Fordham shook his head. “No, it’s all wrong.”

“Like it’s staged and not her actual bedroom.”

He frowned. “Yes. Gods, why didn’t I think of that before?”

“Think of what?”

But he was already pushing past her and into the wardrobe. “Wynter has had these rooms since she was a child. I thought something felt wrong about them, but I haven’t been in here in… I don’t even know how long.” He knocked on the wardrobe door, and it came back hollow. “Her nursemaid used to have an adjoining room to her. It was a small cupboard of a thing. Hardly big enough for anyone to actually live in.”

“Let me guess—a half-Fae?”

Fordham nodded, sticking his hand against the back of the wardrobe until they heard a click. The wood moved inward, revealing a darkened room. He split the dresses in half, stepped over her shoes, and into the room. Kerrigan followed, looking around the space that Fordham had just lit.

It was a madhouse. Papers were everywhere. Wynter had even scrawled illegibly on the walls. A pile of masquerade wear was huddled in a corner, and there was a full bookshelf of old, musty books. Kerrigan lifted one off of the shelf with the title in ancient Fae—Voure hest mas Besremay, Ravinia.

“What does this mean?” Kerrigan asked.

Fordham frowned, scanning the title. “History of the Original Mountain, Ravinia. Where did she get that?” He looked through all of the titles. “Where did she get all of this? A lot of it would have been burned thousands of years ago.”

“I don’t know.” Kerrigan replaced it back on the shelf with the others.

He passed her a stiff card he’d picked up. “Looks like we have our answer.”

Kerrigan scanned the page. “She’s throwing a masquerade?”

“Wynter’s Masq,” he said with a frown. “It’s coded to look like an exclusive party, but it’s something else. It’s something to explain all of this.” He gestured to the walls. “She’s been researching the wall and the mountain and trying to find a way to bring it down.”

“The Masq isn’t for a week.”

He sighed. “Of course it is.”

“Well, do you have a mask?” Kerrigan tucked the envelope into her corset. “Because we’re going to need one.”

11

The Masquerade

“Maybe I should have taken the potion,” Kerrigan said with a shudder.