Page 5 of Forest of Dreams and Whispers

This bargain, alas, didn’t extend to tellingotherswhere he was going if she wasn’t around.

He could also be a bit vague with the details. “I shall be going outside the palace” was not exactly as specific as she needed it to be.

She clambered out of the water, naked and dripping, making Dillon blush. It wasn’t anything he hadn’t seen before—and honestly, given the faerie tendency to dance naked under the moonlight or wear nothing but leaves to a party, he really ought to have been used to it. But for all Juliana was fairly unabashed by nudity, most mortals were not so free with their bodies.

She patted herself down, pulled her clothes back on, and belted herself up.

“You better come with me,” she said, stepping out from behind the bush. “If the Queen discovers you’ve mislaid her son, she’ll mislay yourhead.”

Dillon gulped, massaging his neck. “But I really like my head…”

Juliana laughed, slapping his back. “I’m fond of it too. Come on, Prince Haw can’t have gone far.”

“You know he hates it when you call him that.”

“He hates it when I call him anything.”

“You would think that,” Dillon remarked under his breath, “but you would be wrong.”

Juliana split from Dillon as soon as they reached Down-Water, a part of the capital that stood downriver, in a part of Autumn so cold that it fringed the mountains of Winter. It was a place of ill-repute, known for seedy taverns, black markets, dens of extreme highs and bitter lows.

While the Summer and Spring sections of the city were known for their upmarket saloons, it was this thin sliver of town that Hawthorn chose to frequent whenever Juliana’s back was turned.

He was most likely to be in one of the district’s three taverns. He never visited the seedier dens, the places filled with magical highs, and although she’doncediscovered him in the local whorehouse, she found him there fully clothed and covered in glitter, being spoon fed honey by the madam herself. She wasn’t entirely sure what he’d gone for, but she was fairly sure it wasn’t the sex, and he’d never been back.

No, the taverns were the most likely.

“You head toThe Hideous Swan,“ Jules instructed. “I’ll checkThe Why Knot.Meet atOwen’sif we don’t find him?”

Dillon nodded. “Aye-aye!”

He shuffled off without another word.

Juliana sighed, glancing at the sky. It was getting dark. That was no problem for a faerie, whose eyes were made for night, but as a result, they kept their light to a minimum, and as a mortal, it would be harder to find her way.

She hurried along to the first tavern, seizing the remains of daylight. She ducked as she entered, a tankard flying over her head. Two burly fauns charged into the street, their antlers locked together. A half-dressed nymph with bright pink skin and flowers for hair hurried out after them, alternating between screaming at them to stop and goading them onwards.

Juliana slipped inside. Only three of the six tables were upright, half of the patrons seemed to be on their backs, and a pixie was flying overhead dousing everyone with cheap ale.

This was chaotic, even for Hawthorn. He’d never risk spoiling his fancy clothes.

She gave the tavern a quick once-over, surveying the horizontal customers, and quickly slipped away.

Owen’swas just around the corner. It was owned by a burly mortal man named Owen who had fallen into Faerie two decades ago, fell for a werewolf, and opened a seedy tavern close to the outskirts so she could go hunt freely in the forest once a month or stay locked in the cellar if she preferred. Not that Owen’s clientele would be particularly perturbed by a rampant wolf launching itself across the bar; half of the chairs already had bite marks in.

Juliana ducked into the tavern, the floor sticky with ale. A bard was on a table strumming his lute, singing about some silver-haired demon hunter who had left him for a witch, and a bunch of drunk patrons were hurling coins at his feet. Three nymphs were performing a semi-naked dance in the corner, for entertainment or their own amusement, Juliana wasn’t sure.

She spotted Owen behind the bar, cleaning tankards with a calm serenity that did not belong amidst the noise. He looked up as she approached, nodding his head at the back door.

Although plenty of Hawthorn’s would-be assassins over the years had been faeries, mortals tended to dislike him more. After all, they were the ones that Ladrien had promised to enslave, who had more to lose if the curse came to pass. Even those who had no intention of harming him seemed to despise him for existing.

Owen, thankfully, didn’t seem to mind, although the ridiculous sums of money Hawthorn lost at his tavern might have had something to do with that.

Not that Juliana could talk, she tolerated Hawthorn for the money, too.

She headed into the back room. Half a dozen fae were seated around a table, playing a game of exploding cards—thankfully the less violent kind that involved theatrics rather than actual murder. The main rule of the game was to get rid of the exploding card before it, well, exploded. The rest of the rules were lost on her.

“Juliana!” Hawthorn crowed from the table, his black waves tousled, silver circlet askew. “My sweet, despicable villain! You’re looking just as hideous as I remember.”

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