Kerrigan frowned at the words. She did have to leave in the morning. But she didn’t want to think about it. It was half the reason that she’d allowed her friends to cajole her out into celebrating. Tomorrow, she would be leaving for the House of Shadows with Fordham. And he wasn’t out here tonight with her because things were complicated, to say the least.

“I’m not ready to go back,” Kerrigan said.

“But …” Darby began.

Hadrian put his hand on her arm to silence her. “Whatever you want to do, Ker.”

“Let’s go to the Wastes. No one cares that you’re a half-Fae there,” Clover said.

It was a lie. Someone always cared. But it was the closest thing she had to sanctuary.

“All right,” Kerrigan said. “Sure.”

“I’m going to escort Darby back,” Hadrian said. Such an official way of bowing out of the Wastes. He hated it there.

“Scared, sweetheart?” Clover taunted.

Hadrian leveled her with a gaze. “Some of us have standards.”

“Leave it,” Kerrigan said, in no mood to fight. “We’re still celebrating.”

She hugged Darby and Hadrian, telling them to get home safe, and then headed out of the Square with Clover.

“Must you antagonize him?” she asked as they threaded out of Central and to the Dregs—the primarily human slums in the north and western part of the valley that housed the city of Kinkadia.

“I must,” Clover said with a laugh.

As soon as they crossed the border into the Dregs, Clover pulled a cigarette out and lit up. Clover’s cigarettes were laced with loch—the most addictive drug on the market and the only thing that kept back the debilitating pain from which she suffered. Clover’s hands immediately stopped shaking. She’d gone too long without, but she couldn’t exactly smoke loch in the Square.

They were silent as the streets grew narrower and filthier and darker. More and more people were crammed in less space. Taverns were on every corner, blaring with music and laughter. Everyone worked harder and played harder here. Human life spans were so much shorter than the Fae that it was inevitable.

Kerrigan walked into the opening arms of the Wastes. It was a multilevel pit with a floor for drinking, gambling, whores, loch dens, and at the very bottom was the Dragon Ring, where she had fought with magic for the last year of her life. It was where she had met Basem Nix, the leader of the Red Masks. He tried to ruin her life after losing to a half-Fae. He slung the same slur in her face as the man in the tavern. The same ignorance made him rise up against her after she won the tournament. They’d fought not two days ago, and now, he was awaiting trial in the Draco Mountain dungeons. And it had all started here.