The guard looked skeptical. Kerrigan didn’t blame her. Not only was she drunk, but she was also an underage half-Fae. Her eyes darted to Kerrigan’s softly pointed ears and back.

“I’ll look the part when I get my black robes,” she half-joked.

“Oh,” the guard said, hastily stepping back. “I didn’t realize it was you.”

Kerrigan shot her a hopefully warm smile before careening down the stairs. The temperature dropped precipitously, the farther she wound her way deeper into the dungeons. Kerrigan hadn’t been here in years. Lyam had dared her to run to the bottom of the dungeons one summer. She’d done so just to taunt him. But they’d also thought that the dungeons were empty. She shuddered at the thought of the man she’d found with his guts hanging out.

She gagged on the memory. Lyam had wanted to prove he could do it, too, but she hadn’t let him go. That was back before Lyam had confessed his feelings for her, back when he’d been the fourth member of their quartet, back when he’d been alive.

Voices drifted up out of the gloom, bringing her back into the present. Lyam was gone. His compass still tucked away in her pocket. There was nothing she could do to change that, but Basem’s death was a different story. A new mystery for her to solve.

“Yes, Corinna. Thank you so much for your assistance,” someone said. “We have all that we need here. I’ll let you continue with your investigation.”

“Thank you, Bastian,” Mistress Corinna said. Corinna was the current Chief of the Guard. She’d vouched for Kerrigan before the council when her place in the Society was being debated. “I have my best men here. We’ll find who did this.”

Kerrigan surreptitiously rounded the corner and found Master Bastian and Mistress Hellina standing before Mistress Corinna. Both Bastian and Helly were on the Society council—the highest rank of any member. Bastian had been a dragon tournament adjudicator this year, as Helly had been five years ago.

She was still listening in on the conversation when her foot slipped on the last step. “Scales,” she hissed under her breath.

But it was enough.

Helly whipped around, and when she saw Kerrigan, she sighed heavily. “Kerrigan, what are you doing here?”

Kerrigan straightened and marched forward with what she hoped looked like purpose. “I heard what happened.”

“And how did you hear that?” Helly asked. “We haven’t even announced anything yet.”

“Isn’t that her specialty?” Bastian asked with a warm smile.

“Sticking her nose in where it doesn’t belong?”

Kerrigan shrugged. She wasn’t about to say that Dozan Rook had told her. They couldn’t hope to purge all his spies. “This concerns me.”

“It does not,” Helly said. Then, she wrinkled her nose. “Are you drunk?”

“Uh, a bit tipsy,” Kerrigan confessed.