Page 133 of Cursebreaker

Owen did. Titus has.

Why not Will?

“Ah, here she is!” Rainai stands, his smile broad as he waves at Vera entering the garden once more, followed by a girl about my age, her long blond hair tied into braids that dust her waist.

Silent tears stream down the girl’s face when she sees me, a disbelieving smile lighting her eyes. “Aster?”

I lurch from my seat, falling to my knees as I reach for her, unable to hold back the sob that bursts from my lips. “Elsie?”

My sister throws herself to the ground, tackling me in her embrace.

“How?” I cry, holding her close. “You’re—you’re—”

“Older?” She laughs, drawing back to look me in the eye.

“But how?” I choke out, touching her cheek, just to make sure she’s not some figment of my imagination.

“When I was taken,” Elsie says, slowly, patiently, as if I were her younger sister, “one moment I was with Lew and you, and the next, I was here.”

I shake my head, trying to swallow the lump in my throat. “But that wasn’t so long ago.”

“It wasn’t, was it?” she asks, a wistful gleam in her eyes. “Time moves differently here. What might be days for you could be weeks in Elysia, and what would be hours here could be minutes in your realm.”

My realm. Not hers.

“Oh, Aster!” She embraces me again, squeezing tight.

She’s alive, and I’ve found her, but she isn’t the child she was when she disappeared. There’s so much lost time we’ll never get back.

“I want to show you something!” Elsie smiles through her tears, leaping to her feet and holding out her hand for me to take.

Another sob wrenches my gut as I take her hand and allow her to lead me back through the garden, Rainai following at a comfortable pace.

I feel like I’m stumbling in a dream, but Elsie moves through the streets of the town with effortless grace, waving hello to Myths as we pass stands selling flowers that sing and tiny frosted cakes that smell like happy, peaceful feelings.

She tells me whimsy is her favorite flavor. “You have to try it!” she says, and her ease twists my stomach into knots.

This is Elsie’s home now. Has she forgotten all about us? Will she not want to come back with me?

Should I even ask her to?

Finally, we reach the castle, and Elsie waltzes through the front door, greeting the tree nymphs at the entrance with a bow. There are no guards, but the entry hall buzzes with activity: people laughing, wings fluttering, daffodils harmonizing. Rainai is pulled aside to speak with a Myth who reminds me of a toadstool with eyes.

“Do you live here?” I ask.

Elsie smiles, tugging at my hand as she leads me up the stairwell and down a hallway lined with paintings of landscapes wholly unfamiliar to me. As we pass a row of doors, Elsie points inside the rooms.

“That one I decorated for Lewis,” she tells me as we pass a room filled to the brim with rolls of fabric. “This one for Charlie,” she says, gesturing at the room full of carpentry tools and a variety of woods—most of them not of our world. “Margaret and Jack.” A room clothed in silk, lace curtains fluttering in the open windows. “Albert.” A room with a table set for a game of Clubs. “Mother and Father.” A room that overlooks the sparkling lake.

She lingers in the doorway of a room with maps plastering the walls. “For Owen,” she says, her throat bobbing. “I started working on them when I first came here. I had hoped that if the curse was broken, and the gates to Elysia reopened, you could all join me in this realm. That was before…”

Before Owen and Jack were taken to a different realm—the realm of the dead.

I squeeze her hand. “They’re lovely.”

Her glassy eyes brighten. “Do you want to see yours?”

The contents of my room are simple. Linen bedsheets, a chair by the window. But the walls…