Devlin cleared a path so they weren’t jostled. It wasn’t quite the way he’d hoped the evening would proceed, but his primary goal was met: Seth was uninjured. All things considered, everything was as fine as it could be.

Then he saw her.

Seth stepped past Devlin, blocking the sight of everything else for a moment.

“Wait here?” Seth shifted his hold on the injured mortal. “I’m going to get him to the…”

But the rest of the words he said were lost on Devlin: the girl laughed, joyous and unfettered. Absently, he nodded and stepped closer to the crowd, closer to her.

Ani.

She had shorter hair: close-cropped in the back so that it framed her face, longer toward the front so the pink-tinted tips brushed the edge of her jawline. Her features were too common to be truly beautiful, yet too faery to be truly common. If he hadn’t already known she was a halfling, a look at her overlarge eyes and angular bone structure would be sufficient reason to suspect faery ancestry.

Ani. Here.

Beside her stood her brother, the tattooist who’d bound mortals to faeries in the ill-fated ink exchanges and raised his halfling sisters as if they were his own children.

“Rabbit! Where did you come from?” Ani grinned at him.

“You were to call an hour ago.”

“Really?” She tilted her head and widened her eyes beseechingly. “Maybe I forgot.”

“Ani.” Rabbit glared at his sister. “We talked about this. You need to check in with me when Tish is with you.”

“I know.” She was completely unapologetic. Her chin lifted; her shoulders squared. In a pack, she’d be an obvious alpha. Even with her older brother, she was trying to challenge the dominance order. “I wanted you to come out with us though, and if I didn’t call, I knew you—”

“I ought to drag you out of here,” Rabbit growled at her.

She went up on her toes to kiss his chin. “I miss you. Stay and dance?”

Rabbit’s expression softened. “One song. I have work yet tonight.”

“’Kay.” Ani grabbed the hands of her sister, Tish. They shoved another girl toward Rabbit, and then pulled several mortals toward themselves, and they all writhed like fire burned in their skin. Their dancing was joyous and free in a way that Devlin admired.

I want to join her. He realized it with a start. The Hound was Dark Court, mortal, predator, any variety of things he should not find tempting. Or beautiful. He did, though. Her freedom and her aggression made her seem like the most beautiful faery he’d ever glimpsed. If only for a moment, Devlin wished he could step into her world. It was a deviant urge: Ani shouldn’t hold his attention as she did in that instant. No one should. It is illogical.

When the song ended, a mortal girl whispered in Rabbit’s ear. He dropped an arm around her shoulders, but before he left, he paused to tell his sisters, “Be good. I mean it.”

They both nodded.

“Call if you need me,” Rabbit added. Then, he led the mortal into the crowd.

The music resumed, and Tish bumped into Ani’s shoulder and said, “Dance, silly.”

Ani mock-growled, and they both giggled.

Devlin watched Ani, transfixed as he’d never been before. She shouldn’t even be alive. If he’d obeyed his queen, she’d be long dead. But here she was, alive and vibrant.

After the first time, he’d never sought her out. He’d seen her in passing, but he’d kept away from her. His only intentional encounter with her had been when he was sent to kill her—and didn’t—but as he watched her just then, he wondered if he should correct his oversight.

The request Rae made was to spare Ani, not to let her live for always.

The loophole was there; it had always been there. Ani was the proof of Devlin’s deceit, the evidence of his failure, and the most captivating faery he’d ever seen.

Ani lost herself in the music and the thrashing sea of bodies for hours. Club nights were essential as her hungers grew more intense. When Gabriel had taken her away from her home with Rabbit, her family and court acted like her ability to feed on mortals’ emotions was a secret she’d hidden away. It wasn’t: it was new. A matching hunger for touch had risen up over the last few months, and she couldn’t reliably control both of them. She’d been trying—and failing—since she first noticed them.

“Do you mind if we step out again?” Tish yelled into Ani’s ear.

Tish pointed to the edge of the crowd. Glenn was on another break, and as he had for every other break, he’d unerringly sought out Tish. Every time he headed their way, Tish asked, and every time, Ani shook her head. She’d never stand in the way of anything that made her family happy.

Before Tish could reach Glenn’s hand, some guy with punk-for-the-night clothes grabbed Tish by the hips.

Ani snarled loud enough that Tish looked alarmed. “Ani!”

Forcing back her temper, Ani turned her gaze to her sister. The guy said something crass and moved on.

“Eyes!” Tish hissed. “Eyes. Now.”

“Sorry.” Ani closed her eyes, willing away the sulfurous green that she knew Tish suddenly saw there.

“I’m okay, NiNi,” Tish assured. She leaned close and suggested, “But you should eat.”

Here, in the crowd and surrounded by bodies, Ani could let go of her appetite control a little. She was Dark Court enough to ride the surge of emotions, Hound enough to swallow the sensation of touch, and peculiar enough to do so with mortal and faery both. The Crow’s Nest offered her all of it.

Ani opened her once-more brown eyes.

“You okay?” Tish asked. “I can stay with you. Rab’s going home now that he knows we’re okay, and…”

Ani shook her head. “I’m good. Go on.”

“If you—”

“Go.” Ani shoved her sister gently into Glenn’s embrace.

He gave her a questioning look. He might not know what she was or what she needed, but he’d known her long enough to recognize that she was on the verge of trouble.

How do any of the Hounds stand it? Gabriel dealt with his through fighting; Rabbit dealt through tattooing; and Tish didn’t seem to have a skin hunger. Maybe it was easier with just one appetite to suppress. Maybe it was easier with a pack to embrace. Instead of being alone all the time.

Ani moved farther into the crowd, hoping for enough of a crush that she would be able to lose herself again.

As she slid through the outstretched arms and gyrating hips, she saw him: a faery stood on the periphery of the crowd, just close enough that she could tell that he was someone altogether new. Solitaries passed through Huntsdale regularly. Having several regents in one place was an anomaly, and faeries were ever intrigued by anomalies.

The faery on the edge of the crowd was oblivious to the appraising looks he was getting, but he would’ve stood out even if they were at a faery club like the Rath and Ruins. His hair was so pale that it looked white, and Ani suspected that the shimmers of color weren’t just the reflection of the club lights but a little bit of his true appearance. He was eye candy. And he’s staring at me.

She stopped moving and asked, “Are you coming over or just looking?”

No one around her would hear her ask, but the eye candy in question was a faery. He heard her and answered, “I really don’t think that’s wise.”

Ani laughed. “Who cares?”

Like many faeries she knew, he was sculpture-perfect, but instead of being wrought of shadows like those in her court, this faery had a tangled feel to him. Shadow and radiance. He didn’t look much older than her, until she saw the arrogance in his posture. Then, he reminded her of Irial, of Bananach, of Keenan, of the faeries who walked through courts and crowds confident that they could slaughter everyone in the room. Like chaos in a glass cage.