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I gratefully accepted it, allowing Grieve to pull me up out of the snowbank in which we’d been sitting. “Do you know what day this is? We went in on Monday.”
Chatter squinted, closing his eyes. After a moment, he shook his head. “I don’t know. But you have your phone. Better call Peyton.”
“I’ll have to leave a message—they’re probably in the realm of Summer with Wrath and they won’t get the message till they pop out.” I pulled out my phone. “I hope Kaylin got away.”
“Yeah, so do I.” Rhiannon looked around. “Where the hell are we? Do we even have a clue? The forest looks the same to me here as it does anywhere. We could be twenty miles in, or we could be ten minutes from the road.”
I punched in Peyton’s number and left a message. Then I tried Kaylin. No answer. Sighing, I left my phone on and shoved it into my pocket. “Which way?”
Grieve glanced up at the growing light. “There—that’s east. We head to the west.”
As we started slogging through the snow, I began to notice that I felt odd. Odd in a way that didn’t feel sick, so much as…changed. Something had happened to me. I pulled the fan out of my pocket. More than once, both Lainule and Ulean had warned me against using it too much, and I hadn’t known why. Now I stared at it, wondering if I’d have the courage to ever use it again.
Chatter hadn’t given me back my knife, and right now I didn’t ask for it. Truthfully, the ferocity of my feelings scared the fuck out of me. It reminded me all too clearly that in another life I had been Myst’s daughter. I didn’t want to remember that, but every day it was becoming clearer that I was going to have to accept that fact and learn to use it rather than run from it.
Myst had been scared of me, when the wind and bloodlust from the obsidian were controlling me. And we needed her to feel fear. We needed her to hesitate, to falter while she thought things through. Every time we could put her on her guard, throw her off kilter, was one more inroad we had to destroying her.
As we plowed through the snow, my phone jangled. By now, it was obvious that morning had arrived, even though all signs of the sun were obscured by clouds. So Myst and her cronies were in hiding.
I pulled out my phone and answered.
“Cicely here. What’s up?”
Peyton sounded relieved. “I’m so glad you’re okay. You are okay, aren’t you? It’s been two days and we were beginning to worry.”
So we’d been in the realm of Faerie for two days this time. This losing time thing was a little intimidating. “Lainule—is she still alive?”
“Yes, she is hanging on—barely. Kaylin arrived back here with the heartstone a few hours ago. But Wrath says you must be the one to present it to her. Where are you? Are you near a road?”
“I don’t know…we’re walking west, in the woods. I have no clue how far we are from a road. Can Wrath fly over the Golden Wood to see if he can find us? He knows where the cedar is, though we don’t seem to be anywhere near that at this time. We came out a different way than we went in.”
Peyton’s voice echoed as she spoke to someone else. After a moment, she came back on the phone. “Yes, in fact, he’s headed out the door now. Stay put, out from under the trees so he can see you. The moment he sees you, he’ll land, and then you call me back.”>As I approached the top, the ivy began to wave, and Ulean swept by.
Beware. Be cautious. You are not through the tangle yet.
What is it?
But I didn’t have time to wait for her answer. One of the tendrils reached out and wrapped around my wrist. I struggled against it, but the ivy came thick and fast and began to wrap me up like a spider wraps its prey. I was having trouble breathing and couldn’t move fast enough to stop it. Below, I heard Grieve shout. The next moment, the tower quaked and the ivy sucked away from me, leaving me to tumble down the steps until I caught myself. The tower quaked again and I looked down.
The oak was caught in a frost that was spreading up its trunk. Grieve was standing on the steps, slack-jawed, staring as a layer of frost spread from his feet to the steps, and huge cracks began to form in the staircase.
Kaylin vanished as I glanced anxiously up at the top of the tower. I wasn’t far from it—but the cracks were spidering up the glass, and soon the stairs I was standing on would break and send me tumbling to the abyss below. I made a run for it, staggering up the slick surface to the landing at the top.
Grieve jumped off the bottom step back to Rhia’s side just as the foundation of the staircase shattered and vanished into the crevasse. I didn’t have much time. I glanced around the top of the tower and there it was—a crystal box, and within the box I could see the brilliant emerald stone, pulsing with life and with light. I grabbed up the case, trying to decide what to do. Just then, Kaylin materialized on the landing next to me.
“Can you take the case while you’re dreamwalking?”
He shook his head. “Yes, I can. As well as your clothing, since you’ll have to change into your owl-shape and fly down from here. There’s no returning down those stairs. Hurry—strip!”
I caught my breath, staring at him, reluctant to hand him the case. But there was no choice. I pushed the crystal box into his hands and pulled off my clothes, stripping as fast as I could.
The stairs were half gone, shattering like tempered glass into a thousand pieces. I kept my moonstone pendant, but everything else I gave to Kaylin, and he vanished back into the shadows. I glanced down at the stairs. Only a few more and the landing would go. I sucked in a deep breath and stepped to the edge of the landing. As the glass began to break beneath my bare feet, I gathered my courage and spread my arms, toppling over the edge in a freefall.
Arms into wings, body into bird, nails into talons. As I headed toward the ground, Ulean caught me in her updraft and I was aloft, flying around the room. It felt so good—this freedom to soar, to fly, to…what the…from here, I could see handholds carved into the walls. I followed them up, and when I got to the ceiling, found a trapdoor right next to a thin ledge. This was our way out. I turned to fly down to the others when the door shattered open and a wave of snow and ice came swirling through.
Holy fuck. Three Shadow Hunters leaned through, their expressions triumphant. And behind them—Myst!
I spiraled down quickly, shifting as I hit the ground. Turning to Kaylin, I whispered, “You have to dreamwalk. You must escape with the heartstone, now.”
