loyalties, sire, since she’s both an agent of the Light Fey Council and the Company. Given what has just happened in the woods, I’m certain there is more that she’s not telling us. I don’t believe in coincidences. There is a connection between the attack and her arrival in Marcari, even if it is an innocent one—and I’m not easily convinced of innocence among the fey.”
“Jack!” Lark protested, her already pounding heart now speeding with apprehension.
King Renault had clearly heard enough. “Unfounded suspicions are beneath us, but neither can we afford to be careless. Perhaps Ms. Lark should relax in a private room while you and I discuss what has become of the Company compound. Then I’m sure we’ll have questions for her to answer, and she shall answer them.”
Lark sprang to her feet, instinct screaming at her to flee from the king’s stern presence—but it was Jack’s eyes she sought. “No, you have this all wrong.”
But his expression told her she’d run out of free passes. For an instant her old guilt robbed her of the will to fight, sapping her strength like a deadly fever. It was only for a heartbeat, but it was enough time for Jack’s hand to close around her arm.
“That’s an excellent idea, sire. I’ll make sure Lark is comfortable.”
His frown said she’d be anything but.
The tiny room where Jack left Lark was mostly empty, with a chair and side table and not much else. Lark swore under her breath. The lock was electronic, operated by a keypad. In other words, she’d need more than a knack with handcuffs to get out of this mess. Lark prowled the few feet of floor, frustrated and longing for her guns. Blasting the guts out of the lock would have suited her frame of mind.
Finally, she slumped in the chair and buried her face in her hands. All at once the sheer awfulness of the past hours slammed into her like an avalanche. She leaned forward, folding her arms on her knees.
Disaster had struck. Even if, by some miracle, some of the local agents had survived the blast at the Company’s headquarters, every sense she possessed told her the casualties had been high. No doubt Jack and the king were putting wheels in motion—securing the site, calling the other Company offices, preparing a cover story the human newshounds would believe. Then would come even more activity—forensics, notifications, burial arrangements. The Company had a protocol for every contingency, even one as dire as this.
But their orders only covered action, not emotion. Fine souls had been lost this night—good friends and brave hearts. The world was a poorer place now.
Face after face flashed through her mind, each one tearing away a piece of her. Tears slipped down her cheeks, the first signs of a coming flood. Alone and with nothing to distract her, Lark soon gave in to a storm of sobbing. And Jack thought I played a role in that terrible destruction!
She should have known her reunion with Jack would not go well. I could have stayed in the shadows, but I approached you because you’re slipping, Jack, and I’m the only one who knows why. You need someone who understands. Helping him was the only way to make up for stealing his secret in the first place.
To make matters worse, what good had her betrayal of Jack done? He hadn’t possessed the spell or formula or supernatural stardust that would restore the Light Fey to their former strength. His extraordinary power was a curse—not at all something they could or would want to duplicate for themselves. And now, with the Company in ruins and the Dark Queen on the brink of freedom, the stakes were getting steadily higher.
Lark rose and crossed to the window, fishing in her pocket for a tissue. She mopped her nose, her eyes feeling scratchy and raw. It was dark out, but there were lights enough to see the palace gardens below. They were clearly trimmed and manicured to human tastes—nothing like the half-wild gardens the Light Fey preferred.
She wondered how long those gardens—or the Light Fey—would last. What chance did her people have against the coming of the Dark Queen?
There was one last gamble, and that was why Lark was in Marcari—and why she had to get out from under lock and key.
Lark examined the windows. They were casements, opening out over a sheer drop to the rocky garden path below. Not her first choice of exit. She leaned her forehead against the glass. She was exhausted, and there was so much she had yet to do before the night was out.
She returned to the door with its keypad. Oddly, crying her heart out had seemed to clear her head, because inspiration struck. She placed her hand over the glowing panel, sensing the flow of energy from contact to wire to a central computer somewhere in a basement office. As her mind drifted along that energetic frequency, she detected magical residue thick in the air—probably fallout from the blast that had destroyed the Company’s compound. It was causing static throughout the electrical grid, and anything wireless would be down. If there was one thing magic was good at, it was screwing up tech.
Sorry, Jack, but I can’t afford to sit quietly like a good girl. Lark risked sending a pulse of power into the keypad. The buttons flashed spasmodically, and she heard the click of disconnection. She whisked through the door, pulling it shut before the system registered more than a negligible flicker of disruption like all the others. At the same time, she summoned her glamour, turning invisible in the space of a blink. She was free.
About time, too. She had to see a princess about a wedding. Lark walked swiftly and silently through the marble halls, feeling her spirits lift for the first time that night.
Once out of sight of King Renault’s rooms, Lark pulled on a new glamour that made her visible but altered her appearance to a friendly but forgettable face. She glanced over her shoulder, catching a woman looking her way. For a moment Lark froze, but the woman’s gaze skated past her. Lark frowned. Wasn’t that the same woman who’d been outside with the son of the Italian ambassador? She couldn’t be sure, but hurried on, mentally filing the incident.
Her path led past the apartment of Crown Prince Kyle, who was residing in Marcari these last few weeks before the wedding. Though the rest of his family had remained in Vidon, Kyle had chosen to be close to his bride. Beyond his apartment was a string of guest chambers and, finally, Amelie’s rooms.
With a casual flick of a spell, Lark slipped past the guards and stopped at the entrance to the princess’s sitting room.
Despite the best efforts of the staff, the princess’s chambers looked like a bridal explosion. A swathe of sparkly white tulle sat mounded on a chair, and wedding magazines were scattered across every flat surface. A pair of long white gloves looked as if they had been dragged to the floor and mauled by a dog. Several servants in black-and-white uniforms hovered at the edge of the storm, tidying up as best they could.
Lark edged past the chaos to find an army of shoes marching from the princess’s bedroom, as if Amelie had tried on every pair and abandoned them before she had made it all the way down the hall. Which, apparently, was exactly what had happened.
“They’re all uncomfortable!” Princess Amelie complained to her attendant, a harried-looking woman who clearly had no fashion sense of her own. “I will be standing for hours and hours—on international television! The world will be watching and texting as I marry the man I love. It’s all going to be hard enough without obsessing about the pain in my feet.”
Amelie’s attendant glanced around the drawing room, as if searching for answers among the litter of footwear. “Perhaps I can find something else for you to try, Your Highness.”
“I