Darkness was a comfort to Lyrani, the only element where she felt at home. She could sink into it as though it was a cloud, the only soft and welcoming part of a life riddled with violence and harshness.

She could usually find peace in the night, but now, lying in her bed with only the moonlight streaming through her window for company, it was impossible for her to keep her mind from wandering to those places it was best not to venture.

The shadows fluttered with Lyrani's agitation as if they too wondered how they could carry out a task that nobody else had been able to do.

Lyrani trusted her instincts. It was the only thing that had gotten her this far in her job. When a knife was sailing through the air, heading straight for her heart, there was no time to think before dodging it.

Her life moved too quickly for her to overanalyse every decision, which was why this feeling felt foreign to her, this wondering whether she had made the right choice at the briefing earlier...

Lyrani stood by what she had said. Lord Dundor believed the king was behind the attacks he had mentioned, but Lyrani wasn't convinced. She had been on the ground more than the director of ECISI. She had seen for herself the situations that came to Lord Dundor from the mouths of informants, and there were some things that were impossible to describe in a report.

The ECISI agents talked among themselves about what they saw. It was the knowing smile a fairy flashed after an agent interrogated him. It was the way a group of banshees fell silent upon seeing an elf.

It wasn't discrimination. It was more than that.

There was unrest throughout the realm, and it was centred on the elves, the most powerful of all the clans except for the humans. Nobody could challenge them while they were united under a monarch, but if he was gone, nothing would stop the other clans from harnessing the chaos.

King Nash had no known heirs. If a civil war for the throne broke out between the three elf states after his death, the infighting would leave gaping inroads for scavengers.

The elf king posed a threat that needed to be dealt with. Perhaps he was the cause of the elves' tension with the other clans, as Lord Dundor had suggested, but surely there was another way to handle this.

If Lyrani could gather evidence to strengthen the case against King Nash, she could expose him and kill him with a clear conscience. Sitting back and doing nothing after the everything that had happened at the briefing was not an option, but killing the king without evidence to back Lyrani up was an uncalled-for extreme.

Lyrani didn't have the luxury of time. She would start digging up evidence the next day. When the case became substantial, she would present a new plan to Lord Dundor.

Lyrani's mind writhed so restlessly that she hoped she might be able to pull together some semblance of a way forward, but her thoughts were too disorganised, scattering like leaves in the breeze.

Lyrani turned onto her side to glance at the clock on her bedside table. She saw through the darkness to the clock hands that told her it was nearly midnight.

Morloy wasn't home yet. A dull heaviness settled into Lyrani's stomach.

Morloy usually told Lyrani if he was going to be late and why, but she hadn't heard from him all day. She couldn't help the concern niggling at her.

She had heard the whispers at ECISI that afternoon. Her fellow agents had talked of the fire at the fairy village Loweim in low voices as if that could remove the unfortunate event from reality.

Fairies, despite possessing some of the most powerful magic in the realm, were nowhere near as learned as elves. They hadn't been able to handle the injuries, so elf healers were called to the scene. That was probably where Morloy was at this late hour.

Apparently the casualties were so severe that even the junior healers—those who had only graduated the previous year, like Morloy—had been dispatched to Loweim. Lyrani hoped he was all right.

Being an only child meant that Lyrani had formed close bonds with people who weren't her blood, like Dessie and Morloy.

Her housemate was like a brother to her. They had only been living together for four years, but they had been friends for much longer.

Lyrani shot upright as a prolonged creak echoed through the cottage. Upon hearing footsteps drag themselves after it, she slipped out of bed and through her bedroom door, as silent as a wraith. She peeked into the kitchen to see Morloy sit at the table and bring a glass of water to his lips.

Once he had drained it, he set it down. "Hey, Lyr."

His teeth flashed against his dark skin. Morloy always greeted Lyrani with that smile, but today, there was a sadness to it that she had never seen before.

As Lyrani took the seat beside him, she noticed the smears on his clothing. "Is that blood?"

Morloy looked down at the hardened reddish stains on his white healers' tunic. "Yes. From the fairies."

He met Lyrani's eyes, dazed as if this was news to him.

White bore its stains of blood and dirt for the world to see. It was the worst colour healers could wear, but at least it differentiated them from the criminals and killers clad in black, the people who caused the injuries they treated.

Lyrani jumped to her feet. "Can I get you anything? A clean tunic, perhaps? Or something to eat?"

She was sure she would find something in the pantry, even if it was only apples or bread and cheese. It had been a busy week for her and Morloy, but one of them had to make the time for grocery shopping. Lyrani added that to her mental to-do list for the next day.

Morloy waved his hand for her to sit down. "I'll change out of this soon enough. And I really couldn't eat anything."

Lyrani returned to her chair at the table. They usually had breakfast here, bleary-eyed but bright of spirit at the promise of a new day.

But sometimes they would sit here when the dark hours had long fallen and talk about their day, their battles, the things they couldn't tell anyone else.

"Was it bad?" Lyrani studied Morloy's face.

He met her eyes. They were heavy, weighed down by everything they had seen. Lyrani knew what that felt like. A listening ear might be what he needed to lighten the burden.

Morloy looked down at the glass standing on the wooden table, rubbing at his temples as if to erase the things he had seen. "It was atrocious. The ground was scattered with enormous singed flower petals and charred stalks, all that remained of the fairies' homes. There were so many dead before we even got there, so many we couldn't do anything for." He sighed.

There was much left unsaid in the silence that fell between him and Lyrani.

"What is it?" she asked.

Morloy took a deep breath. "We pulled a child out of the fire. She was horribly burned but still alive. She couldn't have been more than five years old. I could feel her slipping away, Lyr. I tried to find her heartbeat and hold onto it, but I couldn't. She didn't make it." Morloy shook his head.

Each of his words was a blow to Lyrani. He smelt like she imagined Loweim did, like smoke and blood and tears. Her heart grieved for the fairies confronted by an inferno they couldn't fight. It had claimed their homes and loved ones, even their lives.

But Lyrani would stay strong for Morloy. Her friend was little more than a brittle twig about to snap in the face of the wind. 

"You did your best." Lyrani laid a hand on his arm. "This wasn't your fault."

Morloy turned away but not before Lyrani caught the shine rimming his eyes. "If I was a better healer–"

"This is the first disaster you've ever had to deal with." Lyrani put an arm around him, and he leaned against her shoulder. "Feel what you must feel but know that you can't save every life that passes through your hands. I'm proud of you for the ones you did save."

Power came with responsibility, but something less associated with it was possibility. Even with power, so carefully nurtured and trained, there were still things that weren't possible.

Sometimes the crime lord outwitted the assassin. The best healer could only save a certain number of lives out of many.

It was hard to move on and let go of the responsibility felt for such a failure, but it was the only way they could keep themselves together and get up to do their jobs the next morning.

Morloy shook his head again. "I never knew death had a smell, but the air was thick with it."

A sickening feeling rose inside Lyrani. All the training in the world couldn't prepare anyone for a day on the job.

Lyrani knew where to press to make a person fall unconscious. She knew where to nick an artery so that her target bled out quickly, where to punch them so they died instantly without a bruise being left to betray her.

She had believed herself ready to be an assassin, but after her first kill, she had recoiled from the scene, from what her hands had done, from herself. It was only by remembering who lay dying in front of her—a human duke involved with elf trafficking—that she could look herself in the mirror the next day.

Lyrani glanced at Morloy, who was looking at his hands like he couldn't believe they belonged to him. His job was opposite in nature to hers, but perhaps he felt just as out of his depth as she had on her first day.

Death did have a distinct stench.

It smelled like a sweaty surrender, like salty devastation. It smelled like trees that had been felled, like the decay of dead plants. It smelled like the earth, and as much as that reminded Lyrani that death was a part of life, nothing about this fire was natural.

"Do you know who did it?" she asked.

"It was him."

"Who?" Lyrani asked even as her mouth went dry, even as she already knew the answer.

"The only person who would carry out an attack of this magnitude." Morloy's face hardened. "King Nash."

Lyrani's heart sank. "Are you sure?"

"As sure as I can be." Morloy kept his gaze on the table, tracing his finger along a fissure in the wood. "I found a gauntlet on the ground." He reached into his pocket and dropped the glove on the table.

Lyrani snatched it up to examine it. "Why didn't you hand this in as evidence?"

Morloy blinked. "I should've...sorry, I wasn't thinking."

The black leather was cool and smooth against Lyrani's palm. She ran a finger along it, tracing over its seams and edges. She stopped when she felt an indentation beneath the thumb of the gauntlet.

Her heart fell to her feet when she held it up to her eyes. It was a tree silhouetted in front of a star, small enough to escape notice yet big enough to brand.

"This is the crest of House Astor." She looked at Morloy.

He nodded. "I thought so too. The rumours must be true. The elf king is behind all the unrest in the realm. Someone needs to stop him. Who knows what he'll do next?"

Lyrani shook her head. "I need more solid proof than this, Morloy. Anyone can place a gauntlet with Elvenland's royal crest at a crime scene."

People could get creative when they wanted to frame someone. Lyrani's years with ECISI had taught her that. It was only by asking questions that she could unearth the truth.

"Why are you defending him?"

Morloy's question caught Lyrani off-guard.

"I—"

"The king is no one to you. He's a murderer, Lyrani. Why can't you accept that?"

Morloy's voice lashed out like a whip, and Lyrani reacted as someone struck.

"Because he is our ruler, and he represents everything we are and stand for! The atrocities...I just can't believe an elf could think of doing such things, let alone go through with them." Lyrani rested her head in her hands, shaking it as though she could will this all out of reality.

She had met cruel elves, of course, those who hurt other beings to get what they wanted or traded illegal goods, but she had never known an elf to attack others for no apparent reason, to wipe out villages and threaten clans.

"I saw the elf who dropped it. He ran when he saw me see him. I don't know who he was, but he looked like he was part of some elite guard," said Morloy quietly. "Only the king could command such a group."

Nobody else would mark their armour with House Astor's crest. Nobody else would have the connections or resources to organise a special strike force.

There was nobody this could have been but King Nash.

Something felt wrong about the whole situation, but with the facts staring Lyrani in the face, she could no longer ignore them.

She wouldn't launch her own investigation the next day. She would accept the mission.

If the elf king was so merciless that he would order an attack on a village of defenceless fairies, children...he needed to be stopped.

And Lyrani and Trelle had to be the ones to do it.

"Get some rest," Lyrani told Morloy. "I'm sure you'll feel better tomorrow."

"If I can sleep." Morloy stood to leave the kitchen. He turned in front of the doorway. "Good night, Lyr."

"Good night." Lyrani gave him what she hoped was a comforting smile despite the unease within her. "You know where to find me if you need anything."

"Buried under the covers in your bed, as you usually are at this late hour." With a last smile, Morloy merged into the darkness. His feet thudded towards his bedroom at the back of the cottage.

When Lyrani returned to her room, she fumbled in her drawer for her calling-crystal. It was a rectangular blue gemstone the size of her palm. It glimmered like water, but it was surprisingly hard to locate among her collection of lotions and make-up.

"Yes!" Upon finding it, Lyrani held it up and tapped its gleaming surface three times. "Lord Dundor Merl."

"Lyrani?" The director of ECISI's sleepy face appeared in the air above the crystal. "Is everything all right?"

"No, not really." Before Lord Dundor could ask any questions about why Lyrani was calling him past midnight, she said, "I accept the Vlitavia mission."

There was no mistaking the approval in the director's smile. "Excellent."

"When do we start?" Lyrani asked, ignoring the heaviness descending into her stomach.

"Begin preparations immediately. You leave in three days."