Something dark and reckless stirs within me. Because whatever he once was, whatever life he lost, I can feel the truth of him now. Abandoned, alone, nearly erased. A prince reduced to a ghost in a lantern, left to fade while the world carried on without him.
The unfairness of it makes my chest ache. And with that ache comes something sharper and more dangerous. The certainty that if I were given the chance, I’d fight for him. Not as the princess he was meant to end up with, not as the rightful queen of some ancient dynasty, but as the woman he needs now. The one who sees what’s left of him and still wants it. The one who fell for him without knowing he was a prince at all.
Chapter 21
Obsidian
E
The attic bears the evidence of Max and Nick’s search—nothing broken, nothing careless, just the soft disorder left behind when urgency tugs at steady hands.
A few crates sit out of line with their lids propped open. Candles have been blown out, their cooled wax leaving thin smears across the floorboards. The map on the floor has shifted, one corner curling toward the ceiling. Parchments that Mabel organized in a deliberate system that eluded us are now lying in uneven piles.
Unsettled dust bunnies leap through the air and dry my throat. That sort of unpleasantness reminds me that I’m breathing, even though I’m dead. I float down one floor and invade Max’s bedroom.
My heart is heavy with the weight of everything we’ve uncovered and all that we didn’t—mainly that spindle Max promised to the Mist King. Max and Nick move toward the kitchen below, their footsteps softer now, exhaustion thickening their voices.
“Do you remember the night Mother died?” Max asks her brother, her voice rising from the floorboards.
I lie down on the cold bedroom floor and stick my head through the ceiling below in time to see Nick drop onto a chair across from Max at the dining table.
“We both blacked out, didn’t we?” he says.
She tucks her chin down, her face half-hidden in the veil of her thick one-sided braid. “I’ve been dreaming of it. Remembering things I shouldn’t. There were four or five Reds there at the cottage that day. One named Pauline, another Lillivere.” She wets her lips. “And a man.”
Nick’s brows lift. “A man? In the Red Forest?”
“Yes. He ordered the Reds to search the woods for me and said I belonged to him.”
Nick leans over the table, his hands joined together. “You think he might be our father?”
A shiver quakes Max from head to toe. “Maybe.”
Nick knocks his joined hands against the table before slumping back into his chair, one leg bouncing with restless energy. “Now that we found a way into Faerie, we really need to find that spindle.”
A way into Faerie.My heart booms.
For Nick, it means answers. Revenge.
For Max…it’s something deeper. A home she barely remembers, yet longs for. A place that might accept her in ways this world never has.
For me, it makes no difference, as long as I’m with her.
“From the moment you saw that black mirror, I knew you’d want us to use it,” Max mutters. “But we can’t plunge into Faerie headfirst without a plan.”
Nick picks dust off his pants. “I have a plan. If the obsidian passage leads us to where it’s marked on the map—near the borders of the Summerlands—we can meet up with Lysandraand her friends. I was supposed to join them there, but then the sceawere went haywire, so it wasn’t safe for me to travel.”
“You were supposed to go to Faerie?” Max asks. “When?” Her voice goes squeaky, the sound spelling out exactly how rejected and freaked out she feels.
Nick’s gaze slips to the floor. “A couple of weeks ago,” he says quickly. “I would have invited you to come along, of course. Only… With the wedding, you weren’t exactly in alet’s-go-to-Faerieplace.”
Max grunts at that, her eyes flying to the ceiling, but she doesn’t deny it.
“The witches there can smuggle us to Lorntre Hollow,” he continues. “We’re going home, sis. I feel it in my gut, my very soul. My blood’s been humming since we saw the passage. Don’t pretend you don’t feel it too.”
Max grabs a fistful of her hair. “It’s naïve to think we could change the fate of our kin. Change the world. Powerful Fae—Mabel included—have tried to restore the witches to power in the Red Forest, but it’s always in vain. We have to face the truth, Nick. If we go home, we’re heading straight for slaughter.”
I wonder if she truly believes that going home would put her in that much danger, because I suspect she’s just as tempted by the idea as her brother. Maybe she feels obligated to argue the opposing view, since Nick is so hell-bent on returning.
