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I shook my head over and over. “Where? Please! I need to see them.”
A gigantic swell of his power ripped through the realm. Just outside of his protective bubble, a shimmer manifested, like a veil. The crown prince worked his jaw as the tendons in his neck strained. I blinked, then blinked again as the raging storm around us fell away, and an opening in a wall of ice appeared.
And behind that opening...
Fae walked within a hidden dome, visible in splotchy images as the ice fragmented their forms.
I stood, stumbling toward them, but the prince got there first, whispering something, a spell perhaps, and the opening widened, as though unlocking from his masterful touch.
Warmth from inside rushed over my face, and when I crossed the threshold, a layer of protective wards—so strong that it put the dome encasing the castle to shame—gripped me. For a moment, it held me as though analyzing my intent, and then in a rush I was released.
Houses and lanes, shops and fountains—every which way I looked were signs of life. Of a fae’s home.
I nearly fell forward in my haste to see them, find them, hug them, love them, greet them. Mother Below, I didn’t know what I wanted or what I was going to do when I saw them, but if they were alive and here and—
“Ilara?”
I stopped in my tracks. The voice that had just called my name...I would know that voice anywhere.
“Mother?” I whispered. I turned, almost afraid to do so, terrified that this was all a cruel illusion, that the prince was really my mate from the underworld, come to wreak havoc on my soul while playing demented games with my mind.
But then I faced her.
She stood just behind me, her expression a slew of disbelief, happiness, and joy. Silvery white hair cascaded down her back. Blue eyes sparkled with growing tears. Wings with quivering muscles splayed out on either side of her as her hands balled into fists. Those gentle hands had curved hair behind my ears, swatted me playfully when I beat her at her favorite game of cards, rolled dough on the counters in our worn kitchen, and carefully tucked covers around me, Cailis, and Tormesh when we were children, before she kissed us on our noses and wished us dreams of traveling through the stars.
And then she was running.
I was running.
Tears spilled onto her cheeks, mine doing the same. We collided in a crash of limbs and chests, wrapping ourselves around each other as incomprehensible sounds and words tumbled from our lips.
And then my father was there. Tormesh was there. Their laughter, smiles, and hands were everywhere, and their touches, kisses, and embraces obliterated the sorrow that I’d been feeling for so very long.
And it was all real.Theywere real.
I didn’t know how long we stood there in a tangle of love and hope, but all of us were talking and blubbering. My father’s lips lifted in a grin, and Tormesh’s wings rippled in the icy light.
“How?” I finally managed. “How are you all alive and unharmed? How come Cailis and I didn’t know?”
My mother cupped my face before pressing a kiss to my forehead as my father wiped tears from his eyes.
“He put us here,” Tormesh finally said and nodded toward the crown prince.
A heartbeat of silence passed before I realized that Norivun stood near the village’s threshold. His arms were crossed over his chest as he leaned against the ice wall. A sad smile played upon his lips as the northern storm raged just outside of his protective barrier.
I stared at him, so many emotions tumbling through me that I didn’t know where to begin.Why? How? For how long? Why? WHY?
He’d said something about creating this place because he wasn’t what fae claimed him to be. That nobody knew about it, not even his father.
“Why?” I finally said, unable to align my thoughts to anything other than that one word.
He walked toward us, gliding like mist over the sea. “To keep them safe. To keepallof them safe.” His throat bobbed in a swallow, but he waved a hand behind me, to the tiny village, to the other fae mingling about, some whom had stopped to watch my family and me as we dissolved into a mess in one another’s arms. I counted them.Five, fifteen, no twenty-five.The list grew. So many.
“I still don’t understand,” I choked out.
Prince Norivun’s smile grew, but the gesture was filled with a heaviness that made the expression look forced. “There’s much you don’t understand, Ilara, but I couldn’t hide this from you, not any longer.”
Mate.
