“I would bet on it.” Hudson walks a little more to the right and points out a third building none of us had noticed yet. It’s a candy shop, I think, judging from the different-colored jelly beans painted on the roof. “This is all too carefully done for it to just be a whim.”

“Yeah,” I agree, tilting my head back as far as I can in an effort to see to the tops of the nearby trees.

“This is where the fairy tale really comes from,” Hudson says, lightly resting a hand on my lower back as he, too, looks up.

“Oh my God, you’re right. Not beanstalks. Redwoods.”

He grins. “Exactly.”

“Wait a minute.” I narrow my eyes at him. “You said you didn’t know that story when I mentioned it in my room.”

He holds my gaze for a second, then deliberately glances away. “I looked it up afterward.”

“You did? Really?”

He shrugs. “It seemed important to you.”

“Not important, just…” I blow out a breath, then let it drop. Because what I want to say is that his parents suck. That it’s not fair that he doesn’t know something as simple as Jack and the Beanstalk because his parents are selfish assholes who probably never read him a bedtime story in his life. That tutors are great for the brain but maybe not so great for everything else.

Between Cyrus trying to get him to use his power to destroy his enemies and Delilah ignoring him unless she needed him to be an accessory, Hudson’s childhood was a nightmare. He never uses it as an excuse, though. Never even talks about it at all, unless I ask him a direct question. But he thought the story meant something to me, so he made the time to read it.

I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with that, except lean in to his side and lace our fingers together as I whisper, “Thank you.”

At first he seems startled, and I think he’s going to pull away. But then he sighs, and I feel his body relaxing—slowly, slowly, slowly—against mine. “You’re welcome,” he tells me, and his accent is super pronounced. “Now if only we can figure out why those pesky magic beans got added to the story.”

“Only one way to find out,” I say with a laugh.

He lifts a brow. “And how is that exactly?”

I look around at my friends, all of whom look as in awe of this city as I am. “We ask someone,” I answer as I tug his hand and head straight for the guardhouse.

54

Knock-Knock,

Who’s There?

“I thought they couldn’t see us,” Eden says as she follows close on my heels.

“Seems like a terrible defense, that we can see them and they can’t see us,” Flint adds, and I have to admit that I agree.

We approach the guardhouse gingerly, not because we’re afraid so much as because we don’t want to startle the guards.

Except as we move to walk up to the guardhouse’s front window, it becomes apparent that they absolutely know we’re here, even if they haven’t said anything to us before now. The massive slingshot one of them has aimed directly at us—loaded with a boulder almost as big as I am—says that much. As does the sword the other has drawn.

“Who are you?” one of them demands in a voice so loud, it shakes the ground around us.

He’s much taller (like five feet taller) and larger than Mr. Damasen—they both are—and has a bushy brown beard; a wide, burly chest covered by a black uniform shirt; and the most suspicious blue eyes I have ever run across—which is saying something, considering I’m mated to Hudson Vega. Suspicion is basically his first, last, and middle name.

“What is your business at the Firmament?” asks the second, who is smaller than the first but only by a little, which is to say that he only towers over me by about six feet.

He’s also younger-looking, though I don’t know if it’s because he’s actually younger or if it’s because he doesn’t have a beard covering two thirds of his face. His eyes are the same strange gold as Mr. Damasen’s, but he wears his dark-blond hair pulled back in a man bun, and black tattoos decorate his forearms below the rolled-up sleeves of his uniform.

He’s no less dangerous-looking, though, thanks to the giant saber he has braced over his shoulder.

“The Firmament?” I ask. “Is that the name of your city?”

His eyes narrow dangerously. “State your business with us or be on your way.”

“We have no official business—”

“Then hit the forest,” says the bearded one. “We have no use for a band of lost Lilliputians, even if you be a wee bit magical.”

My eyes widen at the familiar term for the tiny, arrogant people in Gulliver’s Travels.

“You know what we are?” Eden asks, her own face as suspicious as the giants’.

“I can smell ye, can’t I?” interjects the blond one. “Now go, before we decide to call pest control to exterminate ye.”

All right, so maybe walking right up and trying to talk to them without a cover story in place wasn’t a great plan, but to be fair, what kind of cover story were we supposed to come up with?

We were lost and our magic just happened to expose your city?

We want to join the Firmament?

We fell down a rabbit hole with four vampires, two dragons, a witch, and a gargoyle? Sounds like the start to a very bad joke.

“We don’t plan to stay long,” Macy says sweetly. “We’re looking for someone, and we were hoping one of you might be able to help us out.”

“You want to find a giant?” Brown Beard says. “I don’t think so. Now walk away, or I’ll make you walk away.”

I can feel Flint tensing next to me, can sense the way Jaxon is shifting his weight onto the balls of his feet, and I’m really worried this is about to go south fast. And then we’ll be totally screwed, as this lead, unhelpful as it appears, is the only one we’ve currently got.

I’m pretty sure Hudson feels the same way, because he shifts so that he’s directly in front of both Jaxon and Flint, even as he says, “Actually, we were trying to keep a low profile, as we’re traveling in such a small group, but several of us are representatives from the Indigo Circle.” He gestures to Flint, Jaxon, and myself. “Four of us are members of the ruling families, and we were hoping to pay our respects to the Colossor and Colossa while we are in the area.”

If possible, Brown Beard’s eyes narrow even more. “We weren’t informed of any royal visit.”

“It was an impromptu trip,” I jump in hastily. “But when we found ourselves on your borders, it felt churlish not to stop and pay our respects to your own ruling family.”

Mekhi chokes a little bit at my use of “churlish”—and yes, I admit it’s a bit historical and over-the-top—but everything about these guys screams over-the-top. I feel like leaning into it is the way to go. And if it’s not…well, they weren’t going to let us in anyway, so no harm, no foul.

Both of the giants continue to look suspicious, but they also look concerned now, like they’re afraid of the consequences of turning away members of other paranormal royal families without at least a consult with someone on their rulers’ staffs.

Talk about a good call on Hudson’s part. Using royal credentials to get in when we’re actually here in search of a way to bring down the vampire king is more than a little ironic, but who am I to judge? At this point, I’m very much a whatever-works/any-port-in-a-storm kind of girl.

Besides, it’s not like we’re lying. We are who we say we are, and we mean absolutely no harm to the giants or anyone else…well, besides Cyrus.

And maybe Cole, the jerk. I wouldn’t mind hurting him a little.

After demanding our names, Blond Man Bun orders us to “Wait right here,” as he and Brown Beard move to the back of the guardhouse to try to decide what to do with us. The funny part is that they try to whisper, but their voice boxes aren’t exactly cut out for that, so we hear everything they say—including the part about throwing us in the oubliette if they have to.

I have no idea what an oubliette is, but judging from the delight on their faces when they say it, I can’t help thinking it has something to do with a jail cell…or worse, a dungeon. Which is not how I was hoping this would go.

To be fair, I never anticipated that there would be a guardhouse at all. I’m not sure what I thought, but whatever it was, it focused on convincing people to talk to us rather than trying to avoid a dungeon—excuse me, an oubliette—in our first ten minutes in the city.

We wait as phone calls are made, another discussion is had, more phone calls are made. The others are getting impatient—which doesn’t exactly surprise me in regards to Flint or Eden, because if Katmere has taught me anything, it’s that dragons shoot fire first and ask questions later.

But even Mekhi, Luca, and Macy are looking like they want to make a break for it. Jaxon looks ready to level the entire city at the first inkling of a threat. Only Hudson and I seem to be out for a casual stroll as we wait.

Eventually, the guards come back to us, and they don’t look happy—though I’m not sure what we’ve done to set them off this time other than simply existing. Not that I’m about to ask.