My jaw clenches. I have to consciously make it relax. Aren’s past is his past. He’s not a ruthless, barbaric fae; he’s a fae who wanted to save the life of a friend. I don’t approve of what he did, but I understand it.
“Are you staying with the remnants?” I ask.
“I’m not going to let the rebels kill them,” she says, tucking the tablet under her arm. “But I can’t help them if I’m dead. I’m going back to Earth soon. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
I’m not exactly okay, but things could be worse. “If you could talk the remnants into giving me something to drink, I’d appreciate it.”
She stops midrise. “They haven’t given you water?”
“No.”
“What the hell.” She straightens fully. “I’ll be right back.”
She doesn’t come “right back,” but she does eventually return with a wooden mug filled to the brim with water. The liquid sloshes over the edge when I take it.
“I’m going to try to talk some sense into Caelar before I leave,” she says. “I don’t know if he’ll listen. It might help if the rebels send Brene back to him. It’d be a gesture of good faith.”
“They don’t know about Caelar,” I say, but she’s already closing the door behind her. I hear the lock click into place, sealing me in the dark.
Lightning flashes across the hand holding the mug. I lift it to my lips and something in it makes the tiniest thunk. I pause, midsip, and stare at the wooden bottom. My edarratae are bright enough to make out an object lying there submerged in the cold water.
I reach inside, pull out a key, a key that looks like it’ll fit in the tiny lock of my shackles.
Paige just handed me my freedom.
PAIGE put our friendship before the Realm. When the rebels caught her, I helped them keep her prisoner. I even tried to help them recapture her when she escaped with Tylan. I spend half the night feeling guilty about that and waiting for the right moment to make my escape. If my internal clock isn’t completely broken, something close to an hour passes without any sound or sign from the fae. I think they might all be sleeping.
Finally, I slip the key inside the lock and turn it.
The shackles fall from my wrists.
I’m going to need the biggest head start I can get, so I don’t waste any time. I crawl to the gap Sosch entered through and start digging. It’s not as easy as I want it to be. I end up going back for the shackles to use them to gouge into the ground. That helps, but it still feels tediously slow.
“You could help,” I whisper to Sosch when he makes an appearance to sniff at my work. His whiskers twitch as if he thinks he could do a better job, but he just curls up into a ball, resting his head on his front paws.
I don’t know how long it takes to make the hole big enough to slip through. It feels like hours, but it’s still night when I start wiggling under the wall. I barely fit. The wood scrapes against my skin, catches on the waistband of my jeans. For a good two minutes, I’m almost certain I’m going to get stuck. I’ve never been overly self-conscious or critical of my body, but I’m praying for smaller hips and a few less pounds when I finally—finally!—tear my way free.
And I do mean tear. My right hip is red and angry, the skin frayed and bleeding. I pull my jeans up, my shirt down, then rise to a low crouch, ignoring it while I survey my surroundings.
There’s a reason why I’ve been freezing my ass off—the remnants are camped on the side of a mountain. For a moment, I’m disoriented, thinking maybe we’re still back in Boulder, but the lightning on my skin and the lightness to the atmosphere proves otherwise.
Behind me, Sosch squeaks.
I turn around quickly, picking him up to keep him from making any more noise. Tents are set up around this shack, five within my line of sight. I assume there are more on the opposite side of my little prison. I’m sure remnants are guarding its door, too, or at least watching it.
I look into the wooded area that leads farther up the mountain. I am so not dressed for that hike. My jeans and long-sleeved T-shirt won’t provide enough protection from the elements, and my hands are already numb from digging in the cold soil. I want to go down, but up will take me away from the remnants.
Sosch sluggishly climbs from my arms to my shoulders. I let him stay there, then I finger-comb my hair so that it’s covering most of my face. After tugging my sleeves down over my hands, I have most of my skin hidden. I don’t waste any more time; I silently jog to the woods.
Honestly, I shouldn’t call it a woods. It’s more like a few scattered trees that decided to brave the increasingly rocky soil. They don’t offer much protection from the wind or from any eyes that might look this way, whatever this way is. The Realm has four mountain ranges. This could be any one of them, but…
But Paige and Lee are in the camp. There has to be a gate near here. Of course, a gate won’t help me unless I find a fae I can trust to take me through it. I wish there was some way to know where I am, where I’m going, but there’s not right now. All I can do is put as much distance as possible between me and the camp. When the sun rises, maybe I’ll be able to orient myself.
Hours later, the sky brightens. I’m not going up the mountain anymore because I can’t. The incline is too steep to attempt without a rope. As it is, there’s a very real possibility of breaking my neck. I set Sosch on the ground because I’m worried about him falling or making me lose my balance. I’m weak, partly from not eating or drinking and partly because I’m just so damn worn-out.
Sosch chirps and scurries over the rocky ground. I let him lead the way because he’s choosing a path I can actually follow. I feel bad, though, that he’s stuck with me. Normally, he wouldn’t be. Fae open fissures so often, he’s almost always able to scurry into the In-Between and hop out wherever he wants. Guess being stranded is a downside of getting attached to a human.
I press on and try not to think because I don’t want to face the truth: I don’t know if there’s any chance in hell that I can make it to civilization. The sun hasn’t burned off the fog below yet.
It doesn’t until midday. I’m staring at the dissipating clouds, trying to decide if I’m hallucinating or if there really is a city down there, when Sosch and I come across a stream. He’s already there, lapping at the water, when I fall to my knees beside him.
Minutes later, I have to force myself to stop drinking—I’ll make myself sick if I continue—then I turn back to the city below. It’s huge, filling up the plateau between the base of the mountain and a large body of water…
Really?
I’m not hallucinating, but this isn’t just any city.
“It’s Corrist!” My voice is hoarse, weak, but I grab Sosch and hug him to my chest. He squeals, then scurries out of my arms. Once he’s firmly back on the ground, he looks up at me with the kimki equivalent of a glare.
“Be happy,” I tell him. “We’re not going to die.”
I’m surprised as hell that the remnants are camped so close to the Silver Palace. Lena sent rebels to search up here, but they found nothing. Either the remnants had their camp hidden by illusion, or they just recently moved into these mountains. Right now, I don’t care which is true. The morning fog made the valley below seem deceptively far away, but now that it’s cleared, I can see that we’re not as high in the mountains as I thought. Sosch and I might even make it to the city by dark.
Reinvigorated, I lead the way back to civilization.
TWENTY-FIVE
WE DON’T MAKE it by dark. We don’t even make it by morning. Sosch abandons me around noon, and it’s at least another hour before I reach the plateau that lies between the base of the mountains and Corrist’s silver wall. The stream Sosch found joined another stream, then another and another until it fed into this river, the one that hosts Corrist’s gate.
I’m too tired to worry about a rebel archer shooting me as I make my way to the wall. The air down here is warmer, but I’m still numb. My feet are moving only because
I haven’t let myself rest. If I stopped even for a minute, I don’t think I would have had the strength to keep going.
A fae calls out from the wall when I’m within a hundred feet of it. My mind is just as numb as the rest of me because I can’t seem to make sense of his words. It’s not until an arrow stabs into the ground at my feet that I force myself to stand still, to think.
“I’m McKenzie.” It takes three tries to get those words out.
No one answers. Not for several long minutes. I don’t call out again or move from my current location. The fired arrow is evidence the fae don’t trust what they see.
Finally, the portcullis begins to rise. Chaos lusters strike across the arms of the human who ducks under it.
“Naito!” I’m smiling and moving forward despite the fae drawing their swords behind him. He made it out of Boulder. I’ve been worrying about so many things, I didn’t realize I was worried about him, too.
“She’s not an illusion,” he says, as I throw my arms around his shoulders. He staggers, probably because I’m not doing a great job of keeping myself upright.
He keeps his arms holding mine when he steps back and surveys me, head to toe. “What happened? Aren said he saw you fall, and he’s…He’s not doing well.”
My heart thumps against my chest, aching and anxious, but relieved as well. Aren is alive. “Where is he?”
“In the palace,” Naito says, guiding me under the silver wall. He calls for some of the wall’s guards to follow us, and while we’re walking through the Inner City, I tell him where I’ve been and where the remnants are. I don’t know their exact location, of course, only that they’re in the mountains overlooking the city and that they’re being led by a fae named Caelar.
As soon as we step inside the palace, my legs start shaking. Now that I’m safe, it’s like they’ve given themselves permission to give out on me. I need to sit, to sleep, but I need to see Aren more, so I force myself to keep walking, ignoring my body’s demands to rest. I make it as far as the three steps that lead down to the statue garden before my knees buckle.
“Shit, McKenzie,” Naito says, keeping me on my feet.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine.” He lets me go but keeps his arm raised, ready if I fall again. “Go to your room. I’ll send Aren.”
That sounds like a great idea, now that he mentions it and now that I know I don’t have the energy to search for Aren myself. So, instead of following Naito through the statue garden, I turn left, staying under the covered walkway. It’s not until I step inside the residential wing that I remember I’m going to have to go up to reach my room. I don’t know how I’m going to make it, but I walk to the staircase.
And stop.
Aren’s there, sitting on a step halfway up with Sosch in his arms. Aren’s eyes are closed. His forehead is pressed to the kimki’s, and he’s murmuring something I can’t quite make out. With Sosch in front of him, I only see half of his face, but it’s clear he’s in pain, more pain than I’ve ever seen him in before. He looks haggard, and the way his shoulders slump toward the ground makes my heart break. I remember the way he screamed my name outside of Nakano’s compound, and I know that I can’t ever let him hurt like this again.
“Aren,” I call out, placing one hand on the banister.
He looks up.
Our gazes lock.
He pales as if he’s seen a ghost, and I pour all my energy into climbing that first step. I need to close the distance between us, touch him, taste him, tell him I want forever with him.
I climb another step.
He sets Sosch aside. I wouldn’t have believed it possible, but he becomes even more pale. I’m not even sure he’s breathing until he finally draws in a long, deep breath.
Then something goes wrong. Instead of relief or elation, fury takes over Aren’s expression. He curses as he draws his sword, and that’s when I realize my mistake. The fae don’t believe in ghosts; they believe in illusions.
Shit.
He’s on me before I can explain, grabbing the front of my shirt in his fist. If he was in his right mind, he’d realize that touching me would break an illusion, but he’s in a blind rage right now. He’s not listening to me.
Instead of trying to pull away, I move toward him, manage to lay my hand on the side of his neck. Thank God, my chaos lusters react instantly. I see the spark of heat in his eyes. He goes still.
“McKenzie?” His voice breaks. Confusion moves through his eyes. He saw me go over the cliff. He’s believed I was dead for almost forty-eight hours.
“I’m not an illusion,” I say.
He touches my face. Tenderly. Tentatively.
“McKenzie. Sidhe, I thought…”
He doesn’t finish that sentence. Instead, he kisses me with a fierceness that takes my breath away, murmuring my name over and over and over again. His hands run down my shoulders, down my arms. They rest on my hips, tighten, then one splays across the center of my back, all as if he’s still not sure I’m here. I cup the back of his neck and kiss him harder, proving I’m not a dream.
I want to keep kissing him, keep touching him, but Aren presses his lips against mine one last time then takes a half step back. He looks at me, almost as if he thinks his hands are deceiving him. He needs to prove I’m alive with his eyes now, so he takes me in. The relief I was searching for earlier reaches his gaze. It doesn’t completely chase away the shadows of his pain, though.
“I saw you at the edge of the cliff,” I tell him. “I heard you scream my name, and it killed me.” I loop my arms around him, pull him close again so I can rest my head against his shoulder. He’s warm and deliciously solid. “I tried to get your attention, but Tylan had me. He…”
I lift my head. “He took me to the remnants’ camp. It’s in the Corrist Mountains.” I draw in a breath to tell him more. “I told Naito—Paige is there. A fae named—”
“No, shhh.” He lightly touches a finger to my lips. “Unless the remnants are going to attack the palace in the next hour, I don’t want to hear a report. You’re always putting the Realm before yourself. It stops now.”
With that, he scoops me into his arms. It’s sudden and unexpected, but I’m holding on to him instinctively. He climbs the rest of the steps and takes me to my room.
To my bathroom. He kicks on a lever, and water begins to fill the round, tiled tub. When Aren sets me on my feet, I steady myself by holding on to the black pipe that travels up into the ceiling. A reservoir of water is up there. A palace employee fills it every time it’s drained.
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Aren says, studying me, “but you look like you’ve crossed the Barren.”
Crossing the Barren, a stretch of land in the Realm where no fae can fissure, is an idiom that basically means I look like shit, and damn it, I do. Dirt is packed under my fingernails, the sleeves of my gray shirt are torn and streaked with brown and black, and, when the edarratae flash across my skin, they look dim under the thick layer of grime. I don’t want to think about what my hair must look like.
“God, no wonder you tried to kill me.” I take my hands off him, step away.
He chuckles and pulls me back. “I wasn’t in my right mind. Even like this, I want you.”
A million chaos lusters somersault in my stomach, and when he kisses me this time, I’m undone. Nothing matters but him and us and this, the way he makes me feel like I’m everything to him. Sometime in the last month, he’s become everything to me.
He pulls my shirt over my head, cups my face between his hands, and drinks me in. Edarratae leap from me to him in excited, frenzied bursts, and I decide then that I’m never letting him go.
“I never told you,” Aren whispers against my neck. “How difficult it was.” He plants a kiss on my bare shoulder, just to the right of my bra strap. “Not to touch you in Cleveland.”
Cleveland? Too many thoughts are spinning through my head, too many sensations driving through my body for me to make sense of
his words.
“You scared me then.” His hands are between us, unbuttoning my pants. “I wasn’t sure you’d wake up until I dropped you into the tub.”
“Ohh.” I mean that “oh” to be silent, but just when I realize he’s referring to the safe house he took me to after Germany, he pulls my earlobe between his teeth. My entire body turns molten.
I feel him smiling against my neck, and I fall for him even more. I didn’t think that was possible, but making him happy makes me happy, and all I want to do is make him smile.
Make him smile and moan and tremble when I touch him.
That’s what he does when I start unbuckling his weapons belt. Then, he places his left hand over mine. His right touches my cheek.
“Again, don’t take this the wrong way,” he says, his voice sounding strained. “But I’m going to walk out of here.”
The way he slides my pants over my hips suggests differently. I step out of my shoes and let him finish stripping me down to just my bra and undies. He’s kneeling in front of me long enough that I have to run my hand through his already disheveled hair. I love how untamed it is, how untamed he is.
“Aren,” I say. I mean to make his name an encouragement, to let him know that this is okay, that I’m not going to stop him, I want him, but my voice comes out just as strained as his, and when he runs his hands up my thighs, I can’t manage any more words. My muscles quiver. I’m barely able to stay on my feet.
But then, he straightens, and, quickly, he picks me up and sets me in the tub.
I gasp when the ice-cold water bites at my calves.
“Sidhe,” he mutters. “Sorry.”
Keeping one hand on my hip, he bends down to submerge his other hand beneath the water’s surface. It warms immediately.
I raise an eyebrow when he straightens, then say, “That’s one way to cool me off.”
He laughs at that, and his smile and the brightness in his silver eyes makes my heart skip.
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