“WHAT?” I’m on my feet.
Nope. Too fast.
Reid jumps up and catches me, guiding me down as the forest tilts sideways.
“Calm down, man.” He moves in front of my face. “She was with us, but she doesn’t remember you. She couldn’t understand the plan. I think she went to help Taran.”
“Youthink?” My head spins with every pound in my ears. My body spasms with the need to do something—anything—but Reid’s grip on me tightens, holding me still.
“She was there one second and gone the next. But we needed to get to you, so there wasn’t time to go after her.”
I shove his hands off me. “So you just left her?”
“You weren’t really in the best condition to drag around searching for her,” Reid snaps. “And by that point, the guards were actively hunting us.”
“We have to go back.” My heart leaps in the direction it assumes the castle is, but my mind blares in warning. My stomach sides with my brain. I gag, barely keeping my insides down.
Hands settle on my shoulder. “We can’t go back now, Caeo,” Owena says, and I flinch at her touch. “We have to hope she found a way out. If she didn’t, we can make a plan to retrieve her—but you’re in no shape to do anything useful right now.”
I’m on the verge of exploding. “She could be captured—killed!” The other fae are all staring now.
Owena kneels in front of me, her dark eyes absorbing my panic. “It would be foolish of your mother to kill her.”
My breath wheezes out as I cover my face with my hands, pressing my eyes shut.
She’s right—my mother knows Ellie. If she wants me back, the worst thing she could do is kill her. Ellie’d be much more valuable as bait.
The drumming of my heart slowly settles. I swallow, then nod. Owena squeezes my shoulder before letting go.
I glance up, forcing myself to look at her. “Did you get enough to eat?”
Her lips twitch with a wistful smile. “I don’t think I could eat anymore without feeling ill.”
“Will you be able to walk?”
Bright laughter bubbles out of her. “Oh, they only want you to walk. They have no qualms about carrying me.” She shifts the fur coat I’d given her to reveal her cleavage, in case I didn’t catch her meaning.
“Lucky you,” I mutter, looking away.
“Time to move,” Aerona calls, clappingher hands together.
As Owena returns to the two fae who carried us before, Reid grabs my arm, hauling me up. After a wobbly moment, my balance settles, and he pats my back before following Aerona through the darkening woods.
The sooner we get there, the sooner we can make a plan to find Ellie.
* * *
We approach a camp in disarray. Fae rush here and there, packing up leather tents, loading them into wooden carts and wagons as sheep bleat loudly in the distance. It’s the exact opposite of what you’d expect of a camp after dark.
A fae man keeping watch jogs toward us, stopping to speak with Aerona and the others at the head of our group. The fae carrying Owena gently lowers her before joining them.
Aerona says something that, judging by her posture and tone, is likely a curse, and the rest of the fae dash to the camp, joining the mad scramble. She storms after them, leaving Reid, Owena, and me looking at one another before coming to an unspoken agreement that we should follow.
We find her at a campfire near the only tent that isn’t being torn down, gesticulating wildly at a taller version of me.
He isn’t just taller—it’s as if someone took me and straightened all my normal person lines into a brooding face and angular frame.
That must be my brother. It’d be easy to feel inferior if he didn’t look on the outside exactly how I feel on the inside.
