“You look awesome.” I leaned in to ask her more questions—

“They took our weapons,” Zane said as he carefully accepted a glass of cider from an elf. I closed my mouth, shooting Zane a look he couldn’t see. Zane took a sip of the cider and made a sour face. “Needs more sugar.”

“I like it.” Lucas reached for a glass from a passing tray. “It reminds me of the apple juice we’d make at the garden house with Mikal. Cold and crisp.”

Beside me, Eliot shifted in his chair.

“No, it’s nothing like it. I had Mikal’s apple juice a time or three and it tasted a good measure sweeter than this rubbish.” Zane turned his cup upside down and dumped the rest of his cider into the snow. I flinched as guests down the table scowled.

“That’s because we added blue wasp nectar, you syrup-sipper.” Lucas tilted back his glass and swallowed the rest in one long, dramatic gulp. Eliot gripped his hands until his knuckles turned white. “And as for the matter of weapons,” Lucas slammed his glass down on the tabletop and released a horrid belch, “perhaps we ought to take a lesson from the dwarves.” He lifted a bronze fork and turned it in the moonlight.

“Frostbitten thief,” Eliot muttered through his hands which he’d placed back over his face.

“That I am,” Lucas agreed, and slid the fork into his pocket along with three knives, two spoons, a triangle server utensil, and an oversized meat fork.

“You look ridiculous,” Eliot grumbled.

Lucas patted the misshapen angles of his coat. “You won’t be nattering about it when I save your scotcher with a spoon.”

I laughed. “Well, if I need a fork for something, I know who to…” A chilly wind swept through the forest, leaving a frosty taste on my tongue. It brushed along my neck and shoulders, like spiders rushing across my skin.

I caught the Queen of the Pines watching me. I thought she was somehow summoning me with an icy gale. But looking into her eyes, I realized it wasn’t her trying to get my attention.

I searched the table as the air dipped colder. My Revelation Orb became a hot flame beneath my clothes. Frost formed on my fingertips, and I pulled my hands into fists. The table chatter continued, but a blanket of darkness swept in like a wave, suffocating the lanterns and fairy lights, blotting out the candles.

Somewhere in the black haze I could hear Kaley asking me if I was alright. The place where she’d been at the table had turned into a hollow black hole, and I gasped, fumbling for a butter knife and tripping out of my seat.

I could see the edges of dim trees and elves serving food. Laughter from the feast echoed, the animals in the forest growled and sang. But everyone I’d been with had become gaps of darkness.