Kai had put it off long enough. He needed to speak with Gavaran.

Rumors were swirling about his lack of power—and not in the magical sense, though that was technically true, too. There’d been less than flattering talk about his lengthy absence and the reasons for it. The elves did not believe Sterling was alive. Some thought him crazy.

Some thought to remove him.

While Kai knew there would always be a certain amount of discontent because he would never be able to please everyone—this was different. If left alone any longer, this would turn into a problem. It was one of many reasons he hadn’t gone with Kestrel and Seraiah to meet with the Summer King. He’d neglected Nyrene for far too long.

Kai strode down the hall in the wing of the castle Gavaran had laid claim to. All of the council members kept rooms in the castle, but Gavaran was the only one who had taken up an entire wing. It hadn’t always been this way, but in Kai’s absence, Gavaran had set himself up nicely, knowing that even when Kai returned, there would be nothing he could do about it.

He scowled. None of this would be an issue if they didn’t have a council in the first place. He wouldn’t be made to feel like an outsider in his own home who needed to ask for permission to do anything.

As much as Kai wanted to do away with the council entirely, he knew it wasn’t the solution. Perhaps it was something that could be addressed when his sister took the throne, but for now, he needed to work with them and present a united front to the elves.

The rumblings of discontent needed to be stopped.

Kai rapped twice on the door to Gavaran’s study and waited. Besides himself and the two guards who followed him everywhere, the hallway was empty.

Minutes dragged by and no sound came from within.

Kai lifted his hand to knock again when a voice made him pause.

“If you’re looking for my father, he isn’t here,” Virelai said.

He turned to find her watching him from a nearby doorway.

She smoothed her hands over her emerald green skirts and smiled at him from beneath her lashes.

Kai didn’t want to be trapped into conversation with Virelai, but he needed to speak with Gavaran, and she was the only one around who might know his whereabouts. “Where is he?”

Virelai lifted one shoulder and let it fall. “Away.”

Kai barely contained his eye roll. “When will he return?”

She tucked a stray hair behind her ear. “I wouldn’t know.”

“Then tell him I would like a word when you see him.”

“I will.”

Kai turned on his heel.

“Not that it will do you any good.”

The words were so soft, Kai wasn’t sure he was meant to hear them. When he looked back, Virelai was already gone.

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A leaf crunched under Seraiah’s cheek. She blinked sluggishly to clear the fog from her vision. Lifting her head up slightly, she took in her surroundings and discovered she was lying on the forest floor in a bed of fallen leaves. Seraiah pushed herself up to sitting and brushed the bits of leaves and soil off her face as she looked around.

She was alone.

Completely alone.

Her satchel lay at her feet, and Seraiah was relieved to find the dagger Kai had given her was still securely strapped to her thigh. She touched the hilt lightly, trying to draw strength from the weapon.

How had she ended up by herself in the forest?

It came back to her in bits and pieces. The faeries. She’d made a deal with the faeries. She was playing their little game, and not just Sterling’s life depended on her winning.

Seraiah’s head pounded, and a surge of dizziness hit her when she tried to stand. She had to grab onto the tree trunk next to her to keep from collapsing back into the leaves.

Must be a side effect of whatever was in the vial the Summer King made me drink, she thought as she waited for the sensation to pass.

She couldn’t remember anything that had happened after she’d swallowed down the blue liquid. One minute she was drinking from the vial, and the next she was waking up here in the middle of a forest.

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After Seraiah was sure the dizziness had passed, she let go of the tree and retrieved her bag, slinging it over her shoulder. She was surprised they’d let her keep it, but she was grateful that they had. With the food Wisteria had packed, she should be able to survive at least a week without having to worry about finding more or starving to death. Hopefully, it wouldn’t take her longer than that to find the dragon.

If more than a week passed, Kai would realize something had gone wrong. He expected them to return within a fortnight, if not sooner, and it had already been five days. It would take four days to travel back from the Seelie Court, which meant she had exactly five days to fetch the scale and return with it unless she wanted Kai to start a war with the fae.

A war was the last thing they needed right now, but there was no way he would allow Kestrel to remain in the Summer King’s possession.

She couldn’t let that happen. I have to get this done not only to free Kestrel, but to make sure the search for Sterling continues.

Seraiah squared her shoulders. She would get that golden scale—or die trying.

Seraiah surveyed the trees around her, struggling to determine which direction she should take. Everything looked the same and like nothing she could remember seeing on her brief journey through this world. For all she knew, this wasn’t even the same forest they had passed through to reach the Seelie Court in the first place. The faeries could have dumped her off somewhere on the opposite side of the continent.

After a few moments of blank staring, she finally decided to pick a direction at random and start walking. Eventually, she had to run into something or someone, she reasoned. She just hoped whoever she ran into would be friendly and not one of those creatures Kestrel had said made the Varanem look like a puppy.

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After walking for what felt like hours, the scenery began to change.

That was a bit of a relief.

Seraiah had been beginning to think she was going in circles and seeing the same trees over and over again. Now, however, the ground had started to gradually incline, and the trees were growing sparser. She suspected she was moving up the side of a mountain.

This had to be a good direction, right?

She tried to recall where the dragons had lived in Sterling’s book. This was something she should know by heart. After all, the dragon stories had always been Sterling’s favorite. Before Sterling could read them for herself, she would constantly demand that Seraiah read them to her until she could repeat them word for word without even looking at the book.

Unfortunately, that had been years ago now, and Seraiah’s memory of the stories had grown fuzzy.

She thought she remembered there being something about a cave in the side of a mountain range, but she was almost certain that had been a story about red and blue dragons—not a golden one. In fact, now that she was thinking about it, she’d never read any stories about a golden dragon.

A moment of panic froze her in place.

What if a golden dragon didn’t exist?

Seraiah shook the thought from her head and pushed herself to keep going, even though her legs burned from the climb. There was no time for that kind of thinking now. She needed to find a good place to stop for the night. It wouldn’t be safe to rest out in the open.

A blanket of loneliness settled over her. She missed Kestrel and Kai more than ever as she thought about trying to sleep with no one to watch her back. Scanning the small patch of sky she could now see through the trees, she tried to gauge how long it would be before nightfall. She was so focused on the sky, she didn’t see the hole in the ground before it was too late.

Her foot hit empty air, and Seraiah’s heart dropped into her stomach. She threw her arms out in an attempt to catch her balance as she teetered on the edge.

It did no good.

A scream ripped from her throat as she tumbled down into the darkness.

Seraiah smacked the water hard—the weight of her bag pulling her under. Once she got over the initial shock, she struggled, clawing frantically at the water as she tried to swim to the surface. Her clothes and bag made it difficult, but she wasn’t willing to part with anything.

Just when Seraiah thought her lungs would burst, her head broke the surface.

She greedily sucked in lungfuls of cool air before paddling her way over to the nearby edge of the pool. She could barely make it out in the small amount of light filtering through the hole above her head.

Grasping onto the edge with one hand, she used the other to pull her bag off and toss it with a wet thump on the stone. With that accomplished, she pulled herself out of the water and lay panting on the ground, staring up at the place where she had been only a moment ago. Seraiah could see now that she had been lucky to land in the water rather than the rock. A few feet more to the right, and she wouldn’t be breathing right now.

As she stared up at the hole, she realized there was no way she was going to be able to get back out that way. It was too high above her and, based on her cursory look around, there wasn’t anything for her to use to reach it.

After she caught her breath, Seraiah sat up, wringing the water from her braid. Her wet clothes were sticking to her skin in a most uncomfortable way. If she got lucky for the second time that day, the spare clothes in her bag would be dry. The bag was supposed to be waterproof in case it rained, but she wasn’t sure how it would survive a dunk in an underground lake.

And Sterling’s book was in there too.

Seraiah quickly pulled the satchel into her lap and unbuckled the flap. When she stuck her hand inside, she found wet fabric.

“No. No. No. Please, no,” she murmured, yanking things out.

Her spare set of clothes on the top were soaked, but beneath them, everything else felt dry. The clothes must have sucked up all the water that had leaked in through the flap. Beads of water sat on top of the wax cloth wrapped food, but none seemed to have reached the book at the bottom.

Perhaps today was her lucky day. She’d have to make do with her wet clothes, but it was a small price to pay.

Seraiah was wringing the water out of her tunic when the bobbing light of a lantern caught her attention.

“I thought I heard something over this way,” a deep voice boomed off the walls of the cave—the echo making it sound louder and closer than it actually was.

“It’s probably nothing,” another voice answered, “just another animal that fell in the hole again.”

“No,” the first voice insisted. “I heard a scream. Animals do not scream.”

“Fine,” the second voice grumbled. “Let’s go have a look then. If it is an animal, I’m going to make you fish it out and carry it home.”

The light danced closer.

It wouldn’t be long before it revealed her, crouched there by the edge of the lake. Seraiah looked around for a place to hide, but there weren’t any spots she could see in the dark. Her only option would be getting back in the lake and hiding beneath the water.

She hesitated and missed her chance as the lantern lit up the cave.