Cruz frowned. “Quinn bit the apple yesterday. Didn’t Amara tell you?”
Remo’s eyes, as well as everyone else’s, fell on me. “No. She failed to mention that.”
My cheeks flooded with heat, which worsened when their eyes fell to our clasped hands. My fingers froze and skidded from his. He tried to catch them, but I stepped away.
“Quinn?” Nima asked.
“Forest Press Quinn,” Cruz said, and Nima gasped.
“If you think that’s crazy, Neenee, wait till you learn who else was stashed in here,” Giya added.
“Who?” Her question was a rush of breath.
“Good old Uncle Kingston.”
“Kingston?” Nima’s voice was so murderously sharp it would’ve sliced my traitorous uncle wide open had he still had a body to rip through.
“He’s gone, though. Amara made him bite the apple.” A hint of pride edged my cousin’s proclamation.
“What are you all talking about,biting apples?” Faith asked.
Remo’s brow furrowed. “Didn’t Grandfather tell you anything before he let you in here?”
“He was . . .indisposedwhen we were shown through the portal.” Faith’s mouth pursed.
Indisposed? I wanted to know what that meant, but shouting erupted at the mouth of the cave as twolucionagadragged in an indignant Kiera. “Massina, we’ve canvassed the cell and found one more prisoner. What would you like us to do with her?”
Nima and Lily spun around.
“Let her go.” Startlingly, it was my voice which rang out.
Although Kiera stopped snarling at the thick-armed guards restraining her, she narrowed her red-rimmed eyes on me. She hated me. I hoped that in time, she would see I wasn’t to blame for Quinn’s suicide. The guards looked between Nima and me, and then they looked at Remo.
“You heard yourprinsisa,” Remo growled. “Unhand the girl!”
At least now I knew where I stood on the ladder of command—under Remo.
“Thank you,” I murmured to him.
“They shouldn’t defer to me.” His jaw was so clenched it was a wonder he managed to produce words, much less entire sentences. He stalked toward his fellow guards, and the rest of us followed.
Kiera’s eyes glinted as brashly as the strand of claws and fangs clinking around her neck.
“Kiera Locklear,” Nima said in wonder. “You’re alive.”
“No thanks to any of you.” She spit at Nima’s sandaled feet.
Everyone froze. Thelucionaga’s eyes jumped to my mother’s filigreed throat, probably assuming she would admonish the Daneelie for her slight with a handful of dust. My mother didn’t raise her hand, didn’t ball her fingers either. Calmly, she said, “Joshua’s waiting for you beyond the portal, Kiera. He’s very impatient to take you home. What do you say we get out of here?”
Kiera blinked. Because of Nima’s calmness, or because of the storm of emotion rising within her? If we’d already been in Neverra, I had no doubt the girl’s disquiet would’ve lacerated the sky with lightning. Nima looked over her shoulder at me and held out her hand. I took it, and together we walked out into the white light of the forever sunless, night-less sky.
I thought we would have to scale the cliff walls to reach the portal, but it had relocated itself, shimmering like a mirror right beyond the opening of the grotto. Lily and Giya slipped through first. Then Kiera and one of the guards. And then it was mine and Nima’s turn.
I wanted to clutch Remo’s hand, but sensed my mother wouldn’t let me go. Not until I was safely home. As my fingertips touched the gelatinous surface, I turned my head.
“I’ll be right behind you,” he murmured, knowing exactly the direction of my thoughts.
I melted through the inky darkness between the worlds with my head still angled toward Remo and didn’t look anywhere else until the broad lines of his body formed on a framed painting of Neverra cloaked in mist.
