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It wasn’t enough, but it helped.
When Gullie was finished, she pulled her hands back and looked at them. The blood on my face was dry by now, caked onto my skin, but some of it had still transferred to her palms, staining them brown. Valerian offered her the bowl.
“I’ve done what I can,” Gullie said, as she fluttered up to the bowl and washed her hands. “It still looks really grim.”
“Nothing a little rest won’t fix,” I said, although in truth, I wasn’t sure how bad the injury was, so I didn’t know if it would heal perfectly. Being part Moon Child blessed me with enhanced regenerative powers, but most of the Moon Children I had met had scars all over their bodies, and they werefullbreeds.
I wasn’t.
I really didn’t want a giant, gnarly scar across my face, but… scars werebad-ass, and I could see myself rocking one.
“What happened today sucked,” I said, looking up at them all, “But she’s shown us what we’re dealing with. That gives us an advantage.”
“Advantage?” asked Gullie.
“We know how powerful and quick her magic is. We know she can shapeshift… somehow. We also know she has the entire army of Windhelm under her command, and they’re all jerks.”
“They were jerks before,” said Melina, shrugging. “We’re thecoldestFae, remember?”
“Right…” I paused. “So, we need to gather support, and people won’t be enough. What about Radulf?”
“What about him?”
“You guys said my family was exiled, but he left on his own… maybe we can find him.”
“We tried. I mean, neither of us are terribly proficient with magic, and we can’t shapeshift to improve our tracking abilities like you can, but we did try to figure out where he had gone. The man left no trace, though.”
“No one would be able to track Radulf down except for Radulf,” said Gullie. “There’s a reason they made him Alpha of the Moon Children. He’s strong, and capable. If he needed to hide his tracks, there would be none.”
“Maybe… but I don’t believe my brother would abandon his family and accept exile. Maybe he left clues we can follow, some kind of trail we can pick up.”
“After all this time, there would be no trail,” said Valerian.
“Not a scent trail, but maybe something else… there has to be something.”
“Even if we did try to find him, we are on a time limit.”
“Twelve days, now. I know.”
“It took us months before we gave up our search,” said Gullie. “What makes you think you’ll find him in twelve days?”
“I don’t, but I have to believe it’s possible. Just like it has to be possible that we can find my parents.”
Gullie fluttered over to me and hovered in front of my face. “Do you understand what exile means?” she asked. “Because I don’t think you’ve come to terms with it yet.”
I frowned at her. “It means they left and promised not to return.”
Gullie shook her Pixie head. “No. It means they wereexiled.They are no longer in Arcadia.”
“What? Where are they, then?”
“No one really knows. Another dimension? Maybe a pocket dimension like the one Malys offered to send you to.”
“She said we’d be outcasts.”
“Outcasts, exiles, I’m sure those two things are the same to her. What I’m trying to say is, your parents are nowhere to be found. We’d need incredibly powerful magic to even try to find them, and none of us have it. We’re more likely to find Radulf, and he’s… he’s justgone, and I think anything we can do will fix that.”
The disappointment in her voice was clear. Gullie held a grudge against him for leaving, even though she understood why he had done it. I could see it on her face. She had hoped that one day, he would come back to her and Melina, and the three of them would be able to figure out how to topple Malys. But that day never came, so Gullie and Melina were forced to stay in that cottage, powerless to stop what was unfolding around them.
