She pushed the thought of the Raven Crest to the back of her mind. She couldn’t get distracted now.

Ana stood at the bottom of the stairs, wringing her fingers.

Misdirection is key, the captain had said. Make a show of one hand while the other takes the winning card from a pocket. Always suspect that someone is watching you. A few waiters passed her with delicate food on silver trays, and for an instant it felt like déjà vu, because she had been here before, dressed in an ill-fitting uniform at an Ironblood party. She felt like a different person now, even though she had been here just six short months ago.

It might as well have been an eternity.

Quietly, she crept up the steps and peered through the honeysuckle vines.

The garden was filled with extravagantly clad men and women in their finest dressing robes. The colors for the season had changed from frothy pastels to nebulas—pinks and purples, greens and blues, melding together like star-stuff. Of course colors she liked better would be in season after the kingdom thought her dead.

Just her luck.

The Ironbloods ambled around drinking rose champagne and the best brandy on this side of the kingdom, laughing and flirting in the way only Ironbloods knew how. She watched as Robb and his brother sank deeper into the crowd, Robb in his marigold yellow, Erik in bloodred. Her palms grew sweaty the longer she watched.

The orchestra began to play the royal march.

She rubbed her sweaty hands on her jacket and took a deep breath—

At the bottom of the stairwell, she heard the sound of footsteps and quickly turned, reaching for her Metroid, knowing that the HIVE would show up at some point—

The boy was not a Messier, though. In the faint golden light through the honeysuckle vines, strands of his red hair flickered orange—like a blazing fire. He wore his midnight cloak from the shrine and a freshly pressed evening coat borrowed from Jax, so he cut a stark and tall figure even in the shadows. On his head was the Iron Crown. He looked every bit an Emperor as he had before, except when he looked up at her, his eyes were moonlit; he didn’t dampen or darken them anymore, a deafening tell that he wasn’t human, but he wasn’t other either.

He was both.

He looked as though he wanted to say something, but then a strange pink tinge rose on his cheeks, and he quickly looked away. Goddess, it felt like centuries ago when they’d last stood here, looking out at the garden. What she wouldn’t have given to be that girl again.

She quickly took her hand off her pistol. “Anything?”

He shook his head and climbed the dozen steps to stand beside her, peering out of the vines into the garden. The way the dusky sunlight fell through the curtain of honeysuckle upon his face reminded her of a far-off fairy tale. “Viera is posing as Wynn’s personal guard. There are no Messiers on the north side, or the east. I cannot sense any on the garden at all.”