He leans forward, his lips brushing mine as he speaks. “I know. And I’ll come with you. Wherever you go.”
My face goes slack. A breath later his lips firmly press into mine and the world around us explodes.
My magic responds faster than my mind. Every cell and fiber of my being feels like it’s been thrown into the deepest level of pleasure. A whimper works its way out of my chest. I can feel him everywhere, his hand presses into my lower back… another under my chin… moving into my hair.
When he angles my head, tugging my hair for more access, my mind finally catches up. I clutch his neck, going up on my toes to deepen the kiss. The ground shakes around us, and I open my mouth for him. A deafening rumble of thunder surrounds us, but all I hear is his moan as my tongue finds his.
He turns us, pushing me back into the warm stone of the castle. His hips find mine, and I feel how hard he is, pressing against me. Pulling back, breaking our kiss, he places his forehead to mine.
“Together,” he says through deep, heaving breaths. “We will leave heretogether…”
We both look up to the heavens as lightning strikes somewhere nearby. Thunder claps again, shaking the entire castle, and he curls around me. When the immediate threat quiets, we both peer up into a sky as dark as the day Nova died.
I swallow and look at him with wide eyes. The dark sky brings some semblance of rational thought back to my brain. “You can’tleave with me,” I argue, determined. “I may be running from the Goddess the rest of my life. Hiding in another world, away from friends and family. She’ll be angry if her princess doesn’t marry the new king. I don’t want that for you. You love this kingdom, this world. You were born for it. You can’t go with me.”
“I can go, Lila,” he grinds out through a clenched jaw. “Goddess be damned if she is mating you tohim. You aremine. I’ll give up anything in this world to be with you.” He’s almost shouting into the storm, which is now pelting us with thick rainfall.
“Be quiet!” I swing my gaze around desperately, as if Gaia herself is about to show up and damn us on the spot. When no one appears out of thin air, the wind fills my lungs again. “You love the Fae. I would never ask you to abandon them. That isn’t who you are.”
“You didn’t ask, and the only Fae who matters is you. If you run, I’m coming?—”
Thunder and lightning explode around us. A wooden wagon the servants use splinters only twenty twigs away from us.
“We can argue later.” He grabs me around the waist. “If we’re going to talk to Celyste, we need to gonow.”
I shut my eyes, braced against the instantaneous heat and nausea that threaten from a mistwalk.
Just like before the air in the Aeronia is thick and suffocating. But with the storm is raging even some of the smoke has dissipated. The ground shakes with the rumble of thunder and it echoes through the cliffs nearby.
“What are we doing here?” I yell through the rain.
“Celyste isn’t in Castara,” he yells back over the noise of the world being ripped apart around us. “Niko found her seeking refuge in Pollara.”
My heart skips a beat as he tugs me towards a portal to the witch world. I realize that I’m in almost the exact samesituation that Nova found herself in before she died—away from all Guardians, in an elemental land that isn’t my own. At one of the portals.
I freeze.
Cillian swings around. His hair is sticking to his face and rain drips from his chin. His blue eyes shine back at me. “Do you trust me, Nissa? Because you’re the only Fae in this world that I trust completely. Maybe that’s stupid since we’ve been separated for so long, but I know, I knowin my soul, in my mind, in my magic, in my heart,that I can trust you. So even if you have only the tiniest feeling that you can trust me, I ask that you do it, right now. Trust me. I’m taking you to Celyste. Let’s just pray she has the answers you need.”
I swallow the last of my fears, because he’s right. I still need answers. And the one thing I know for certain is that I can trust Cillian. I’ve always known that we were connected somehow. That he would protect me at all costs.
So, I give him the smallest nod. I’m not even sure he sees it through the rain, because we are already racing for the witch portal together. Hand in hand, we step through. The immediate feeling of weightlessness carries us as we fall through space. Red gas wraps around us, hiding anything that exists outside of our connected bodies.
My pulse picks up as the fall goes on longer than I expect, but when I look into his eyes, a sense of peace fills me.
At least it does until we find ourselves in a world that I don’t recognize, with a storm still raging around us.
We look at each other. What are the odds that the Goddess has sent her storm across worlds? The gods are supposed to have an agreement—to leave the other worlds to the god who created them. For the storm to follow us across portals could mean that Gaia is defying that to chase me.
No matter where I run, thatwerun, we may never get away from her.
I try to push the thought away as Cillian grabs me around the waist. Kissing the side of my head, he mistwalks us again.
This time we land near a cream-colored stone cottage set in a dark green forest. The vine-covered roof is thick with twining leaves dotted with budding pink flowers. The windows look dark, but we proceed hand in hand up a rock path inset into the mossy ground.
An invisible barrier halts our progress. Cillian reaches out, probing, running his fingers along the blocking magic. I place my free hand against what feels like a solid, cool breeze. It tickles my palm, and then my hand easily pushes through. It’s as if someone suddenly unlocked a door.
We look around to see if there’s anyone around but it is hard to see through the pouring rain. On alert, we approach the front door. Cillian shields me behind him, then knocks. There’s movement inside, and the door pulls open. A stunning silver-haired female Fae in a white robe dress stands just inside. Her eyes widen, and she tries to shove the door closed.
