Chapter 1

For just a second, I let myself indulge in a vision of throwing a rock at my boyfriend’s head, right before he reaches his orgasm.

I’m standing in a dark London alley in a damp T-shirt and soggy trainers, staring up at the Tudor windows of his flat, where he entertains a woman I’ve never met. There, against the leaded glass, he’s shagging a blonde. The cheeks of her bare arse press against the panes—pale, like two little mounds of uncooked dough.

Cold rain slides down the windows, echoing as it drips from the stone eaves. I loved that bedroom until a few minutes ago—the way it nestles in an arch between two pale stone buildings, sweeping above the alley like the Bridge of Sighs.

Up there, it’s warm and safe—all golden light and steamed windows.

Down here, in the chilled damp of the passageway, a mouse scuttles past me into a puddle.

The wind starts to pick up, whipping the April rain at my back.

How many times, exactly, was Owain lying to me when he said he was busy?

Sharp loneliness opens between my ribs. 

In the window, Owain’s hand tangles in the woman’s blond locks, yanking her head back. It’s precisely the same way he grabs my hair when he’s about to come.

The crack splits wider in my chest—an icy, hollow fissure. 

What is he doing? Half our friends are dead. We need to flee the city, or we’ll be dead too. Tonight is our onebloody chance.

And he’s throwing it away for this mortal woman?

I’m still staring at Owain. He hasn’t seen me; his eyes are closed in ecstasy.

Thought it would be over by now. Do they know people can see them? Maybe that’s the point. We never have sex in the window. Just in bed, after a few glasses of wine.

My cold sadness simmers into anger, and I grit my teeth. I storm up to his front door—blue-painted wood set in old stone under the archway. Slimy water drips onto me, sliding down my hair.

I press the buzzer. No answer. Of course not. Obviously, he’s busy, but I suppose I’m not feeling very considerate at the moment. 

I keep pressing it. Again and again, unrelenting, refusing to let them come. The doorbell sound grates through my skull like a baby’s cry, but I don’t stop until footsteps thunder down the stairs and I hear him yelling, “Fuck off!”

I wince, even though he doesn’t know it’s me. I’m not supposed to be here.

At last, the door flies open.

Owain is wearing nothing but a towel, and when he sees me, his face goes white as the terry cloth around his hips.

His throat bobs. “Syn… I thought we were meeting at the church in an hour.”

I glare at him. I can’t even figure out where to start.

His dark hair hangs to his shoulders, and his pointed Fey ears peek through the strands. Of course she wanted him. To a human like her, he’s not only pretty, but also immensely strong—and these days, a Fey lover is something forbidden. An intoxicating combination.

“That window has been there since Elizabeth I,” I say, a razor’s edge cutting in my my voice. 

He narrows his eyes—bronze, a color I loved deeply until tonight.

“Syn.” His voice cracks a little. “Why are you talking about windows?”

“Because that girl’s pasty mortal arse was mashed against them.” I keep my voice cool, controlled. Icy. “You don’t press your arse on something that survived the 1665 plague and the Great Fire of London, do you?”

He frowns, looking confused. Frankly, so am I. No idea where I’m going with this.

It really doesn’t help that I haven’t eaten since a breakfast of Extra Value brand bread this morning.

“Those windows were here for the dissolution of the bloody monasteries.” Somehow, I feel like this is a cutting rebuke. “For the beheading of King Charles I.”

“Okay.” His voice is quiet, shaky. “I didn’t mean for you to see that.” 

Heartbreaking ache keeps intruding on my rage, which I hate. It’s making my eyes mist as I stand here beneath the damp stone arch, and I really don’t want to cry in front of him.

The girl must have heard me yelling about the dissolution of the monasteries because she comes whipping around the corner, wearing Owain's Cardiff City Football Club T-shirt. It hangs down to her knees. She's small, like me, but very human—and very young. Twenty, maybe, to my thirty-five. Absurdly, we’re both wearing Owain’s T-shirts right now, and mine has a cartoon picture of an old computer.

Unlike me, she’s holding a champagne flute. She must have bought the champagne, because gods know Owain can’t afford it. Apart from the nice flat, he has nothing here in London.

“What's going on, Owain?” she chirps. “Who are you talking to?”

My fingers curl into fists. “Did Owain tell you he was leaving London tonight with his girlfriend?”

She wrinkles her nose. “Yes, I know? I’m his girlfriend? We’re leaving tonight?”

Everything is a question.

Owain’s eyelids are shut now like he’s hoping this whole situation will somehow be gone when he opens them—like a toddler trying to hide from the world by putting a blanket over his head.

At last, he opens them again. “I told Vicky I’m leaving. She’s going to come with me to the Fey realm. I’m sorry, Syn. After the war, you and I just… we stopped having fun, and I…” He trails off, looking agonized. “Well, I met Vicky. I planned to take her with me to the Fey realm. I was going to tell you…”

The rage bleeds out of me, until all that’s left is the dull, Sunday-grey throb of loneliness. 

“You’re bringing a mortal?” So much for our plan to start a new life together.

He looks back at Vicky. “She won’t be in danger there now. The king is dead. Mortals are allowed.”

“I don’t understand. Who are you, Vicky?” Now my voice cracks, which I hate. I want to keep sounding ice cold.

Her facial expression seems to be frozen in a permanent grimace. “I’m a life coach for single women?”

Another question.

“Life coach?” My shout echoes off the stone above me, uncontrolled.

“I offer coaching for high-achieving women about how to find their soulmates…” She trails off, and her grimace fades into a blank expression.

I stare at her, still stunned. “People pay you for that bollocks?”

“Yes,” she says sharply. “If you hadn’t noticed, everything is fucking terrible these days. People want an escape. They want fantasy. They want romance.”

“You’re a romance expert, are you? And you’re shagging a man who is cheating on his girlfriend?”

I glance at Owain again, and I can’t decide if I want to tell him to be careful or not.

Instead, I just blurt, “Well, you’d better pack your things. The portal isn’t open all night. And look out for the Iron Legion so you don’t get murdered by mortals on the way out. They hate our kind these days, you know?”  

It doesn’t seem cutting enough, so I add, “Twat.”

I pivot on my heels and walk down the rain-slick alley, where streetlights gleam off the puddles.

I’m trying very hard not to cry, but the loneliness is eating at me.

I turn a corner, heading for the old medieval church in Smithfield. With my head down against the drizzle, I hurry through the modernist flats known as the Barbican. This used to be one of my favorite parts of London, where ancient Roman walls still stand. A water feature burbles across the landscape.

When I first arrived in London, I wanted to live here. Not that I could afford it. But once, I imagined myself giving history walking tours, rambling on about medieval walls and lost Roman roads. I dreamt I’d one day be able to afford a flat near the fountains and overgrown greenery. Sometimes, I imagined Owain and me living here—a sweet little domestic life of home-cooked dinners and hot tea.

But I stopped dreaming of those things when the war began. Now, I dream of dragons scorching the skies, hunting us to death. I dream of a beautiful Fey knight with golden tattoos, killing everyone around him, standing knee-deep in gore.

Even my favorite neighborhood doesn’t feel the same anymore. The Barbican walls show the wreckage of the war. I glance at the silver Fey script still curling along the bricks, a faint glow that brightens under starlight. The Fey army made these markings last year, designating these flats as barracks—a pretty little reminder of the violence they left behind. And above that script—scorched walls from dragon fire.

As I walk, I can’t relax for a moment. The war isn’t totally over—not really.

I glance over my shoulder as I walk. Tonight, the quiet has a dangerous edge, a sharpness to the air.

I’m not welcome in London anymore, and my time is running out.

I take off on my own into the city’s dark alleys.

Chapter 2

I’m running down a street lined with dark brick buildings, heading for my meeting spot with my sister—the thousand-year-old church known as St. Bartholomew-the-Great. With the portal key in my pocket and the ancient power of the church’s stones, we’ll be able to open a gate into the Fey realm.

But until we go through that portal, I can’t let my guard down.

My hands tremble—the old tremor I’ve had since I was teenager. And along with it, a brutal headache blooms in my temples.

Of course I’m on edge. First of all, there is the heartache: the life coach, the knife-twisting betrayal, the fist gripping blond hair—

Then, there’s the danger.

In London, they’re hunting people like me.

Officially, the war between Fey and humans ended a few months ago. The mortals won; the tyrannical Fey king was killed. And I hated the king more than anything. I never supported his invasion.

Still, it doesn’t really matter what my politics are. When mortals look at me, all they see is a killer, and they’re trying to rid their country of every last one of us.

With a shaking hand, I slip my sunglasses on to hide my purple metallic eyes. I sniff the air, then relax a little. I don’t smell any iron—yet. It’s just me and the scorched stone walls, the gaping holes in buildings.

Since the war ended, human paramilitaries have been roaming London’s streets at night, looking for Fey to torture and kill. The revenge gangs call themselves the Iron Legion. They murder Fey with iron weapons—our weakness. 

Fey corpses have been turning up all over the city—mutilated, hanging from walls with iron hooks. Some with blood-smeared signs that read MONSTER. 

Walking faster, I cross into the old square known as Smithfield. Up ahead, the stones have steeped in centuries of blood. Right here, kings and queens burned and mutilated a thousand so-called traitors.

Human or Fey, tyrants all wield power in the same way.

Nearby is a memorial sign, and bouquets of dried flowers. It’s the spot where an executioner disemboweled William Wallace.

I don’t say these kinds of things aloud when I can help it. I have all the worst possible thoughts churning in my head at all times, but I don’t go on about them to people, because I am fucking fun, Owain, and I know how to make small talk. So even if I’m thinking it, I can, in fact, stop myself from saying, Henry the Eighth boiled his cook to death in a great vat of blistering oil right where I’m standing.

As I’m imagining what it would be like to be boiled alive, a voice pulls me from my thoughts.

“Syn.”

I turn to see my sister Vero with her best friend, Balin.

His face flushed, Balin is lugging all the enormous duffel bags and rucksacks. He’s also supporting Vero’s weight as she leans on him.

My sister looks like she’s barely hanging on to life.

Her big, lavender eyes are almost the only sign of vitality, and her cheeks and lips are pale as apple blossoms. Though the ends of her curls still hold their cherry-red color, the rest of her hair is growing in white.

Years ago, the Fey king poisoned the river where my family lived. He was trying to kill anyone with mixed blood—the demi-Fey. Us.

People called his poison the River-Ague. Even when you survive it at first, the after-fever never goes away. Fifteen years later, the last of the surviving victims are dying.

My gaze lingers over her cheekbones, the way they stand out too sharply in her pale features. Faint blue veins trace their way up her chest and throat. The higher those marks climb, the sicker she gets. Now, they’re nearly at her jawline. By the time they reach her purple eyes, she’ll be dead.

My heart squeezes at the sight of her, and I want to scoop her up and take her somewhere safe, somewhere with magic that can cure her.

As she steps closer, I can hear how hard she’s breathing, and my stomach tightens.

“We could have been the Iron Legion,” she rasps. “And you’re standing here thinking about… let me guess. History? Kings? Something morbid?”

I lift my chin, pretending she didn’t just see right through me. “If you were the Iron Legion, I’d have smelled you before you ever got close. I have a nose for ferrous oxide. Now, my friends, let’s stop chatting and get out of London before the Iron Legion actually turns up.”

I loop my arm through hers, so I can support her weight instead of Balin. I know she can’t move fast, and our slow pace has my pulse racing out of control. 

With the paramilitaries roaming around, we’re in danger every minute we’re out here. Every day we spend in London is another day I could come home to find Vero carved open by the Iron Legion—or simply disappeared. If the disease doesn’t kill her first, the hunters will.

Staying in London is a death sentence right now.

As we get to the church’s old gatehouse, I start to feel relief for the first time in months.

Beneath a Tudor arch, Balin pushes the wooden door open. We step into the mossy churchyard of grass and crooked gravestones.

On the far side of the cemetery path stands the thousand-year-old church where Balin works as a sextant. It’s perfect for us tonight, because we need the ancient stones’ power to open the portal.

Vero coughs. “Have I ever told you two how much I love you for taking care of me so well?”

Balin’s bright golden eyes gleam in the darkness. “You don’t need to thank me, but I do like to be loved.”

Balin uses a key to unlock the church doors. He pulls open the heavy oak, and we step into the church.

We walk further up the aisle, where pale grey stone soars high above us, and moonlight spills onto the checkered floor through stained-glass windows.

“Wait, where’s Owain?” Vero asks, as she leans against my shoulder.

“He’s coming through later, and so am I. Separately, though. I’ve got one more errand before I leave. The portal will stay open for a full hour, so we both have time.” It finally dawns on me that our plans have totally changed now, and we need a new place to stay. “But, um… we won’t be staying in Owain’s aunt’s mansion anymore. And we won’t be seeing much of Owain anymore.”

“Why?” Vero asks. “What happened?”

I sigh, walking deeper into the church. “He has a new girlfriend. A mortal named Vicky who teaches rich women to find their soulmates, and apparently, she’s found hers in Owain. They’re going to be using my plan and my borrowed portal key to start their new life. They’ll be staying in his aunt’s mansion, and I don’t imagine we’re invited anymore. But there are plenty of empty cottages in the Fey realm, you know, from…”

I trail off, because I was trying to come up with a cheerful thought, but the cottages are empty because of a tyrant king’s brutal massacres.

I clear my throat. “Anyway, we’ll find a cottage and fix it up. It will be all ours, and we don’t need Owain.”

“But Syn.” Vero is staring at me, open-mouthed. “What a tosser. You know what? I never liked him. Do you remember that time he couldn’t grasp the concept that two thirds was bigger than one sixth? Fucking idiot.”

Balin quirks a smile. “You know what? I’d rather find our own cottage than live with someone’s rich aunt.”

“Exactly,” I say, brightening. “We’ll find a cozy little place, and we will find a magic cure for you, Vero. And when we do, we’ll throw lovely parties among the primroses and bluebells and butterflies. And you won’t be sick anymore.”

She smiles at me. “Do you think we can find the grail? That would cure me.”

“I think we can. It will be my only mission.”

I release a long breath, finally feeling safe as I take in the gothic arches of the church. This place has been a sanctuary for centuries.

“Our last few minutes in the human realm!” Balin’s voice echoes off the arches.

I put a finger to my lips. It’s not exactly the sort of thing you want to shout if the Iron Legion is lurking around outside.

“You’re sure you can’t come with us now?” Vero asks. “What’s this last errand?”

“I’ll follow through soon.” I pull the portal key out of my pocket. It’s a silver hoop, like a bracelet, and it hums with magic. “I’ve got to get this key down to the Tower of London before I join you. We’re only borrowing it, and I’m supposed to get it back to Tristan immediately. He needs it for some kind of secret spy mission. But you should go through now.”

“Why can’t Tristan meet you here?” Vero asks.

“He’s on a spy stakeout, I guess?” I say. “I don’t know. Everything he does for Avalon Tower is top secret. You two should wait for me on the other side, okay? I want to make sure you get through safely, and then I’ll catch up after I give the portal key back to Tristan.”

“And where will it take us, exactly?” Balin asks.

“Somewhere in the north of the Fey realm, by the sea. There’s not much around there, I think. We’ll need to make our way south. Tristan promises it will be safe as long as you don’t go near the dragon’s keep, and if you happen to see a large castle, don’t go near it either. He won’t even tell me what that is.”

Vero touches my arm. “You’re sure you can still run fast enough to get back to the portal in time?”

“Of course I can. I can cover three miles in an hour. I’m thirty-five. I’m not dying.”

I immediately regret the choice of phrase, and guilt twists behind my ribs.

She doesn’t seem to notice.

“Okay,” she says. “We’ll be waiting just on the other side.”

“Right. Here goes.” I close my eyes. Holding the portal key, I chant a few words in Fey, my voice echoing off the arches. 

Magic crackles over my skin, raising goose bumps on my arms. When I open my eyes again, I see a whirling vortex that seems to tear through the grey stone and shadowed alcoves of the church.

On the other side of the portal, my old homeland stretches out under the night sky. There, a weeping willow sways gently in the breeze, silvered in the starlight. In the distance, the sea laps the shore, glittering with silver flecks. My chest aches for its strange beauty, and my heart speeds up with longing.

My home lies just out of reach—the castles and forests and fields kissed with a magic that I crave. It was the last place I was truly happy, and I want it so badly I can taste it.

With the tyrant king dead, we can go back to the halcyon days before the fall.

But it’s not my time yet.

I shove the portal key safely into my pocket. With misting eyes, I watch Vero and Balin go through the portal. They step into tall grasses, then sit down beneath the shadowed branches of the willow tree.

For the first time in months—no, over a year—I feel happy. Vero will be safe in the Fey realm—Brocéliande, to use its real name. Later tonight, they’ll be sitting by a warm hearth in a little forest cottage. My eyes sting, and I blink fast to stop the tears.

But I don’t have too much time here to relish the moment. 

I turn, and I hurry out the door. On the stone path through the churchyard, I break into a run past the graves, and I push through the gatehouse door into Smithfield again.

I’m hoping to make it to the Tower of London in fifteen minutes or less.

I grip the portal key tight, running toward the main road on my way to meet Tristan. Really, I haven’t seen him enough since we moved here from the Fey realm. Once, we were best friends. Inseparable. But in the past fifteen years, he’s been busy nonstop with Avalon Tower—his magical spy agency. And he can never talk about what he does, so we’ve started to drift a little. On top of that, it’s not like I ever have anything interesting to tell him. While he’s been off on missions assassinating evil Fey aristocrats (or whatever he does), I’ve been filling out paperwork and replacing pens and fetching ham sandwiches for colleagues.

Now, we talk to each other from across a chasm of different lifestyles. I miss our former closeness, though, almost as much as I miss the golden days of our early childhood.

I cross into a short, narrow alley. As I approach the high street, I scan my surroundings, surveying the narrow lane—and I skid to a halt.

Now, alarm bells are ringing in the hollows of my mind.

Iron.

It’s unmistakable, its toxic stench nearly overpowering me.

Fuck.

I slip back into the shadows of the alley. As I catch my breath, I watch four black-clad members of the Iron Legion crossing into view at the mouth of the alley. Their dark shirts are buttoned tight, iron dagger pins gleaming on their lapels. Fear shoots through my veins—until I realize they’re not looking at me.

Their eyes are fixed on a skinny Fey woman coming from the right. She’s dressed in a magical cloak, stitched with glowing silver thread. 

The four men move closer to her, surrounding her.

As she turns around, I see only more magic: a luminous golden glow radiates from her skull, like a halo. What’s she doing walking around here with Fey magic beaming from her head? It’s a literal beacon for the paramilitaries.

She folds her arms, glaring back at them with an irrational confidence.

Is she stupid?

Then, the tallest member of the gang pulls out an iron dagger, and my pulse races.

“You,” he growls at the Fey woman, “put your hands where I can see them.”

As the men draw their weapons, the pungent scent of iron curls toward me, stinging my eyes. My throat tightens.

They’re going to kill her right in front of me, aren’t they?