Which meant he’d come for me, and my outrage converted into relief.
Unlike me, Remo had neither rolled himself into a ball, nor managed to land back-first. It probably shouldn’t have made me smile, but Skies, how I grinned at the sight of thelucionagaburied in mud to his ears. He twitched, and his palms crawled up to his shoulders, then flattened. He began to lift himself, the suctioning sound like a sloppy kiss. When he managed to pry himself up and prop himself onto his ass, I threw my head back and laughed. His face was yellow and caked with more mud than Shiloh and Aylen used on their customers when demonstrating the rejuvenating properties of fae sediments.
Remo grumbled, rubbing his hands down the sides of his face, only managing to heap more wet earth onto it.
Tears formed in the corners of my eyes. “I will never let you live this down, Farrow.” I laid my hand on my belly that was still vibrating with the dregs of my laughter.
He glowered at me.
One glance at his face, and my wild giggling resumed. I didn’t laugh often, but when I laughed, I laughed hard.
He muttered a medley of unsavory Faeli curse words under his breath. “Where the hell are we,prinsisa?”
That knocked the laughter from my lungs and the smile off my lips. “What do you mean? Didn’t you come to break me out of here?”
“Break you out? No. I followed you in, because . . . because I’m obviously an idiot.”
“What?”
“I’m an idiot.”
“That’s not why I saidwhat, Remo. Although I agree that you’re an idiot, onmanylevels. I saidwhatto you not knowing where we are.”
Remo’s eyes seemed to shoot out the same lethal laser beams used in human warfare.
“You really don’t know where we are?”
“Why don’t you enlighten me, Trifecta?”
“Wait, does that mean you didn’t come to get me out . . .?”
“Get you out? It’s a portal. I’m sure the princess of Neverra can get herself out.”
He was right. I could surely get myself out. Unless the portal was locked. I decided to keep worst-case scenarios at bay.
“So, you really didn’t know about this place?” I asked, even though his severe exasperation showed through his facemask.
“No, I really didn’t.” He swiped more muck off his face and flung it aside.
A new shiver coursed up my body, this time not from the bite in the air, even though the airwasreally cold. “It’s a prison. Created by your grandfather. And mine.”
His pupils shrank. “A prison?”
I bit my lip but tasted moist earth, so I released it. I wanted to wipe my mouth on my sleeve, but my black suit was as ochre as the faerie glaring at me.
Remo’s gaze skated over the field we’d landed in, taking in the ring of green cacti and cloud-filled sky. When his eyes returned to me, they seemed somehow darker and sharper, less trusting . . . not that they’d ever seemed that trusting before. “How doyouknow about this place?”
I flicked a clump of mud off my leg. “Joshua Locklear.”
Remo’s skin color rose in the few spots he’d wiped clean.
I sighed. “I owed him a favor, and he claimed it. Asked me to look into the rumor he’d caught of a supernatural prison. He thinks his sister might be in here.” I gestured around me.
There was no wire fence, no magical barrier either, as well as no doom-colored structure that remotely resembled a prison, so I doubted anyone actually lived here.
I hugged my arms. Why wasn’t my fire kicking in? “Are you cold?”
“Cold?” Remo’s eyebrows dipped toward his nose. “No, I’m not cold. What I am is fucking pissed off. A prison! You fucking led me into a prison?”
