The seconds stretched like toffee. No time had passed, while still allowing her the ability to take in her surroundings. She searched the room, trying to guess which one was Samael. A disheveled man with an unkempt beard in thick fighting leathers looked to be pushing sixty years of age. He had the thick chest and broad shoulders of someone who looked like he could command a room. Odrin had said that Samael had been here the longest. If she were a betting woman, she’d guess him to be the oldest.

The acceptable moment for pause had come and gone, and it was time to speak.

The present snapped into reality. The deeply human rainbow of golds, reds, browns, and blacks tilted toward her as hair and eyes shifted expectantly in her direction. The men stared at her. The enormous fire popped and crackled, providing enough white noise to prevent the room from being as stiflingly quiet as it might have otherwise. She twinged with the recurrent sensation of unbelonging, wishing the fire would warm the chilly fear that had settled in her stomach.

She urged herself to begin. She begged herself to speak.

Goddess damn it all, she needed to say something, anything!

The matrons had wanted to raise a well-spoken girl—one who could fit in if she was purchased to live in the courts. They’d prepared her for a variety of positions, staking their time and combined intellects for their eventual return on investment upon her sale. The silver girl had no idea if the assassin’s coin purse held anything close to the crowns they’d spent those years cultivating, nor did she care. Regardless, she was thankful for training in oration as she rallied her courage to introduce herself. She couldn’t be afraid. She couldn’t be self-conscious. She couldn’t think of consequences, or danger, or anything but the words she had to spit out.

“I am Amaris, of Farleigh, though I do not call it my home.”

Her treacherous heart thundered, but her voice did not shake.

The collection of assassins watched her attentively. The twentysomething man at the end of the table had one arm on the side of his chair, resting his chin on his hand. His face was impressively blank, though he paid close attention to every word.

Amaris’s face had flushed earlier when she’d absorbed how disconcertingly beautiful the stranger was. Her eyes glided from the man to the table before them like droplets of water sliding off a glass surface. In the moments before she dropped her gaze, she’d taken note of the slender points of his ears.

He was fae.