I nodded, glancing over my shoulder at the fine-boned, skinny blonde with the tousled dreads who was at present scanning the darkened expanse of thick palms, squatpanem, and curled aloe. “Where the hell is Little King?” she barked.
Giya faltered, and I tightened my grip on her.
As we scraped past a yellow thicket, I said, “Did I forget to mention our dear, dead uncle is here?”
“He’s alive?” She came to such a sudden halt that she almost slipped from my hold.
“Yeah.” With a sigh, I looked toward Remo, whose expression turned even graver. “He’s the reason Remo and I had to tie the Cauldron knot. Iba was afraid Gregor was grooming him for a coup.”
Giya stared between us, then all around. “Wow,” was all she said, but her writhing eyebrows told me she was thinking a heck of a lot more as we took off again. Ducking beneath a liana, she asked, “Any other dead fae lurking around these parts I should know about?”
I shook my head. I hesitated to tell her that Kingston not only harbored the apple but also an intense desire to turn me into ether. I thought she’d had enough craziness lobbed at her and didn’t need more to process, but I wanted her prepared in case we ran into his deranged ass. “He has the apple and is intent on feeding it to me.”
She gaped at me, then at Remo, whose knuckles were clenched around his machete, and whose gaze was on the shadows cast by the swaying blue canopy. “He’ll be dead—and I don’t meanfield-of-muddead—before he can even try.”
She docked her mouth against my ear and murmured, “Are you sure you can trust him, Amara?”
Byhim, I assumed she meant Remo. “Yes.” I smiled at my fiancé, but he neither caught my smile or her words, too busy scouring the land for danger, or rather, for Kingston. “I’m sure.”
“Wait . . . so you guys are like,actuallyfriends?”
“Believe it or not.”
“When did that happen?”
“Somewhere between Fake Rowan and Fake Neverra.”
She frowned.
Remo tsked, then volleyed, “In the city with skyscrapers.”
“No, I didnotlike you then.”
He side-eyed me. “You cried when I died.”
“Because I didn’t want to be all alone.”
“Uh-huh.” He winked at me, which made Giya’s brows jolt back up.
One more shock, and she would get a kink in her forehead from all the eyebrow squirming. “This is so weird,” she ended up saying.
“You’re telling me.” I smiled at Remo, thinking:Wait till you hear the whole of it.
After a beat, my ever-perceptive cousin leaned in and spilled a shocked whisper that threatened to blow out my eardrum, “Youlike himlike him!”
I whispered back, “Maybe.”
“I didn’t quite catch your answer, Trifecta.”
“Eavesdropping is beneath you, Farrow.”
“You think too highly of me.” His accompanying smirk hit me square in the heart.
“Wow,” was all Giya said, again, but her eyes never stopped traveling between us as we escorted her to the waterfall.
38
The Ambush
