Cruz offered me a smile that made my heart lurch, because it was the same he wore in the picture Iba had of him. “They must not have been my ashes.” Tucking the knife into his belt, he made his way toward where I still stood in Remo’s shadow.
“You look so much like your mother, Amara, and yet so much like Ace, too. It’s incredible.” His eyes, the same vivid green as Remo’s, shone with emotion. “How old are you?”
Remo stiffened, which was impressive considering there wasn’t an ounce of softness anywhere on his body.
“Almost eighteen.”
Cruz’s Adam’s apple bobbed in his corded throat. “Almost the age your mother was when I knew her.” There was something heartbreakingly wistful in his tone.
“Since we aren’t needed here,” Kiera said, “Quinn and I are going to head to the fall and scrub some of the cat gunk off.”
I couldn’t believe I was standing in front of my father’s best friend, speaking to him. This was insane. Almost as insane as the fact that he was still the exact same age he’d been when he’d vanished from our worlds.
Since Remo didn’t shift a foot, not even an inch, I stepped around him, coming to stand at his side instead of behind him. “How are you alive, Cruz?”
“After Gregor . . .” His voice trailed off as he looked at Remo, shaking his head a little. “Sorry, but this is . . . it’s—you were a baby when I was shipped to the Scourge, Remo. Now you’re a man.” He shook his head again, a wavy black lock falling across his forehead and into his glistening eyes. He thrust one hand through his hair, then cleared his throat. “Gregor injected me withdilepoison to get Lily back into Neverra. Next thing I knew, I was lying in mud below a portal. I thought I’d died and gone to Hell. Until I reached this cell, and found Kiera and Quinn and a few others.”
“Others?” Remo narrowed his eyes.
“Yes. They’ve all passed on, but there were others.”
My pulse stuttered. “I thought . . . I thought we couldn’t die for good.”
Cruz stared at his bloodied palms, then wiped both on his dark green cargo pants which bore a constellation of other stains. “You’ve encountered the apple, right? Each cell has one.”
All of the blood drained from my body. “I almost ate it,” I blurted out, glancing up at Remo in horror.
He slanted me anI-told-you-chomping-on-it-was-a-bad-idealook.
“I owe you my life, Remo Farrow,” I breathed, and something poked my stomach. What the—
Remo’s eyes, which had been pinched until now, snapped wide.
Oh . . . no.Nononononono.I’d just struck a bargain with the faerie!
I could’ve been dead, so all in all, a bargain wasn’tsobad. Besides, Remo was . . .nice. He wouldn’t use hisgajoïto hurt me.
“Amara . . .” Cruz rolled my name, completely oblivious to what had just happened between Remo and me. “Love.Who came up with your name? Your mother or father?”
I wet my lips and turned back toward Cruz. “It was my father’s idea. So . . . so you landed here, and then what?”
“Then I understood Gregor hadn’t killed me; he’d saved me. For the longest time, I believed he would come to get me out. But years passed, and no one came, and I realized he wasn’t planning on letting me out. My only prayer was that he’d left me here to punish me for having awoken the Hunters and helped Ace take the crown, and not because he’d stolen it from your father. It was only when Kingston arrived that I learned no one was aware of this dimension.” Anger stained his gaze, but it didn’t linger. Soon, his expression gentled. “I also learned that my dearest friends were all alive and well. That the Woods still ruled over Neverra, and even though I never gave up hope that Ace would find out about this place, I was content.”
A tear curved down my cheek. And then another. I rubbed them away. I wasn’t even sure why I was crying since, inside, I was screaming. Screaming at how evil Gregor was to have locked an innocent man away. How could he do this? To Cruz? To Neenee? To Iba?
“Don’t cry, Amara.” Cruz lifted his hand as though to touch my cheek, but something in Remo’s expression made his fingers return to his hip without making contact. “I could’ve been dead.”
“It’s unforgivable, and so unfair,” I croaked. “Cruel.”
It wasn’t Remo’s fault, yet he flinched as though his grandfather’s crimes were his own.
Cruz expelled a deep breath. “So now, can I hear how the two of you landed in here?”
“I owed Kiera’s brother agajoï. He told me about a portal that led into a supernatural prison, told me where to find it. I thought he’d lost his mind, but then I got sucked through.” I laid one palm over my stomach as though expecting it to cramp again. “I damned him for sending me in here, but now that I’ve found you . . . now I’m glad he claimed his bargain.”
Cruz smiled.
My hand finally slipped off my abdomen, coming to rest on my necklace of torn sleeves. “I still can’t believe you’re real.”
