Wynter’s own dress was just as extravagant but dyed the color of Kerrigan’s lips. As if the dress were bleeding on her. Her white-blonde hair was up in a braided crown on the top of her head, and a diamond tiara had been placed in it. In fact, she was consummately festooned in glittering jewelry. A blood-red ruby at her throat, diamonds at her wrists, dripping diamonds at her ears, and a silver ear-covering atop one of her finely pointed Fae ears that dangled with rubies and diamonds. Comparatively, Kerrigan looked like a blank canvas.

“You’re sweet,” Wynter said. “Are you ready for this ball?”

“I’m always ready,” she lied.

Wynter grinned, her teeth gleaming. “Ah, I see now.”

“See?”

“I wondered why my brother would choose you.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“He wasn’t a proponent for human and half-Fae rights. He wasn’t that stupid,” she said, slowly stalking around Kerrigan, as if she were a predator trapping her prey. Of course, Wynter didn’t know that Kerrigan wouldn’t be easy prey. “But he never took a lover from either kind. In fact, he used it as a shield. As if he wouldn’t sully himself. And now, he’s shown up with you …”

Ah, Kerrigan saw where she was going with this. “Do you have a problem with him taking a half-Fae lover?”

Wynter laughed, a throaty thing. “Hardly. I just couldn’t figure out why he’d do it now.”

“Maybe he came to his senses,” she said with a look of carefree ease. She couldn’t be caught off guard or seen to have anger about how half-Fae were treated here. It certainly wouldn’t win her any points.

“Perhaps,” Wynter said with a twinkle in her eye. “Shall we?”

“I believe so.”

Benton held the door open for them, keeping her eyes down. Kerrigan touched her hand as she passed, a thanks, and then followed Wynter toward the ball, where she would have to bury her true self so completely that not even Fordham would recognize her.

The walk to the ballroom was shorter than Kerrigan had thought it would be. She had a matter of minutes to steel herself for what she was about to do, and then they were there. She could hear the music on the other side of the door. It was surprisingly comforting to have something so familiar. She’d been to dozens of balls just like this one. She’d be fine.

“There you are,” a voice said.