Ava Mae left the fae court three days ago, and no one had come after her. That was the part that scared her. The prince had held her eyes across his throne room longer than any mortal should have survived, and then he had let her walk out. She knew what he had sworn. A blood oath before the whole court, never to love a mortal, his bloodline stripped of power if he broke it. She had walked in anyway. She meant to win him, and she had told exactly one person, and that person had sworn to keep quiet. Now she was somewhere she did not recognize. Flared jeans stiff with dust. Pink crop top clinging to her back. The desert stretched in every direction, red rock and dry brush, and the sun pressed down like a hand. A small fox stepped out from behind a cactus. Red coat, cream chest, eyes too steady for an animal. It looked at her the way a person looks at someone crying in public. Then it turned and trotted off, and she followed because she had nothing else. The fox led her over a low ridge. Below sat a cottage she had not seen from the other side. Desert flowers crowded the porch. A wind chime hung by the door, its hanging gems throwing hard little sparks of light across the boards. The fox climbed the steps and waited. She did not go inside. Behind the cottage the ground dipped, and water showed between the rocks. A lake, round and still, with no stream feeding it and no reason to exist here. She walked down to the edge. Her reflection was wrong. In the water her hair lifted as if underwater, and behind her shoulder stood a dragon that was not on the shore. Green scales. Orange and green wings folded close. It looked at her out of the reflection with the same steady attention as the fox. She turned. Nothing behind her but sand. She turned back. The dragon was still in the water, waiting. Ava Mae understood then what the lake was. Mortals did not cross into the fae world by walking up to the front gate. She had done that once and been let out on purpose. This was a second door, and someone, or something, had put a guide at it. She thought of the prince's long look. She thought of the oath he had sworn and what it would cost him to break. She stepped into the water. The surface closed over her boots without a splash. The desert light thinned. On the other side of the reflection, the dragon lowered its head to meet her, and the air smelled of a country she had never been to. She was in the fae world now, and no one there knew she had come back.

Ava Mae stepped out of the lake onto grass that felt cooler than any grass she had touched. The fox was already on the bank, shaking water from its coat. The dragon stood beside it, waist-high to her, green scales dry as if the water had never touched them. No guards. No horns. Just three of them at the edge of a wood she did not know. She started walking because standing still felt worse. The fox took the lead. The dragon walked at her left shoulder, close enough that its wing brushed her arm every few steps. She kept expecting it to pull away. It did not. After an hour the trees opened onto a clearing. In the center sat a low stone basin, cracked and stained, filled with a yellow-green liquid that hissed when the wind moved it. The rim was eaten down to gray pulp. The fox stopped short and would not go closer. Ava Mae stepped toward it anyway. She wanted to see her face again, the way she had in the lake. She wanted to know if the dragon still stood behind her in reflections. The dragon moved before she did. It shouldered in front of her legs and pushed her back a full step. When she tried to go around, it turned with her. Its tail curled behind her ankles like a low fence. "Okay," she said. "Okay. I hear you." She crouched. The dragon lowered its head to her level. Up close its eyes were the same blue as hers. Not similar. The same. She reached under her collar and pulled out the heart-shaped locket her mother had given her the morning she left home. Rose gold, warm from her skin. She had not opened it in weeks. She opened it now. Inside, where her mother's picture had been, the paper was blank. Not faded. Blank, like it had never held a face. In the polished inside of the lid she saw her own reflection, and behind her shoulder, the dragon, watching her open it. Her chest went tight. Something she had carried from the mortal world had been read and rewritten while she crossed. The dragon had not appeared to her at the lake by accident. It had been waiting, and it knew her the way a thing knows its other half. She closed the locket. She rested her hand flat on the dragon's snout. It leaned into her palm and made a low sound in its throat, almost a purr. "You're mine," she said. "Or I'm yours. I don't know which." The fox yipped once from the treeline, sharp, urgent. Through the trees, past the stinking basin, Ava Mae saw movement. A tall figure in green and gold armor, dark blonde hair catching the light, walking a patrol line he clearly walked every day. Mase Thornweave. The prince. Alone, and headed straight for the clearing. She dropped behind the basin and pulled the dragon down with her.

Ava Mae pressed her back against the cold stone of the basin. The dragon curled tight beside her, wings folded flat. The fox had vanished into the trees. She could hear the prince's boots in the grass, slow and even, the walk of a man who owned every step he took. She held her breath. Through a crack in the rim she watched him stop at the edge of the clearing. Mase Thornweave. Green and gold armor. Dark blonde hair loose around a face she had studied from across his court three days ago. The face she had crossed a portal to see again. He was not looking at the basin. He was looking past it, at a scorch line in the grass where the dragon had landed earlier. His hand moved to the hilt at his hip. "Show yourself," he said. The dragon shifted. Its shoulder pushed her ribs. She understood. It meant to step out and take the prince's eye so she could stay hidden. She grabbed a horn and held on. No, she mouthed. Not you. She thought of what would happen if he found her here. He had let her walk out of his court once, knowing what she wanted. Finding her in his own woods, crouched behind a poison basin with a creature that wore her eyes, would not be the same mercy. He would have to answer to the court. He would have to answer for himself. She made her choice. She let go of the horn and stood. The prince's blade cleared its sheath halfway before he saw her face. He stopped. The blade did not go back in, but it did not come further out. "You," he said. "Me." His eyes moved past her to the dragon rising behind the basin. He did not look surprised. He looked tired. "You should not be here." "I know." "If any other patrol had come through this clearing, you would be in irons." "But you came." He did not answer that. He looked at the dragon a long moment, then at her locket where it hung outside her shirt. She had forgotten to tuck it back in. His jaw tightened at the sight of the rose gold heart, as if he recognized something in it he did not want to name. He sheathed the sword. "Walk back the way you came," he said. "Now. Before I decide I saw you." "And if I don't?" "Then I have seen you, and the oath will require what it requires." She stepped out from behind the basin. The dragon came with her, close at her hip. She did not walk toward the trees. She walked toward him, three steps, and stopped where he could have touched her wrist. "I'll go," she said. "Today. But you looked at my locket like you knew it. Remember that when you decide what you saw." She turned and walked into the trees. He did not follow. He also did not call the patrol.