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“I don’t know if I have the strength. She took so much from me. She took my heart.”
Ernest shook his head. “Our creator has given you something stronger than your heart. He gave it to you in the form of true love, Kellan. Haven’t you ever read a fairy tale? True love always prevails.”
I chuckled. “How many times do I have to say that I don’t believe in fairy tales?”
Ernest climbed to his feet and offered me his hand. “You’re gonna have to start believing, Kellan. Fairy tales don’t work if the hero doesn’t embrace that he’s the key to saving his princess.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Josie
“Josephine.”
Someone shook me, but I couldn’t pry my eyelids open. There wasn’t enough strength in my body to do it. The portal had taken so much energy from me.
At least, I thought it was the portal. It was the last thing I remembered. Gathering the courage to jump through without Kellan.
Kellan. His name ran circles in my mind. I’d left him against my better judgment. I assumed I was lying near my house with Fern attempting to wake me.
She shook me again. Slowly, I blinked away the heaviness to see her leaning over me. “Oh, thank God,” she whispered. “You’re alive.”
The canopy of trees above her were orange and yellow. It was a beautiful blanket overhead. If I hadn't felt a sudden urge to get home, I would have sat there forever, just staring at the beauty of our world.
I sat up on my elbows, pine straw and sticks piercing my skin. Fern watched me as I looked around. I'd never forget the woods that surrounded my home. I spent so much time there as a child. “We’re behind my house.”
Fern glanced over her shoulder. “That big house is yours?” she asked.
“My parents’ house, yes.”
Fern reached to grab me when I began to stand up. My legs were wobbly from the portal, but after a few moments, I regained my footing. “Thank you. It looks like it’s the afternoon. I’m sure they’re home.”
I stopped when I noticed Fern wasn’t following me. “Are you sure they’ll be okay with me being here? Do they like visitors?"
I chuckled and pulled a stick from my hair. “I’m sure. They’ll be so excited that I’m safe that it won’t matter. We have plenty of rooms for you to stay in. Everything will be fine. Come on.”
Fern reluctantly followed me toward the backyard. My mother’s garden looked neglected, but everything else looked the same. There was still a sparkle to the swimming pool, and the grass was mowed.
The back sliding doors creaked when I opened them and the smell of Melissa’s cooking hit me square in the chest. Tears pooled in my eyes as I walked through the back door and toward the living room. I tried to blink them away, but more followed.
The distant sound of the TV drew me forward. I imagined my father sitting on the couch, half asleep, while my mother watched a TV show practically alone.
“Hello?” I shouted, hearing my echo against the walls of the staircase. “Mom? Dad?”
The silence didn’t settle well with me. I craned my neck into the dining room and then the den. Where is everyone?
When I started the stairs with a hesitant Fern behind me, I heard chatter. “Mom! Dad!” I shouted.
A few seconds of silence followed, and then thundering footsteps hammered down the hallway, and I met my mother at the top of the staircase.
She looked terrible. There were dark circles beneath each eye, her hair hadn’t been brushed and she was still in her pajamas in the late afternoon.
She wrapped her palm around her mouth, and tears raced down her cheeks. “Honey! She’s here. He did it. He brought her home.”
She pulled me into her arms, and her smell made me cry harder. My father stopped several feet behind us. The shocked look on his face meant he didn’t think Kellan would succeed.
“Honey Dew,” he whispered, pulling me out of my mother’s arms and into his own. “I can’t believe he found you. He found you.”
Thoughts of Kellan thundered through my body. I pulled away to look at my dad’s grateful face and wiped my own tears. “Kellan found me. He saved me, but he’s battling something over there that took me. A witch took me. Who took her spindle? Someone in the house has her spindle. I have to find it and bring it back to Kellan. We need it to kill her."
