Auren covers her face with her hands, shoulders shaking as she sobs.
Slade looks fucking devastated. Argo whines low in his throat.
Like he feels the weight of Judd’s fall, Osrik’s head hangs down. I feel it too. Notched around my shoulders and pinning me in place.
Auren comes over to Slade’s side and wraps her arm around his back. He holds her, dragging a hand down his face, wiping away the moisture from his eyes. “Oh, Judd,” Slade says with a shake of his head, his tone full of misery. “Fuck.”
The grief is too close for us to get a good look at it yet. The wound too fresh. None of us know what to do with it. None of us know how to move around the empty space he’s left in our group.
Maybe we never will.
Maybe sometimes, time doesn’t help. It just…stretches. Widens the gap between the loss and the after.
Slade takes in a shaky breath and looks around at us. “I’m fucking glad to see you all,” he says before clearing his throat. “Come into the city. Let’s talk.”
“We thought you left.”
“We were going to,” Auren tells us as she wipes at her eyes. “But we got held up. We were going to leave tomorrow instead.”
Thank the Divine for that.
“How in the world did you get here?” Auren asks. “The bridge…”
“Yeah, it exploded,” Rissa says. “But then, we found someone.” She gestures behind her pointedly, and then Auren turns just as a limping figure shifts out from behind Argo.
“Hi, Lyäri,” Emonie says quietly. Her expression looks unsure, her smile nervous.
Auren’s eyes go wide. “Emonie! How did you? What—What happened to you?”
“I’m so sorry about what I did on the stage,” she rushes to say. “I know how it must have looked, but—”
“Stop,” Auren says as she hurries over and hugs her, though she does it gently so as not to hurt her. “You had to. I don’t blame you one bit. I’m just sorry I couldn’t get to you before the king took you away with him. I’m so sorry you were hurt.”
Emonie slumps in relief. “I’m sorryyouwere hurt.” She sniffs as they pull away, and then her swollen eyes find me. She perks up with a bit of good old-fashioned smugness. “See?” she says with a smirk. “Told you.” She looks at Auren. “You got the better brother, I think, because this one is rude.”
My lips press together in both irritation and guilt. “I had to be cautious,” I defend.
She rolls her eyes. I think. Still too swollen to really tell.
“Let’s get you to a healer,” Auren says to her.
Slade nods. “We obviously have a lot to talk about.”
We start walking into the city with Argo in tow. I look around the stone buildings, the arched rooftops and the glittering waterways. Some fae are rowing skinny boats down the water while people pass over the bridges above. There are some buildings that stretch up into the twisting trees themselves, and glass orbs that hang from branches, glittering with magical light.
Osrik whistles under his breath. “We’re definitely not in Orea anymore.”
Fae stop and gasp, staring at Argo wide-eyed as we pass. He puffs up a bit, as if he likes the attention.
But what I can’t help but notice is that nearly every single person turns around and smiles or waves or even tips their heads in Auren’s direction. And all of them are murmuring the same thing.
“Lyäri,” I say to Slade. “Why do they call her that?”
He takes in a breath like he doesn’t even know where to start. Then, he simply says, “Because…they love her.”
I can see the truth of that in every face.
As we walk, I try to settle into the fact that we’re actually here with Slade and Auren…in the fae realm. Where I haven’t been since I was a child.
