Someone bumped into her from behind and she realized she’d been standing there, frozen, at the edge of the courtyard. She couldn’t help it. She’d never seen anything like this kind of—luxury wasn’t the right word, opulence wasn’t the right word. This wasn’t an Automa gathering, this wasn’t the controlled splendor of Crier’s engagement ball. This was lavish, beautiful, overflowing with food and color and light despite the late hour, and it was so deeply human. Chaotic, unrestrained. It was like the Reaper’s Moon celebration the sovereign’s servants held each year in the seaside caves, but a hundred times bigger.

Ayla blinked hard and found Benjy a few paces ahead of her, equally frozen. She joined him, reached out to lay a hand on his arm, hesitated. Ever since the night they had snuck into the palace, when he had pulled her aside right before they’d parted ways—him to Kinok’s study, her to Crier’s bedroom—and kissed her, quick and hard, she couldn’t touch him without remembering it. They hadn’t talked about it. They hadn’t talked about anything, really; that night or the aftermath. Ayla still didn’t know if the kiss meant something to him, or if it was just the act of a scared boy who knew he could be dead within the hour, wanting to experience something for the first and last time.

She didn’t know which answer she’d prefer.

Maybe that was a lie.

“Benj,” she said, quiet enough for no one else to hear but loud enough to be heard over the music, the ocean-roar of a city drunk and merry. “The palace gates. Come on.”

He nodded. Heads bent, they made their way through the center of the courtyard, where the music was loudest and the smoke thickest. Sticking to the edges would have been easier—but that was where the royal guards were stationed, watching everything from behind their white masks. So instead Ayla and Benjy wriggled their way through the tightly packed crowd, pressing up against dozens of sweaty, drunken, laughing bodies. The smoke stung Ayla’s eyes. Even after the meat pie, her belly panged at the sight of so much food: tables piled high with a dozen different types of fish, platters of cheese and fruits and shimmering black eels, fruit pies, baskets of oranges, loaves of sweet dark bread, honey and oil and butter, mulled wine, and honey cakes, seed cakes, ginger cakes. There were a few humans in what looked like green servants’ uniforms flitting around the tables, refilling platters and pouring cups of wine.

She was so hungry, and she’d eaten nothing for three days but pilfered bread and the meat pies she’d bought. Before that, the week and a half at sea, sick and delirious in the cargo hold, she was unable to keep down anything but water. Ayla’s stomach gnawed at itself, crumpling, rolling over. She clenched her teeth and forced her eyes away from the food. She didn’t have time to eat. She just had to get through the gates, inside the palace. . . .