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Callie hates the idea. Honestly, I’m pretty sure Ash does, too, but my dad is way better at hiding his thoughts and emotions. He’s a fae. It figures.
Once I latch onto the idea, once I have even a speck of hope, I can’t be stopped. As much as I’d rather never step foot inside the Black Pine facility ever again, it’s all I want to do.
So I make plans. I make plans and I practice.
I know I’m gonna have to do this on my own. Ash won’t be able to travel with me. As a Light Fae, he has his own magic. His own powers. Callie wasn’t exaggerating when she told me that my shadows nearly killed him as we were escaping the Fae Queen. I saw it myself.
Taking a pocket to travel from the city to Black Pine? Even if he survived one of my shadows again, he’d be useless when we arrived at the asylum.
On the plus side, he’s a pro when it comes to being a teacher. He might not be able to use the sunlight to move around like Rys did—he can’t since he won’t risk returning to Faerie during the night to recharge his strength—but he can explain how to do it.
The principles for shade-walking and Light Fae travel are basically the same. Within a couple of days, he actually manages to teach me how to make the shadows work for me without them dictating where I’m going to end up. It’s touch, but I’m super fucking motivated.
Hey, anything to keep me from accidentally walking back into Faerie again.
It’s not just about shade-walking. I spend every free moment that I can working on gathering shadows. Dr. Gillespie might have the seeing stone that looked straight through the shadowy disguise I used in the alleyway the last time we met. That’s just one man. I still have the entire ward to worry about.
Now that I know fae-touched humans also are inside the Black Pine facility, I can’t be too careful. My shadows are the only glamour that I have. I need to be able to call them easily, using them to conceal me and hide me while I sneak around my old floor.
And that’s if I even manage to make it to the right floor in the first place.
When I’m not working with my shadows, I’m learning how to shade-walk while I’m conscious. With Ash’s instruction, I start by creating my own pockets and turning them into portals. It’s a struggle in the beginning. It leaves me so drained the first couple of times that I don’t even have the energy to move through them.
The pull toward Faerie is too great. It would be so easy to slip into the shadows and land on the other side of the veil between worlds. I can’t, though, and it takes everything I have to control where I end up.
I start with the inside of the apartment. Bedroom to bathroom. Living room to kitchen. It gets easier after a couple of tries. I keep on practicing. When I can shade-walk from our apartment to the abandoned lobby without a hitch in my breath, I begin to think that I can really do this.
I tell Nine every night that we’re working on saving him. He can’t hear me—my parents are proof since neither one remembers any of their imprisonment at all—but it makes me feel better.
Callie keeps track of the days. Every couple of mornings, I run down to the corner store and buy a newspaper so that we don’t lose any; after my experience with Faerie, I keep expecting it to be like December or something. We don’t, and as March turns to April, Ash and I agree that our best bet would be the second Sunday this month.
Easter.
It’s a holiday. Back when I was still a “wayward juvenile” trapped in the asylum, I remember how hectic it was during any holiday season. Family visits and day-time passes were at a high then, and the staff was always short-handed. I’m hoping Dr. Gillespie will still be there—he’s the one who has the Brinkburn around his throat, after all—and that any of the Fae Queen’s pets won’t be.
I don’t necessarily want to confront my old psychologist at Black Pine. I don’t know what he’s doing there, or who he might be working with—or for. But since I don’t have any other lead than that he worked for the facility as of October, it’s my only chance to get a Brinkburn without sending Callie out to find one.
I can’t do that. It’s not fair to her. I know there’s gonna come a time when she has to leave this apartment and realize
that twenty years have gone by, that the world kept spinning while she was frozen in time under Melisandre’s cruel curse. It’s… it’s just not yet.
Every time she looks at me, her dark blue eyes sad, I know she knows that twenty years have passed. I’m proof right here.
She doesn’t want to push me to confront the queen. I don’t want to admit that I’m still dealing with twenty years of feeling like I’ve been left to survive on my own.
We’re all living in denial.
Well, except for Ash.
On Friday, two days before I’m supposed to put our plan into place, he calls for me. I walk into the living room to find Ash waiting.
And he’s holding a sword.
One of those scary-ass swords that the fae guards carried with the silver hilt and the diamond blade.
Oh, boy.
My mom was in the kitchen, busying herself with reorganizing the drawers and making sense of the random groceries I keep bringing back to the apartment. When Ash called my name, she must have followed me because it’s her incredulous voice that breaks the quiet.
