I turn to my brother. “Did you find her?” I ask, the question coming out fearful. I’m almost too scared to ask, too scared to hear his reply. Because what if the answer is bad?
I don’t fucking know if I can bear it.
But Slade juts up his chin and moves his eyes, and I follow his line of sight. “I found her,” he tells me, and I feel my heart stop and start all at once.
My mother stands there.
She looks happy. Safe. Smiling with a group of fae and even some of the Drollard villagers right here on the street. In the sunshine. Not in a horrible freezing mountain in the middle of nowhere.
I immediately race forward, breaking away from the group. People turn to look at me as I run down the brick road, and the commotion makes my mother turn and lock eyes on me.
I see her gasp just before I reach her. I fling my arms around her, wrapping her in a hug as I hold her close. “Mother,” I say as I squeeze her, heart spilling over with my tears.
I’ve been so fucking afraid.
But I was so relieved to see her that I forgot to be cautious. To not scare her.
Shaking, I force myself to pull away. “I’m sorry,” I quickly say, because if she’s having a bad day, if her memories are more jumbled than usual…
But no. My mother looks at me, and her green depths are clear. Her smile beaming and watery with overflowing joy.
I gasp out a sob, and she smooths a hand lovingly over my cheek as I shake in relief. “Are you alright?”
She nods, and finally, I’m able to breathe right. Able to exhale all that wringing worry I’ve been strangled with since the moment I discovered she was gone.
The two of us turn as the rest of our group catches up. We all stand here on the street together, while fae watch us curiously, most of them giving Argo a wide berth. I see Slade reassuring them that he won’t attack, watch Auren and Digby and Rissa talking.
I shake my head, almost dumbfounded at it all.
“How the hell did we find ourselves here?” I say to Lu.
She snorts. “No clue. But…we’re together. That’s what matters.”
I know she’s thinking of Judd, that we all will feel the loss of him in the empty space where he would’ve normally stood. That we’ll feel his absence in every pause between people speaking, where he would’ve cracked a joke.
“I fucking miss him,” Lu confesses, her voice tortured.
“Me too.”
She takes in a deep breath and blows it back out as she glances up at the purple sky through the trees. “He would’ve liked it here, I think.”
He would’ve been ecstatic to see this place, no doubt about it.
“I think we should celebrate finding each other over some fae wine,” she says, drawing everyone’s attention. “For Judd.”
So we do exactly that.
We sit around a table with wine and words, and we celebrate and grieve.
But like Lu said, we’re together.
And that’s what matters.
CHAPTER 70
AUREN TURLEY
Two months later
