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While he’s still trying to process the situation, I slam my palm upward into his nose with a satisfying crack. He flails backward onto his back.
My heart is in my throat as I lean down and fish my pendant from his pocket. Then I grab Jane and we run. We don’t stop until we’re in my room. I watch from my window as his friends help him to their four wheelers. The same window he came inside last night.
How did I not know?
I don’t stop watching until they disappear into the forest.
Then I run to my new cell phone and message Mack.
She doesn’t respond, and the message remains unseen.
Crap.
“Summer?” Jane says. She’s shaking, but her voice is steady.
“It’s okay.” I wrap her in a hug and then begin throwing on warm clothes. “You did good, Jane. Cal won’t retaliate against you. It’s me he wants.”
“He’s one of them, isn’t he?” she asks, her voice way too calm for having just shot a Fae with an arrow.
I nod. “They call them changelings. How much did you hear?”
She tugs at one of her braids. “Enough.”
I pull her close. “Thank you for saving me. But now, I have to go back to save someone else.”
“The prince he mentioned?”
“Yes, but also my friends.” Her hazel eyes narrow and I add, “They’re human, and they’re innocent bystanders.”
She nods as if she understands that part of my speech, at least. But tears glisten her eyes. Tears she’s too old and too stubborn to spill. the prince is back with Inara.
Soon after that, I asked her to stop mentioning the prince at all.
A few weeks later a package arrived with a cell phone inside. Now we chat daily. Mostly she tells me she misses me and I say I miss her too. Sometimes we talk about Asher and their flirtatious—but platonic—relationship.
Between what happened to me and Evelyn, any potential romance between Mack and Dragon Boy is gone.
Occasionally we bring up Evelyn, but her disappearance is still too painful.
Currently, the conversation revolves around the Wild Hunt.
That’s today, by the way.
My stomach has been in knots all morning knowing how nervous Mack is. She and the other first year shadows will be dropped into the Forest of Eyes just outside the scourge lands with their keepers. They’ll be split into teams as they face off against trolls and other ancient monsters. Each team will be sent to find one hidden artifact.
“Summer, lunch is ready!” Aunt Zinnia calls. She stands on the back porch, wearing an apron that says, ‘It’s always five o’clock somewhere,’ over a pink robe and slippers. She watches me for a moment longer, shielding her eyes, before the porch screen slams shut behind her.
When I showed up on the front porch at the crack of dawn two months ago, wearing a Fae dress and a gold crown, my eyes rimmed from crying, Aunt Zinnia screamed. Then she wrapped me in a hug so warm it chased away any of the lingering cold from Everwilde.
She hugged me for a good five minutes. Then, like any good Southern woman who discovered a girl in tears on her porch, she fixed me grits and tea so sweet it made my teeth ache.
Aunt Vi’s icy demeanor has taken a bit more time to thaw. But I catch her checking on me late at night when she thinks I’m asleep. We don’t speak about what happened, but they’ve taken to running salt over the windowsills and doorways, and I’ve found extra rowan berry charms inside my clothes.
I don’t have the heart to tell them none of that matters. If the Fae want to come back for me, very few things can stop them. The mark on my arm ensures that.
It’s the only part of the prince I can’t erase.
I finish hanging up a pair of jeans and then grab the blue plastic laundry basket. For a moment, my gaze wanders to the east, where the Shimmer glints softly in the late morning sky.
