Chapter Eighteen
“No,no,no,”Florianwhimpered,weaklyshakingJerah'sshoulders.“Youhavetowakeup,Dad,please,youhavetow-wakeup.Dad.Dad!”
For the first time he looked up to where Kade had stumbled back. His face was stricken, eyes wide and unmoving from where he stared down at Jerah.
“Do s-something,” he stammered between sobs, Kade's eyes flickering toward him. Florian was sure his face was covered with tears and snot and blood, but all he could focus on was the still, unmoving weight pressed into his lap. “We have to do something.”
Silent, Kade shook his head, looking back at Jerah's face.
“He's gone,” he whispered at last.
“No!” Florian shouted, his face twisting in agony. “No, he's not, he's—we can still—” His voice trailed off into a wordless wail. He knew it was a lie even as he said it. His head fell forward, and he wept onto Jerah's cold, still chest. His father was dead.
Vaguely, he heard Kade slowly stepping closer, kneeling down next to him.
“I'm sorry,” Kade whispered. When Florian looked up, he had crouched down on the other side of Jerah, lightly touching his hand where it had fallen limply to the floor. “Florian, I'm sorry.”
Florian shook his head, squeezing his eyes shut. His ears were ringing, his whole body aching with cold. He could barely process the words, much less reply to them.
“I want to go home,” he choked out, clenching one hand into a fist around the Arrow. “I just want to go home.”
Magic swelled from the Arrow as he said it, warm and tingling, and with the same sudden popping sensation that had carried him to the top of the rock formation, the world lurched around them. He felt Kade gasp, and when he opened his eyes, they were no longer in the moonstone mine surrounded by the bodies of spike-covered dead dogs, but the Moon Garden. They were in the Winter Court. They were home.
“How—How did you—” Kade stammered, standing up quickly. A look of panic was starting to truly set in on his face now, as he stumbled back and looked around in disbelief. "Florian, how did you do that?"
Florian shook his head again. He didn't know how he did it. He hadn't even been thinking of the Winter Court when he said it. He had been thinking of the apartment in Coral Shore—but he supposed not even fae magic could take him there. This was the closest place to home.
“Kade?” a familiar voice called out from the walkway into the garden. A woman—Tatiana, Florian realized, and his heart shattered all over again. “Is that you? I saw a light. How did you...?”
She fell abruptly silent, and when Florian looked up, she was already running for him with a look of terror on her face.
“Tatiana,” he gasped, unable to form any other words.
“Oh, Jerah,” she sobbed, falling to her knees next to Florian and reaching for his father's body. “Jerah, no!”
The despair in her voice set him weeping all over again, and her hands that had hovered fearfully over Jerah's body moved to grab him instead. Tatiana hugged him close, and he could feel her frame shaking with sobs, even as he pressed his face into her shoulder and cried.
He had no idea how long they held each other over Jerah's body, weeping, but when she finally helped him stumble to his feet, Kade was gone.
Time passed by in a blur. Florian had no idea who came to take his father's body away, or how long he sat there on the ground of the Moon Garden, hollowly explaining what had happened to a still-weeping Tatiana; or how he ended up back in his room, standing in a daze inside the hot shower for an unknown length of time. He had no idea what time it was when Tatiana knocked on his door—eyes red and face gaunt—and handed him a steaming mug of something that resembled tea.
“Drink it,” she said, her voice hoarse. “It'll help you sleep.”
He could only nod, and drink. Whatever it was, it gave him a dreamless rest.
He had no idea what time it was when he finally awoke the next day, staring up at the ceiling with a sick feeling in the bottom of his stomach, hoping that the whole journey had been a terrible hallucination, a nightmare.
Eventually he rose, mechanically washing his face, brushing his teeth, changing his clothes. The Golden Arrow was on his writing desk, carefully set on some sort of display stand: a plain dark metal that made the Arrow’s gleaming surface look all the brighter. He had no idea where it had come from, or if it had always been in his room. He couldn't remember if he had even shown Tatiana that he had it.
Slowly he reached out to touch it; the metal was cool to his fingertips. It felt like a perfectly mundane arrow as he picked it up, turning it over and over in his hands.
He caught sight of something near the arrowhead—a scratch, it seemed, and he turned it again to get a better look at it. No, not a scratch. It was etched with words. He frowned, pulling it closer to his face to read the tiny inscription.
I pierce the heart of sacrifice, it read, and Florian scowled, putting it back on the stand. Whatever kind of sacrifice it wanted, he thought bitterly, Jerah's life had surely more than paid.
Next to the Arrow by its stand was the picture Jerah had given him on the first day that he arrived in the Veil. His mother smiled up at him from the picture, and Jerah looked at her with adoration, a look that almost made Florian start to cry all over again. He flipped the picture down onto the table, unable to bear their happy faces.
A sudden knock at his door—three familiar sharp raps—pulled him from his thoughts. Frowning, he stood and opened the door, taking in a sharp breath when he saw Kade standing in the hallway.
