“Her name was Corina Ravencrest?—”
“Corina,” I whispered. The name wrapped around my heart and squeezed. I never knew her name. All those years, and I never knew. Not even Tinker Bell knew. Now I had something to call her—something more than the woman in my nightmares. More than the one who burned.
Corina. My mother was Corina.
Grump’s eyes landed on me, something raw passing through them before he continued. “She was a powerful witch. Beautiful. Perfect.” His voice softened. “And lost.”
Lost. Like me. She’d been lost too.
One of the Uncrowned Seven, Thorn—a tall fae with silver hair—shifted uncomfortably. “I remember her,” he murmured. “She was kind.”
Darius motioned with his hand. “Say more.”
Beads of sweat broke out across Grump’s forehead. His knuckles had gone white against the armrests. He was in pain. I could almost feel the hat working, tearing information out of his skull, dragging truth into the light whether he wanted it there or not.
Part of me wanted to rip it off his head. Part of me wanted to hear every word. But Ineededto know the truth. For too long I had lived in darkness. Not having a past had haunted me my entire life.
“She fell through a portal.” A vein twitched on his temple. “And I found her. She was dazed and confused. But brave.”
That made sense. She had faced down the assassin to protect me.
“Yes, you said that,” Darius pressed. “What happened?”
Grump’s chest heaved. A muscle jumped in his cheek. “King Cormac hunted us.”
Caterpillar exhaled a slow stream of smoke. “Cormac... does not forget. Does not forgive.” His ancient eyes settled on me. “And does not... stop.”
A chill ran down my spine.
Darius demanded, “Why did he hunt you?”
“Because she was pregnant with my child.”
My breath caught. Pregnant. With me.
Chester’s grin had faded—actually faded—leaving something almost solemn in its place. “A king who hunts unborn children,” he said quietly. “How very... red of him.”
“I sent her back through the portal.” Grump’s voice had gone hoarse, each word dragged out of him like shattered glass. “Then I destroyed it. To keep her safe.” He swallowed hard. “To keep Cormac from invading her world and finding my unborn child.”
I stared at him. This hard, cold, suspicious man who’d scowled at me since the moment I arrived.
He’d destroyed his only way back to her. To protect her. To protect me.
Murmurs rippled through the Uncrowned Seven. I caught fragments: “he never told us” and “all these years and that’s why he’s been so angry.”
Darius leaned forward. “You never saw her again.”
Grump shook his head slowly. A single tear slid down his weathered cheek.
“I never saw her again.”
His eyes shifted to me. “Until I saw Alice. And it was like seeing a ghost from my past. She looks exactly like her mother.”
The cavern fell silent. No one moved. Even Caterpillar’s smoke seemed to hang frozen in the air.
Then Chester spoke, his voice uncharacteristically soft. “The Grump who never smiles... loved a witch who fell from the sky.” His luminous eyes blinked slowly. “And lost her to save her. How terribly, wonderfully mad.”
Tears fell down my cheeks. King Cormac and now his daughter had taken so much from me. Destroyed my family. Left us in ruins.
