Sean hadn’t heard his mother’s name spoken aloud in so long.
The driver met his eyes in the rearview mirror. “Your father is very much alive. He is our Sovereign.”
“What is happening?” Cole asked, clearly fed up with the mystery. He dug his hands into his hair.
“We’re here,” the driver said.
Without Sean noticing, the scenery outside the SUV’s windowshad faded from the star-bright opulence of the Vegas strip to the nondescript darkness of a desert highway. The driver pulled into an abandoned convenience store parking lot and shut off the engine.
Sean stared at their surroundings—dilapidated building, vegetation pushing through the asphalt—and was instantly certain they’d been brought there to die. What else was the desert good for but hiding bodies?
Laughing, Autumn set a hand atop his. “You’re safe.”
Her seemingly normal hand was hotter than the glass of a lit candle, and he yanked his own away from her. It wasn’t just the heat that startled him. Something else coalesced beneath his skin, almost like she’d injected champagne bubbles directly into his blood.
“You’re safe with us, okay?” she said. “Can you trust us for just a few more minutes?”
“Until you murder us and chop us into little pieces?” Cole said dryly, yanking open the car door. “Sure, why not?”
Heat leached across Sean’s skin as the rest of them exited the vehicle. It coalesced in the air and radiated from asphalt that spent the day absorbing the desert sun.
The driver murmured something into Autumn’s ear. After she nodded, he loped off into the darkness. The women took a moment to exchange their party dresses and heels for linen shirts and thick brown pants, complete with leather boots. When they emerged from the other side of the vehicle looking more like female Robin Hoods than club rats, Sean had nearly reached his limit of insanity.
He forced out a smile, leaning again on his charm—though it was far more difficult to evoke. “Will you please tell me what’s going on?”
“It’s just easier to show you,” Autumn said, starting away from the vehicle and into the darkened desert. “Follow me.”
Sean rejected that command. And he refused to even glance toward Isobel because looking at her made everything so much worse. If he stared into her eyes one more time, he’d probably lose himself completely. Rooted to the overgrown convenience storeparking lot, he shook his head. “I’ve spent the last hour following you and still have more questions than answers.”
Autumn paused. “You want to know about the mist, right? It’s right up here.”
With a curious spark in his eye, Cole stepped forward, peering into the darkness where she pointed. “I don’t see anything.”
She tutted. “Do you often see mist when it’s pitch black outside?”
He shot her an annoyed look. “Are yousassingme?”
For the second time that night, her gaze caught on Cole’s face. Her head tilted, and something predatory ignited in her gold eyes.
And that was the moment Sean decided to leave. “Cole. Let’s get out of here, yeah?”
“Nope.” Isobel wrapped a manacle-tight hand around his wrist and dragged him into the desert. “It’s taken two decades to find you, and you aren’t getting away.”
He could get away if he wanted though. She was tiny, and he was very strong. But once again, the urge to follow her crashed through every other desire in his body. He needed her close, the same way he needed air in his lungs and blood in his veins.
It was heinous, this yearning. It could easily destroy him.
They were well into the desert, the abandoned convenience store a tiny dot in the background, before Sean returned to rational thought and yanked his arm from her acidic grip.
He might have found the strength to turn around, to save himself and Cole, if not for the wall of mist that lurched from the darkness up ahead. It swirled as if alive, sending tendrils of gray through the dry desert air. Inside the mist, the sagebrush and creosote gave way to the shadows of impossibly tall trees and flickers of light like candles.
Something called to him from inside the fog—a silent, ravenous wail, beckoning him forward. He dove into the gray just as Cole shouted for him to wait.
All sound muffled—the wind through the shrubby trees, the scampering of lizards over rock, the distant calls of large birds. It wasas if he dipped his head underwater. The cool fog kissed his skin and formed tiny drops in his sweaty hair, so thick he could barely see his next step.
As he walked, the desert dissolved. It didn’t take long before the mist thinned and colors oozed back into the world. First the chestnut and copper of tree bark. Then the emerald and sage of the ferns and leaves above. Riots of flowers grew in playful bouquets along the ground, electric purple and powderpuff pink. Teal vines crawled up several trees and hung from branches like verdant icicles, glittering in the strange flames of light that pulsed in the air.
“I’m dreaming, right?” he asked of no one in particular. “This isn’t real.”
