“This way,” Yasmine said, heading up the meandering path that led out of the walled garden. A half-dozen guards, clad in blue, fell into step around them—Yasmine’s Am fear-faire, the young faerie’s guardians and almost constant companions. For this alone Laurel would not have wanted to be a Winter faerie, no matter how powerful they were. She valued what little privacy she had.

They walked silently, passing through the stone walls that enclosed the gates and into Avalon’s earthy resplendence. Laurel paused to savor the island’s sweet air; the sheer perfection of nature in Avalon was enough to take anyone’s breath away. Evening was already falling, and a brilliant sunset was painting itself across the Western horizon. “I’m sorry Jamison could not come and greet you himself,” Yasmine said, addressing Laurel, “but he has asked that I bring you to him.”

“Where is he?” Laurel asked. She hadn’t intended to disturb Jamison in the middle of something important.

“In the Winter Palace,” Yasmine said casually.

Laurel stopped in her tracks and looked up the hill to where the crumbling white marble spires of the Winter Palace could just be seen. She glanced back at Tamani. He stared resolutely at the ground, but a slight tremor of his hands, clasped in front of him, showed her that the thought of entering the sanctuary of the Winter faeries frightened him even more than it frightened her.

Chapter Seven

LAUREL LOOKED UP AT THE WINTER PALACE AS THEY approached it on a sharply sloped path. She had noted the green vines that supported large portions of the structure from afar, but as they drew closer she could see where tiny threads sprouted from the vines, enmeshing themselves in the shimmering white stone, encasing the castle in a lover’s embrace. Laurel had never seen a building that looked so alive!

At the top of the slope, they came to an enormous white archway. On either side sprawled the disintegrating ruins of what must have once been a magnificent wall, and as they passed into the courtyard, Laurel saw that she was surrounded by destruction. Crumbling relics—from statues and fountains to sections of the destroyed wall—jutted incongruously from the beautifully manicured lawn. Nowhere else had Laurel seen such disrepair in Avalon. Everything at the Academy was fixed as soon as it was broken, every structure meticulously maintained. Everywhere else she had visited in Avalon seemed much the same—but not the palace. Laurel couldn’t imagine why.

Inside, however, the palace was bustling with faeries dressed in crisp white uniforms, polishing every surface and watering hundreds of plants potted in elaborately crafted urns. It had the same familiar neatness and luxury that Laurel had gotten used to at the Academy.

She and Tamani followed Yasmine to the foot of a wide, grand staircase. The more steps they mounted, the quieter the chamber grew. At first Laurel thought it was a trick of acoustics, but by the time they were halfway up the staircase, the entire room was silent.

Laurel ventured a glance over her shoulder. Tamani was right behind her, but his hands, which had been trembling very slightly before, were now clasped so tightly Laurel imagined he must be hurting himself. Every faerie servant on the floor below them was staring, dusters and watering cans held limply in their unmoving hands. Even the Am fear-faire had stopped at the foot of the stairs, not following when Yasmine began her ascent.

“We’re going into the upper rooms of the Winter Palace,” Tamani whispered quietly, his voice strained. “No one goes into the upper rooms. Except Winter faeries, I mean.”

Laurel looked up to the top of the stairs. Rather than opening into a wide foyer, as she had expected, they ended in a huge set of double doors, heavily gilded where they showed through a thick hanging of vines. They were the largest doors Laurel had ever seen. They looked too big, too heavy, for Yasmine to move at all.

But the young faerie didn’t pause as she reached them. She raised both her hands in front of her, palms out, and made a gentle pushing motion toward the doors without actually touching them. There was visible effort in her movement, as though something in the air was pushing back at her, and gradually, with the rustling of greenery, the doors glided open, just wide enough to pass through single file.

Yasmine looked back at Laurel calmly, expectantly. After a moment’s hesitation, Laurel eased through the door, followed by a slightly more reluctant Tamani.

It was like walking under the canopy of the World Tree. The air was alive with magic—with power.

“We do not frequently allow other fae into the upper chambers,” Yasmine said calmly, “but Jamison felt that anything which would cause our scion to demand a meeting with him must surely call for secrecy only the upper rooms can provide.”

Laurel was starting to regret her haste and the impulsive demands she had made to get here. She wondered what Jamison would do when he discovered why they had come. Was a wild faerie in Laurel’s school worth all this concern?

“He’s back here,” Yasmine said, beckoning them through a cavernous room decorated in white and gold. An eclectic mix of items was on display atop a series of alabaster pillars—a small painting, a pearl-encrusted crown, a shiny silver cup. Laurel squinted at a long-necked lute made of a very dark wood. Cocking her head to the side, she stepped off the deep-blue carpet that streaked across the room and headed toward the lute, obeying a pull it seemed unnecessary to question. She paused before it, wanting nothing else so much as to strum its delicate strings.

Just as she reached for it, Yasmine’s hand wrapped around her wrist and pulled her arm back with surprising strength. “I wouldn’t touch that if I were you,” she said matter-of-factly. “My apologies, I should have warned you; we are all used to the lure. We hardly notice it anymore.”