He’s lying, don’t say anything.
But... he can’t lie.
When I didn’t immediately react, he leaned in. “Just to be exceedingly clear: You and your family are all trapped here.”
After rubbing salt in the wound like that, he gave me a satisfied smirk. This time when he marched up the stairs toward his throne, I didn’t try to stop him.
Honestly, I barely even noticed him leave.
I dropped onto the bottom step, trembling.
Was that it?
After everything I’d done over the last few days, all the deals I’d made, all the lies I’d told, I’d not only failed but was also stuck here?
Jumping to my feet, I tried to focus on the room. A fae with vivid red butterfly wings passed by a few feet away.
“Hey!” I grabbed her wrist in a blind panic, ignoring her gasp of outrage. “Is the veil actually closed?”
“Unhand me,” she screeched, tugging at her arm.
But I didn’t.
Right now, I didn’t care what they thought of me. I needed answers. “Is the veil closed?” I repeated. “Tell me!”
Logically, I knew Caius couldn’t lie, but I still wanted to hear it from someone else.
“Of course it’s closed,” she hissed, ripping her arm from my grasp. “Did you not sense it?”
I didn’t bother to answer her, turning away, searching for any tunnel other than the royal one. I pushed through the crowd.
I’d go outside and see for myself.
I just needed to find an exit.
Then I’d trek back through the snow, figure out how to get through this stupid “veil,” and bring the police back here. They’d have to listen to me. I had all kinds of things I could tell them about the fae that weren’t under any contract.
The next closest tunnel was the troll tunnel.
Using the tiny bit of remaining sense I had left, I walked past it. If I took that one alone, I probably wouldn’t make it all the way outside.
Heading for another yawning opening, I stopped when a group of fae blocked my path by accident. One of them was complaining to his friends, “I wanted to get at least one more human before the veil closed. Why did the lifting end so early this solstice?”
I ducked back, narrowly missing being run over by them, but after a few more steps, I slowed to a stop. Somehow, hearing it for a third time made the truth finally start to sink in.
The veil was closed. Not for a day or a week, but formonths. No telling what would happen in that amount of time, but it wouldn’t end well, for me or for my family.
The storm in my chest moved to my stomach, roiling around and making me sick.
We were never going to make it home.
I pulled my phone from my pants pocket and powered it on, clicking the Find My Phone app despite the “no signal” bars in the corner.
Halfway through opening the app, the screen went dark.
I stared at it like it’d somehow turn back on.
But the battery had finally died.
