Chapter 1
The Bodyguard, The Wolf, and the Wildcard
Hallie was annoyed. She rarely got a chance to leave the Fae Court. When the summons came from the Seelie Queen to carry out a commission in London, she was over the moon. That is, until her driver showed up. It was always him. Liam.
She had nothing against him personally. She had known him most of her life, at least the part of her life that started when she was brought to court as a foundling. Liam was tall, athletic and drop-dead gorgeous, like all Fae. Hallie got along with all the Fae, but at 5'8" with long dark hair and light gray eyes and curves she felt like a duck among swans.
She had been hoping to have a nice trip to the human world on her own, but she should have known better. She never got to go anywhere on her own. She silently fumed until Liam slid the car into a space in the car park and they both got out.
The order was warm from the Fae court’s seal when Hallie pressed it beneath her coat and realized she had no idea how to reach the Council chamber. But it appeared that Liam did know the way. She had no time to sightsee and enjoy all the historical buildings around them. Liam walk briskly forward and she had to jog to keep up with him.
"Which way?" she asked as them approached a three-way crossing.
"Right," Liam said. But as they came to the three-way crossing, he said, "Left."
She stopped at the three-way crossing. “You said right.”
“I said left.”
“You said right with complete confidence.”
His mouth tightened, though the silver light sliding along his cheek made him look amused. “The passage changed.”
The corridor behind them folded with a soft, wet groan. Stone rippled like water. A door that had been painted blue a moment before became a narrow arch filled with white mist.
Hallie touched the order through her coat. The paper seemed to pulse against her ribs.
“Then perhaps you should stop giving directions until the walls settle.”
“They won’t settle.”
“That is not reassuring.”
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
Liam moved past her, close enough that the sleeve of his black coat brushed her wrist. He smelled faintly of rain and crushed mint, a scent Hallie had learned to notice despite herself. He lifted one hand, palm outward, and the corridor’s shifting slowed.
Only for him.
The realization should have comforted her. Instead, it tightened something low in her stomach.
She followed him through the left passage.
The Fae court had never felt dangerous when she first came to live among it. Strange, yes. Beautiful in ways that made London seem gray and unfinished, certainly. But danger had always belonged to stories told over wine: bargains made with teeth, names stolen in moonlit gardens, and doors that led somewhere they shouldn’t.
Now the walls moved beneath her feet because a representative of the London Council had vanished, and someone had decided she was the person to investigate it.
No one had bothered to explain why.
Liam glanced back. “You’re limping.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I’m walking carefully.”
“On your left foot.”
“Perhaps my left foot is cautious.”
His gaze dropped to her boots, then returned to her face. His eyes were too bright in the court’s pearly light, they were green threaded with gold. Fae eyes, though he had never said the word aloud. Liam had driven Hallie through half the hidden roads beneath London, appeared whenever she was in trouble, and treated every locked door as a personal insult.
He called himself a driver.
He watched her like a bodyguard.
“What exactly did the order say?” he asked.
“That I am to carry it to the Council chamber.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It is the answer I was given.”
A narrow bridge unfolded ahead of them, its rails growing from the walls like pale roots. Beyond it, a staircase turned upward into darkness.
Liam caught her elbow before they stepped onto the bridge.
The touch was brief and careful. But it still sent heat through her sleeve.
“Wait.”
“For what?”
A bell rang somewhere below them. Once. Then twice.
The bridge shuddered.
Liam drew Hallie back against him. Her shoulder met his chest, hard and warm beneath the coat. His arm came around her waist - not trapping her, not quite, but leaving no question that he could hold her there if he chose.
“Liam.”
“Don’t move.”
His breath touched her temple. She could feel the steady rhythm of his heart through the layers between them. Hers answered too quickly.
The bridge twisted ninety degrees, carrying the staircase with it. Stone scraped against stone. A cold draft rose from the gap beneath their feet, carrying the smell of iron and something sweetly rotten.
When the movement stopped, Liam released Hallie at once.
The absence of him was sharper than the danger had been.
“You could have warned me,” she said.
“You would have stepped forward.”
“I might have.”
“You would have.”
His certainty irritated her because it sounded less like judgment than knowledge.
“What are you not telling me?”
His expression changed - not much, only a slight stillness around his eyes. “About the bridge?”
“About any of it.”
The order crackled beneath her coat. He heard it. Of course he did.
Liam looked toward the staircase. “We need to reach the gate.”
“That is not an answer either.”
“No.”
“Liam.”
He turned to her then, and the court’s strange light made him beautiful in a way that felt unfair. His face was all sharp planes and controlled restraint, but his attention was wholly hers.
“You were given a sealed order by the Fae court,” he said. “A representative has disappeared. Two others have retired without submitting notice. Their replacements were seated before anyone was told there was a vacancy.”
“I know what happened.”
“You know what they want you to know.”
“And you know more?”
“I know enough to be concerned.”
“Concerned for the Council?”
“For you.”
The words hung there in the silence between them.
For one reckless second, Hallie wanted to believe him. She wanted his concern to be simple, personal, unconnected to court politics or hidden obligations. She wanted to ask why he looked at her as if losing her would cost him something.
Instead, Hallie stepped away.
“I’m not helpless.”
“I never said you were.”
“You keep grabbing me before the floor gives way.”
“Because the floor keeps giving way.”
“Then stop treating me like cargo.”
His clenched his jaw. “Cargo is easier to abandon.”
The admission was so quiet she almost missed it.
Hallie stared at him. Liam looked away first.
A tremor passed through the passage. Dust sifted from the ceiling, glittering like ground glass. Somewhere ahead, a door slammed.
“We’re running out of time,” he said.
“That sounds like another thing you should explain.”
“It means the court has begun closing the routes behind us.”
“Why?”
“Because someone doesn’t want that order delivered.”
The corridor narrowed. Hallie drew the sealed paper from her coat. The wax bore the Fae court’s mark: a thorned crown pressed into dark green.
“If they don’t want it delivered, why send me?”
“Perhaps they expected you not to arrive.”
The truth of it sent a chill through her.
Hallie had lived among the Fae for years believing herself human. She had no glamour, no inherited title, no talent for the little acts of magic everyone else performed without thinking. She could not coax a candle to light or hear a promise hidden inside a song. Her place here had always depended on usefulness and the kindness of people who had never quite explained why they offered it.
Now the court had chosen her to carry an investigation into the ruling body in London responsible for handling conflicts among every major supernatural species.
Three Fae representatives. Three vampires. Three werewolves. Three demons. Three members of the magical folk - witches, wizards, and sorcerers.
Fifteen seats, and someone was quietly rearranging them.
“What if I refuse?” Hallie asked.
Liam’s eyes returned to hers. “You won’t.”
“You’re very sure of yourself.”
“I know you.”
“No, you know how I react when cornered.”
“That is one of the things I know.”
The passage opened into a circular room lined with doors. Each door bore a different symbol: a black rose, a silver fang, a red hand, a wolf’s eye, a ring of stars.
The departure gate stood at the far side, framed in white fire.
Between them and it, the doors began opening.
A gust of cold swept through the room. One door revealed a forest under a violet sky. Another showed a flooded crypt. From the door marked with the wolf’s eye came the low, distant sound of a growl.
Liam stepped in front of her.
She caught his sleeve. “Don’t.”
His head turned slightly. “Don’t what?”
“Decide I need hiding.”
“I’m deciding you need to stay alive.”
“Those are not the same thing.”
“No,” he said. “They aren’t.”
The wolf door slammed shut. The others followed, one after another, until only the departure gate remained. Its white fire flickered, revealing a London street on the other side - wet pavement, black railings, the blurred gold of ordinary traffic.
A figure waited beside the gate.
He was broad-shouldered, dressed in a dark coat open at the throat. His hair was the color of storm clouds, and his face carried the rough, arresting beauty of something made for the wild rather than a city. Even through the gate, Hallie caught the scent of pine, rain, and warm skin.
His gaze fixed on Hallie
Then on Liam.
The stranger’s mouth curved without humor. “You’re late.”
Liam’s hand settled at the small of her back. Not possessive. Protective.
The gesture did not escape the stranger’s notice.
“Who is he?” she asked.
“Angus,” Liam said.
Angus’s eyes narrowed. “You brought her through the shifting passages?”
“She came through them.”
“Did she?”
The question annoyed Hallie.
She pulled away from Liam’s hand and faced Angus. “If you have something to say, say it to me.”
Angus studied her with unnerving attention. Not the way Liam did, with guarded familiarity. Angus looked as if he were listening for something beneath her words.
“I’m Angus,” he said. His voice was deep, roughened at the edges. “The Council’s werewolf liaison.”
“I didn’t ask for a liaison.”
“No. You asked for a gate.”
“I was ordered to investigate.”
“By whom?”
She reached for the sealed order.
Liam’s fingers closed around her wrist.
The contact stopped her cold.
“Don’t open it here,” he said.
Angus’s gaze dropped to Liam’s hand. “Still keeping secrets for them?”
Liam released her as if burned.
“For whom?” Hallie demanded.
Neither man answered.
The silence filled with the hiss of the gate’s white fire.
Hallie broke the seal.
The paper inside held only three lines.
Report to the London Council regarding the unrecorded vacancy of Fae representative Elian Voss.
Trust no appointment made in his absence.
Attend with Liam.
Her breath caught at the final sentence.
Not bring the court’s driver.
Attend with Liam.
She looked at him. “You knew.”
“I knew I was assigned to take you to London.”
“Assigned by whom?”
“By the court.”
“As my driver?”
His silence answered too slowly.
Angus gave a quiet, humorless laugh. “She deserves the truth.”
Liam’s expression hardened. “You don’t get to decide what she deserves.”
“And you do?”
The gate flared. Heat brushed Hallie’s face. Beyond it, rain struck the London pavement, sharp and real.
She folded the order carefully, though her hands had begun to shake.
“You’re coming with me,” she said to Liam.
“Yes.”
“As my driver?”
“No.”
The word seemed to strip the air from the room.
Liam held her gaze. “As your bodyguard.”
Angus’s attention sharpened.
Hallie heard the confession beneath the title: the years of watching, the doors opened before she touched them, the danger he had intercepted without telling her. Every time she had accused him of hovering, he had been doing his job. Every time she had wondered whether his concern meant something more, she had been building hope on a secret.
“You should have told me,” she said.
“I should have.”
“Why didn’t you?”
His face remained composed, but his voice lowered. “Because if you knew why I was near you, you might stop letting me stay.”
The truth moved through her slowly, painful as warmth returning to frozen hands.
Before she could answer, Angus stepped through the gate. “The Council is waiting.”
She looked at Liam. At the man who had guarded her while pretending merely to drive. At the sealed order naming a vanished representative and warning her that the replacement had already been installed without notice or vote.
Then she stepped into London.
Rain struck her face. Liam came through behind me, close enough that his shoulder brushed hers.
The gate snapped shut, cutting off the shifting court.
For one breath, there was only the city’s noise, Angus’s watchful silence, and Liam’s hand hovering near her back without touching.
She had wanted an assignment she could carry like a message.
Instead, Hallie had arrived with a bodyguard who had lied to her, a werewolf who did not trust her, and a Council seat filled by someone no one had voted for.
The investigation had begun before she reached the chamber.
And she no longer knew whether Liam had been sent to protect her from the Council - or to protect the Council from her.
She could feel, in the tightening of Liam’s posture and the tilt of Angus’s head, that the questions she carried would widen rather than close. Whoever had sent the order expected her to fail, or to be silenced. Whoever had seated replacements expected the truth to be buried. Hallie tucked the folded paper back beneath her coat and set her jaw. She would not be moved like a piece on a board. If the Council had chosen her, it had also given her a weapon: knowledge that something was wrong. She would use it. Liam’s hand hovered near the small of her back, an offer of steadiness rather than restraint. Angus’s gaze was fixed on the straight road ahead, as if cataloguing exits. Together they walked toward the sound of the Council’s chamber, and the city closed around them with no promise of mercy.
