Kaden’s brows knit together, and something swift and dark flitted across his face, like a storm blowing in over the mountains.
He closed the distance between us without a word, those powerful wings materializing from the shadows as if they were made of darkness themselves.
He scooped me up, cipher and all, and alighted from the garden. Wind whipped my face as he swooped toward the clouds, and I could feel the weight of his assessing gaze as he flew us back to the House of Guile.
I didn’t dare meet his gaze. I was afraid one look would reveal what I’d done, and I wasn’t ready to admit it out loud.
Now that I held the cipher in my hands, I had to wonder if it had been worth it. Could I have found someother way to rescue Imogen without binding myself in a bargain with a faerie — even one I didn’t fully understand?
The heaviness in my gut made it impossible to appreciate the shimmering beauty of the Quarter as Kaden began our descent. He didn’t speak until he touched down on the black stone balcony, his footsteps faltering as he landed.
He set me on my feet and looked me over with an assessing, clinical gaze. “Are you hurt?” he asked.
Something in his voice made my chest tighten, but I just shook my head.
Kaden loosed a breath. “Did you kill him?”
“No.”
“Then how did you . . .” A line appeared between Kaden’s brows as he tried to piece together the puzzle. “When I saw he’d left the party, I came looking. But then I felt a blast of power, and I sensed you outside.”
Troubled as I was, I didn’t questionhowhe’d sensed me. Instead, I felt the truth spilling out of me before I could stop myself. “Caladwyn caught me trying to steal the cipher from his study,” I confessed. “He felt it when I unlocked the drawer where he was keeping it.”
Kaden’s eyes widened, and I looked down at the cipher cradled in my hands, wondering if it had been worth it.
“He let me take it.”
At those words, the horror and dread in Kaden’s eyes intensified. “Heletyou take it?”
I nodded.
“Why?”
I took a deep breath. There was no point in hiding it. That wouldn’t erase what I’d done. “I . . . made a bargain with him.”
“Youwhat?”
“He said he was going to kill you for trying to steal from him,” I snapped. “What was I supposed to do?”
Kaden made an aggravated noise in his throat and raked a hand through his hair. “I could have handled Caladwyn.”
“He wasn’t going to let me leave that study,” I shot back, angry that he was making me feel even worse.
“You know better than to strike a bargain with a faerie!”
I opened my mouth to say something nasty in return, but the desperate, almost pleading note in his voice made me pause.
“When I first found you in that alley, you wouldn’t even tell me your godsdamned name!”
Panic and frustration swirled inside me, but I knew Kaden was right. It had been reckless to make a bargain with Caladwyn — even if I didn’t understand the full ramifications of it yet.
A muscle in Kaden’s jaw twitched, and he closed his eyes as if trying to summon patience. When he finally spoke, his voice was ragged. “What did you promise him?”
I couldn’t bring myself to tell him — not when I knew nothing of the Otherworld or what reason he might have for barring me from the Quartz Palace. Perhaps I’d been under some sort of thrall from the moment I’d entered Caladwyn’s estate, because the terms of the bargain that had seemed so inconsequential now felt like manacles.
“Lyra,” Kaden croaked. The sound of my name on his lips made the panic swell in my chest. “What — did you —promisehim?”
He opened his eyes, and the desperation in his stormy gaze stole the air from my lungs.
