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“I wasn’t just wandering around for fun,” Dru said. “I was looking for you.”

For a moment, he stopped dead, his hand still on her arm. He looked down at her. From this angle his cheekbones were blade sharp. “Why?”

She didn’t want to tell him about the scrying bowl. “The Memory rune you gave me,” she said. “Maybe…it worked? Just not in the way I thought? My memories are coming back. Now I know why you said what you did about having to introduce yourself to me more than once. How many times have we met?”

His response surprised her. His face had gone very still, his green eyes dark, like pine boughs at midnight. A moment later, he herded Dru into her room and locked the door behind them. Her dinner was still set out on the table, which was a good sign—hopefully Elara would never have to know Dru had left at all.

“How much do you remember?” Ash demanded.

“Bits and pieces. It’s coming back slowly,” Dru said, which was true enough. “Mostly I remember images. It’s like looking at photos of a place you’ve been but you were too young to recall it. I remember music in a field near a river, an underground tunnel…”

“But that’s all? Just places?” The tension in his voice was a live wire.

“Don’t you want me to remember?” she said, trying to pitch her voice so that she sounded wistful as well as curious.

He passed a slim hand across his face, the rings on his fingers catching the light and shining. “I remember everything,” he said flatly. “Every day that you’ve been here I’ve wondered if that would be the day you’d finally remember. That you’d wake up and see me. If I even wanted that.”

Dru took off her linen cloak and hung it among the vines. She wasn’t sure what to say. The words sounded introspective, even sad, but his tone was emotionless.

She turned back to face him. “Do you?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “After our second meeting, I realized you were someone I could tell anything to, because you’d forget it the moment you were out of my sight. Out of Faerie.”

Was that what he wanted? Dru wondered. Someone he could know, but who could never know him? Who could never recall his secrets?

“You can destroy the rune, you know,” she said. “Make sure I never remember. If that’s what you want.”

He looked around the room, not answering. Looked at her white-draped bed, the little river, the tree trunk still set with dinnerware. “Poor Rathna,” he said. “I can’t imagine she was best pleased when she was kicked out of her room so it could be given to you.”

“This was Rathna’s room? She can have it back if she likes—I don’t need a room this fancy—”

“She’s been sleeping underwater in the caves,” said Ash. “I doubt you’d have much luck switching with her, unless you brought scuba gear.” He looked at Dru curiously, as if he was taking her measure. “You asked how many times we’ve met,” he said. “Six. Six times. I recall them all, even if you do not.”

“Six?” Dru hadn’t realized it had been as many times as that.

Ash didn’t respond, just headed for the door, turning to look at her as he reached it. “Next time, if Bonecrusher finds you wandering the halls, I might not be there to save you. Or I might not feel like saving you, even if I am.” He smiled, the way he had smiled at Rat in the banquet room. “Do not leave your room like that again. It would displease me if you did.”

Cristina

Cristina was stomping around the kitchen of the cottage she shared with Mark and Kieran in Faerie, near the borderlands between Seelie and Unseelie territory. She opened the door to the icebox and then slammed it shut. She kicked the leg of a stool, then jumped up and down because her toe hurt. Finally she dumped a pile of dirty dishes into the sink with such force that two shattered.

Bracing herself on the edge of the sink, she tried to take deep, steady breaths. She knew she got like this when she was worried or frustrated. You shouldn’t take out your rage on inanimate objects, Emma had advised her once. Kick a person. It’s more satisfying.

The memory only made her more tense. She was missing Emma; she and Mark had been in Faerie longer than usual, and they’d expected to return to the mortal world this morning. But they’d found it impossible. The usual way that they took, which brought them to the beach in Los Angeles, had vanished. There was no gate there now at all. They’d checked several other paths into the mortal world, but they all seemed to be closed.

Hoofbeats sounded outside the cottage and Cristina hurried to the front door. It was Mark, returning from the Unseelie Court. It was a hot day and he’d put on a T-shirt and jeans. It looked a little incongruous since he was seated on Windspear, a white stallion who, with his red eyes and silver and gold hooves, was clearly a creature of Faerie.

“I’ve talked to Kieran,” Mark said, without getting down from the horse. He looked worried. A bad sign. “Every door from Unseelie lands to the mortal world is closed.”

Cristina drew a sharp breath. “What about Seelie?”

Mark shook his head. “The Queen and Kieran are on bad terms. She would not answer a message from him even on a good day.”

“Well, she doesn’t hate us,” Cristina said. “That I know of, anyway. Let’s go over the border and see if there are any open ways there.”

She swung herself up onto Windspear behind Mark, and put her arms around him. It was comforting to hold him even under these circumstances.

She couldn’t help but think about Jaime—normally she would have come and gone from Faerie using the Eternidad, but she had given it to him for his mission to the Seelie Court. She knew he hadn’t returned from the mission when he was supposed to, and that everyone was worried about him. She was worried, too, but it wouldn’t be the first time Jaime had disappeared only to pop back up again unexpectedly. She’d asked Kieran if his scouts, who regularly went in and out of Seelie lands, could keep an eye out for Jaime. She’d even thought of going to look for him herself, but she was wary of blowing his cover.