Bree’s death still lingered in my mind, and a dull ache had filled my bones. I didn’t know how I could go on. I didn’t know how to move forward. The only thought keeping me moving was the idea of becoming the kind of girl who could hunt one of those monstrous creatures down. Because there was a truth that I’d tried to ignore, one that would make the ache explode into excruciatingpain.
The Redcaps were drawn to me, if these four guys were to bebelieved.
If Bree hadn’t been with me, she wouldn’t havedied.
So, I stepped forward onto the grass. For a moment, nothing happened. In the distance, I could still hear the familiar honk of yellow cabs, and I could see the lights of the buildings casting an orange glow on the cloud-studdedsky.
But then everything began to change. The world rippled, the ground shook. And suddenly, everything went strangely, eerily silent. Night turned into day, and the dark sky morphed into light. I whirled in a circle, heart stuck in my throat. I was still in the Faerie Ring, in the clearing between the trees, but it was quiet now, so quiet. And everything had gone strangelybright.
It was as if the city had vanished and had been replaced by an endless sea oftrees.
The four guys blurred in before me, and I jumped back with a sharp cry. One moment, they hadn’t been there. The next, they were mere inchesaway.
“Welcome to Otherworld,” Finn said with a wink. “So, now you see we weren’tlying.”
“I don’t understand. Where did everythinggo?”
“It didn’t go anywhere,” Kael said, voice gruff. Almost as if my very existence irritated him. “Manhattan is still where it’s always been.We’rejust not there anymore. The Faerie Ring transported us intoOtherworld.”
“Which is the…fae realm.” It sounded so insane that it felt like it wasn’t my own voice that said the words. We’d been transported to a fae realm through a ring of flowers? Maybe I really was going insane. Maybe this entire thing was a hallucination, a result of seeing my only friend in the world killed by a viscouswolf.
I felt a little lightheaded now, a dizziness sweeping through my body. Stumbling forward, I pressed my hand to my mouth and tried to breathe around the panic in mythroat.
A strong pair of arms encircled me, saving me from face-planting onto the dewy grass. “Whoa there. Can’t have you passing out on your first night at theAcademy.”
I twisted to look up into a pair of sapling green eyes. They were kind but mischievous, and a strange thrill went through me. He’d caught me once before. I was sure of it now. He’d been the one who found me passed out in the alley. And he’d caught me again now. I felt a strange tug toward him, a need to have him arms hold tight just a little bitlonger.
My face flushed, and I yanked my gaze away. That was ridiculous. I didn’t want him to hold me up. This guy was a weird stranger who was calling himself a fae, and calling me a….changeling.
“Right.” I pulled myself out of his arms and brushed off invisible specks of dirt, hoping he couldn’t see the red in my cheeks. “So, you’ve convinced me that maybe the fae realm is real, though I don’t know how I’m supposed to know that this is really it. Still. Even if all that is true, it doesn’t necessarily mean I’m achangeling.”
Finn laughed and shook his head. “Norah, only fae can travel through Faerie Rings. If we want to bring a human here, we have to carry them through ourselves. In our arms. Kind of like how I was just holdingyou.”
He winked. He actually winked. The redness in my cheeks deepened anothershade.
“So, because I was able to travel through by myself…” I trailed off, understanding immediately the implication of hiswords.
He nodded. “It was your final test. You’re fae. And you’ve got the ears to match, though they’re stillgrowing.”
“But why now?” I couldn’t help but ask. “If I’m really one of you, wouldn’t I have noticed a long timeago?”
“Fae don’t begin to reveal their abilities until their eighteenth birthday. It’s a right of passage and cause for celebration here in Otherworld. For changelings, it’s a bit more complicated. You were lucky that your birthday was a mere few days before the Solstice, which is the day all changelings return to their realm. Otherwise, you would have had to deal with all of this on your own for months, like someothers.”
I frowned. “Okay. But why? And why was I swapped at birth? What happened to the human baby? Does my mother know about this? Oh mygod.”
My heart stopped as a new realization slammed intome.
“Does that mean…?” Iwhispered.
Kael gave a curt nod. “Your mother is not of your blood. As for the rest of your questions, all will be answered at Orientation this evening. If you go with Finn, he’ll take you to your apartment where you can settle in while we collect the other two changelings still inManhattan.”
“The other two? There’smore?”
“Four from Manhattan. Sixteen in total each year,” Finn said, gently taking my elbow in his hand. “The four of us were tasked with collecting the Manhattan recruits this year. One is already at the Academy. She’s sharing your apartment with you. We collected her first, though that might have been amistake…”
He trailed off, leaving the rest of his sentence unsaid, though I knew the meaning of his silence. If they’d come for me first, Bree wouldn’t be dead. It took everything within me to move my feet forward, out of that circle, and to leave my old life behind. Not that it was much of a lifeanymore.
* * *
