“How long have I been out?”
“You’ve been gone for six days.” Lily reached out and squeezed my hand. “You’ve missed several nights, honey. And days.”
“Six days?” I echoed. “No. That’s impossible. I was barely gone for a few hours.”
“Trust me, it’s very possible.” Lily glanced with compassion at Silas. “Ask him—he’s had about fifty-five heart attacks in the past week waiting for you to return. We thought… Let’s just say it was a long week. The entire island felt it.”
Silas still hadn’t said a word, but I realized his hand was gripping my shoulder like he’d never let go. It had probably been there for six days. It felt like his fingers were the roots of a tree trunk that would be impossible to unearth from my skin.
“Six days.” I felt dazed as I repeated it. “Sixdays.”
I kept repeating it, trying to make it make sense. I hadn’t slept. I hadn’t eaten. Maybe spirit-world time didn’t work the same, but still—six days?
“So much must have happened in six days,” I murmured. “Is everything…is everyone okay?”
Lily and Silas exchanged glances. Then Silas looked to Ranger X. It seemed that things had happened, but nobody had figured out how to inform me of the actual details.
“What happened?” I persisted. “Are things okay?”
“Things are stable,” Ranger X said. “Although there have been some changes around here you need to be aware of. But that can happen in due time. You need to get your strength back.”
Screw strength.We didn’t have time to wait around. Six days? That meant the blood moon was almost here. “The Darkest Lord—has he attacked? Are there spirits on the island yet?”
“No,” Silas said. “Not in a significant way. A few here and there, but they’ve been quickly neutralized.”
Ranger X nodded. “The few spirit sightings we’ve had were quickly contained by Lily’s potion. By now, vials of the potion have been distributed widely to civilians as well as the Rangers.”
“Okay,” I said. “So no huge attack?”
“No huge attack,” Ranger X confirmed.
“What do you mean by changes, then?”
Ranger X expelled a breath. Lily looked uncertain, like she didn’t know how to explain.
Finally, Silas moved. He drew back the gauzy curtains I’d always loved. Night cloaked the world, but this wasn’t underworld darkness. This was moonlight on snow. Stars. A warm glow.
Wait.
“Snow?” I blinked. “Snow?Snow?”
Lily grimaced and nodded. “As a Minnesotan, I can assure you, that’s snow.”
“As a New Yorker, I know snow too,” I said. “But I thought this island never saw snow. It’s a tropical paradise year-round.”
“It’s supposed to be,” Lily said. “That’s what my husband means when he says there have been some slight changes.”
“What happened?”
A small voice from the end of the bed answered. Liza shifted closer. “When our spirits disconnected, you became absent as queen. We entered a season of winter.”
“Literal winter?” I asked.
“Literal and figurative and everything else,” Liza said. “The Forest Dwellers speak of long, barren winters after the Fae Queen’s courts collapsed. I think when your spirit was taken and the potion linking us was severed, we entered that sort of barren winter, like the entire court was mourning the loss of its queen.”
“We could all feel it,” Lily agreed, glancing around the room. “Just like we could all feel it the moment you returned.”
“It’s true,” Liza agreed. “We could sense the emptiness where you were supposed to be. Just like we all knew the moment you returned.”
