“We should get going,” Rhett tells us.
I offer Sam a hand and pull her up. She huffs out a frustrated exhale as she stands on wobbly feet. “Shit. My backpack. It’s at the bottom of the lake, with all my stuff.”
“I can give you my spare change of clothes,” I tell her.
“I might be able to help dry you,” Rhett chimes in, lifting his hand. When he turns it, something resembling a small tornado envelops Sam. Her hair whips around her in a copper blur. The tornado moves to Malik, then to me. It’s like being caught in a wind tunnel.
We mumble a “thank you” before making quick work of gathering our belongings. Rhett leads the way.
As we pass the knobby driftwood, I’m finally able to take in my surroundings. I’ve never seen trees as big as these, resembling sleepy giants that rise from the earth to brush the cloudless sky. Their bark is a vivid reddish-brown, and thick crimson vines climb along their length. The closest thing I can compare them to are sequoia trees. Still, these are much taller and bulkier at the bottom.
They make me feel small. Inconsequential. More so now that I can’t access my abilities. It’s as if someone took away my crutches, and I have to learn how to walk again. It’s unsettling. The only time I remember feeling this way was right after I woke up in the hospital after the car accident. For years, I thought it was because of losing my memories…but now I know it’s because of the barrier in my head.
It’s only here, now, smelling wet mud, rotting wood, and something sweet that reminds me of honeysuckle, that I make the connection implied in my mother’s journal. I might be half fae. This could have very well been my home, in another life. My mother’s home, too, in that alternate universe. I have no idea what it all means.
Upon our arrival, everything quiets—the foreign birdsong, the small animals moving in the underbrush, even the wind rustling through the branches. It’s as if the forest itself is holding its breath. The only sound is that of loose pebbles and fallen foliage crunching under our boots.
“So, where are we?” Kaiden asks Rhett. He’s walking behind uswith Malik, surely to watch our back in case something happens.
He turns to look at us over his shoulder. “The portal dropped us on Seelie lands. The Wasting Woods forms the barrier between the Seelie and Unseelie courts, so we should enter it in about two or three days.”
“You said time flows differently here,” I chime in as I rearrange the straps of my backpack. The farther we venture into the woods, the more the sensation of being watched prickles the back of my neck.
“It does. But it’s unpredictable. Sometimes, when I cross back to the human world, the months I spent in Faerie are mere days, and then other times, the weeks here turn into months there.”
“I hope time will work in our favor because my flower shop can’t run itself. Trish is going to kill me if I’m gone more than a few days,” Sam mumbles from beside me.
Rhett prattles on about the enormous plants resembling ferns as I throw Sam a worried look. “Hey, you okay?”
She nods and offers what should be a reassuring smile, but it’s brittle—devoid of the usual confidence she wears like armor. Sam is terrified of water in the same way I’m afraid of being in a moving car. Her mother suffered from severe post-partum psychosis, which resulted in delusions and mania. She tried to drown Sam in their backyard pool when she was eight months old. Even though she can’t remember it because she was just a baby, the scars are still there. And they’re bleeding. I recognize those haunted shadows in her eyes; they’re what I see in the mirror every time I wake up from a night terror.
“Are you sure?” I insist.
She puffs out a breath before lowering her voice to a whisper. “No. Between Ian—Malik—being back and almost drowning, I feel as though my life is spinning off its axis. And my magic has been a part of me since the moment I was born. It’s like someone cut out a big chunk of my soul and misplaced it. I keep wantingto draw from it, but I can’t. There’s only an empty well…I don’t like it one bit. This place gives me the heebie-jeebies.”
“It is kinda creepy, right? I can’t shake the feeling that we’re being watched.”
Sam swivels her head left and right. “Yeah, me neither.” A few more minutes go by before she asks, “What are you going to do about the Order if weeks or months pass in the human world while we’re here?”
Shrugging, I say, “I don’t know. I was going to tell Grayson I quit yesterday, but everything happened, and yeah…now we’re here. I guess it doesn’t matter anymore. He surely is aware I missed my shift last night, since we’re still supposed to work in pairs. He probably already fired me.”
I didn’t even tell Aunt Josephine I was leaving Ashville for a few days. I am bitterly disappointed in her because she stayed silent about Emily. Her only concern was the non-existent repercussions that might follow a violation in the Treaty.
Sam shakes her head incredulously at my indifference. “Who the fuck are you, and what have you done with my workaholic bestie? I’m proud of you, Iris. I know what being a hellseeker meant to you. It takes guts to do what you did.” She smiles. “I love you to pieces, but you were a little brainwashed.”
I huff a laugh. “Love you too. Good thing I finally woke up, huh?”
We continue our trek through overgrown berry bushes, crisscrossing giant tree roots that are a bitch to climb over, and mossy rocks. With each step toward the Wasting Woods, this weird feeling filtering through me only intensifies—as if something is calling out to a part of me from beyond the dead forest. But when I try to decipher it…I can’t. It feels as though I’m underwater and can’t break the surface. It’s unsettling. More so because I can’t help but wonder if it’s because my mother was fae.
With the dipping sun, the temperature also drops, cooling the fine sheen of perspiration on my exposed skin. Even if I’m used to prolonged effort, my legs are starting to tire. Sam hasn’t complained much, but she too must be exhausted since she abhors any form of physical exercise.
Rhett stops when we encounter a small clearing on our left. “We’re going to camp here for the night.”
“Oh, thank Hecate,” Sam huffs quietly as we jump over a small creek.
I down what’s left of my electrolyte drink, shell out my weapons, then let out a tired sigh as I slide off the heavy backpack. Kaiden, Malik, and Rhett do the same while I rummage for my tent. When I get all the parts out, both Sam and I stare at them with pursed lips.
“Don’t look at me. I’ve never been camping. If I still had magic, all I’d have to do is snap my fingers, and it would already be pitched.” She wrinkles her nose. “I swear this is the first and last time I’m trading my stilettos for hiking boots.”
