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“It’s evening,” I said, without even glancing up at the sky. I could tell from the angle of the light, and I knew the sun’s path better than I knew the back of my hand. “A few hours away from what we would consider nighttime. How can you see a ridge, anyway? It’s dark up there.”
“Fae eyesight.” She tapped the side of her face. “We can be there in a few hours.”
My entire body groaned at the thought of hiking for even an hour longer. I chewed on the bread, willing my limbs to do what I needed them to do. I did not want to be the one to slow the others down.
So, after a brief rest, we continued onward. The path grew skinny, and the cold stung my cheeks when the mists finally descended. The wind battered my aching body. Shivering, I focused on Kalen, just in front of me. He was all I could see in the sudden darkness. I watched his boots as the rocks crumbled down the cliff-side on our right.
And so I just kept moving, step after laborious step. Exhaustion burned my eyes, and my lungs struggled to pull in enough air. Still, I carried on.
I would not give up. I couldn’t.
I took another step, weariness tugging at my eyelids. My boot found nothing but air. I cried out as I stumbled forward, and my foot skidded against the path, lurching me sideways. The ground rose up fast, hurtling toward my face. With a scream, I threw out my hands to brace my fall.
Pain raced through my fingers as they hit the ground. My body tumbled to the side, rolling me off the path—and straight into nothing but cold, thin air.
Rocks blurred by me as I soared off the ledge, my braid whipping around my head. Kalen’s roar cut through my heart. Numbing fear flooded my veins. For a moment, the world slowed around me as the reality of my situation sank in.
I’d fallen off the side of the mountain. Soon, I would hit the ground.
Terror knifed my heart. My arms flailed around me as I desperately tried to find something—anything—to grab onto. The raging wind snatched my feet and tossed me sideways. Another scream ripped from my throat, but no sound came out. Fear took my voice and swallowed it whole.
I looked down to meet my fate. And there it was. The face of my death storming up at me from the depths of the shadowy mist.
Two seconds to go.
One.
I sucked in a breath and braced myself.
My shoulder slammed into the ground, and my head snapped to the side, colliding with stone.
The world went dark.
Forty-Two
Tessa
TWENTY YEARS AGO
“Stop fighting me!” My father shouted the words, his cheeks so red they looked like patches of blood. I flinched away from him when he hissed at me. The tears flowing from my eyes made everything blurry, even the twisted expression on his face, but I still knew how angry he looked. This wasn’t the first time he’d screamed at me.
And it wasn’t the first time he’d forced me to goout there.
“I don’t want to go into the mists,” I whispered.
“You have to.” He smacked his chair so hard it slammed into the pub’s wall. The wooden legs splintered, the sound like the crack of the whips the fae used against us sometimes. “These fae are monsters. We have to get away from them. And you’re our only hope. You or Nellie.”
“Not Nellie,” I said through clenched teeth, my hands shaking so hard that they rattled my skull. “Leave her alone.”
“She’s stronger than you are,” he said with a curled lip before pacing the warped floorboards in front of me. Just like the other times, he’d dragged me here in the middle of the night while my mother and Nellie slept, where no one could hear him shout at me. None of the candles were lit, so creeping shadows filled the entire dusty room.
I closed my eyes. “Please. Leave Nellie out of this.”
He wound his hand around my arm and clutched it so tightly that pain cut through my bones. “Then come with me now. If you don’t, I’ll take her instead.”
His words stabbed me in the heart. The last thing I wanted was for him to throw Nellie, only three years old, out into those mists to fend for herself against the monsters. And he knew it.
He’d only done it once, and I’d never let him do it again. She was stronger than me in so many ways, even as little as she was, but the power had warped her in a far different way than it had me. I’d never forget the terror in her eyes when she’d shown me what he’d forced her to do. I wouldn’t put her through that again.
