Seventeen
That evening, snow falls gently outside the palace windows, while inside the library, a crackling fire keeps the room remarkably cozy considering its size. It’s the kind of scene that looks perfect from the outside: Aurora paging through books at one of the tables; me curled up in a leather armchair finishing off the final volume from the last collection Aurora gathered for me; mugs of hot spiced chocolate that apparently won’t stain anything if we knock them over. Beneath the snug surface, though, my mind is reaching new levels of paranoia. Did Dash return safely to his Guild, or were the guards who accompanied him instructed to harm him once he left the Unseelie Palace? Or perhaps everyone is lying to me—Aurora, Roarke, the drivers—and Dash never actually left. The Unseelie Ki
