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wall. More are on watch inside, I presume.
     The wall is eight feet wide and hollow between the stone blocks that support the heavy
     silver plating. Wooden stairs and narrow platforms allow the fae to stand guard inside
     the wall. I’ve stood guardinside it recently as well, making sure no one hidden by illusion was attempting to
     enter the Inner City.
    I wrap my arms around myself, trying to hold in what little warmth I have left, while
     Aren exchanges a few words with the shorter of the two fae swordsmen. The taller fae
     is carrying a
jaedric
cuirass and a cloak. He hands them both to Aren, who brings them to me. He helps
     me slide the cuirass on over my head, then tightens the bindings on the sides.
    I’m more thankful for the cloak than the armor, and not just because I’m cold. The
     chaos lusters are bright on my skin. Supposedly, the fae who have remained in the
     Inner City support Lena or are neutral in this war, but it’s not like we’ve had time
     to interview every individual to see if that’s really true. Without the cloak, the
     lightning would draw too much attention, so I pull it on over my cuirass and adjust
     the hood so that my face is hidden beneath it.
    “One more thing,” Aren says, holding a third item I didn’t see before. He takes the
     two ends of the long strap in his hands, then buckles them around my waist, under
     the cloak. “Think you can keep up with this one?”
    I reach behind my back, feel the hard
jaedric
casing that, I’m assuming, holds a dagger. It’s about the length of my hand and sheathed
     so that the weapon is almost parallel with the ground.
    I can grab the dagger’s hilt with my right hand relatively easily.
    “Don’t trust me with a sword?” I tease.
    “They didn’t have a spare,” he returns, a small smile playing across his lips. And
     that’s all it takes, that slight curve of his mouth, to make warm, tingling happiness
     flare through me. I’ve missed our playful disagreements.
    We don’t take a direct route to the palace. Instead, one of the swordsmen leads us
     to a narrow passageway between the buildings to the west of the
Cavith e’Sidhe
, the Avenue of the Descendants. Aren stays at my side, his gait more a saunter than
     a walk. If his hand wasn’t casually resting on the hilt of his sword, I’d say he wasn’t
     worried at all about a possible attack. But the hand
is
there, and his head is cocked slightlyto the side as if he’s listening for an extra set of footfalls or the soft scrape
     of a blade sliding free of a scabbard.
    My stomach tightens with unease. My hearing isn’t nearly as good as a fae’s, but I’m
     listening and watching for an attack, too.
    Moss and red-flowered plants grow out of cracks in the stone walls on both sides of
     us. On Earth, that would be a sign that this part of the city isn’t well taken care
     of, but here in the Realm, it adds a certain beauty and exoticness to the twisting
     passageway.
    The Inner City is where the wealthiest fae live and where the high nobles have their
     secondary residences away from their provincial estates. We reach one of those residences
     soon. Kyol pointed it out to me once before, saying it belonged to Lord Kaeth, elder
     of Ravir and the high noble of Beshryn Province, one of the fae we have to convince
     to support Lena. The gardens surrounding his home are still green despite it being
     late fall here.
    We turn right at the edge of a meticulously trimmed hedge, then left when we reach
     the avenue of the Descendants. Blue light from the magic-lit lampposts makes it easy
     to see the cobblestones beneath our feet. They’re level except for the parallel indentions
     where
cirikith
-drawn carts have weathered away the stone. None of the beasts, which look like a
     thin version of a stegosaurus with horselike hooves and haunches, are out now. When
     the sun goes down, they fall into a minihibernation. It takes a hell of a lot of effort
     to keep them awake through that,