“In the palace,” Naito says, guiding me under the silver wall. He calls for some of the wall’s guards to follow us, and while we’re walking through the Inner City, I tell him where I’ve been and where the remnants are. I don’t know their exact location, of course, only that they’re in the mountains overlooking the city and that they’re being led by a fae named Caelar.
As soon as we step inside the palace, my legs start shaking. Now that I’m safe, it’s like they’ve given themselves permission to give out on me. I need to sit, to sleep, but I need to see Aren more, so I force myself to keep walking, ignoring my body’s demands to rest. I make it as far as the three steps that lead down to the statue garden before my knees buckle.
“Shit, McKenzie,” Naito says, keeping me on my feet.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine.” He lets me go but keeps his arm raised, ready if I fall again. “Go to your room. I’ll send Aren.”
That sounds like a great idea, now that he mentions it and now that I know I don’t have the energy to search for Aren myself. So, instead of following Naito through the statue garden, I turn left, staying under the covered walkway. It’s not until I step inside the residential wing that I remember I’m going to have to go up to reach my room. I don’t know how I’m going to make it, but I walk to the staircase.
And stop.
Aren’s there, sitting on a step halfway up with Sosch in his arms. Aren’s eyes are closed. His forehead is pressed to the kimki’s, and he’s murmuring something I can’t quite make out. With Sosch in front of him, I only see half of his face, but it’s clear he’s in pain, more pain than I’ve ever seen him in before. He looks haggard, and the way his shoulders slump toward the ground makes my heart break. I remember the way he screamed my name outside of Nakano’s compound, and I know that I can’t ever let him hurt like this again.
“Aren,” I call out, placing one hand on the banister.
He looks up.
Our gazes lock.
He pales as if he’s seen a ghost, and I pour all my energy into climbing that first step. I need to close the distance between us, touch him, taste him, tell him I want forever with him.
I climb another step.
He sets Sosch aside. I wouldn’t have believed it possible, but he becomes even more pale. I’m not even sure he’s breathing until he finally draws in a long, deep breath.
Then something goes wrong. Instead of relief or elation, fury takes over Aren’s expression. He curses as he draws his sword, and that’s when I realize my mistake. The fae don’t believe in ghosts; they believe in illusions.
Shit.
He’s on me before I can explain, grabbing the front of my shirt in his fist. If he was in his right mind, he’d realize that touching me would break an illusion, but he’s in a blind rage right now. He’s not listening to me.
Instead of trying to pull away, I move toward him, manage to lay my hand on the side of his neck. Thank God, my chaos lusters react instantly. I see the spark of heat in his eyes. He goes still.
“McKenzie?” His voice breaks. Confusion moves through his eyes. He saw me go over the cliff. He’s believed I was dead for almost forty-eight hours.
“I’m not an illusion,” I say.
He touches my face. Tenderly. Tentatively.
“McKenzie. Sidhe, I thought…”
He doesn’t finish that sentence. Instead, he kisses me with a fierceness that takes my breath away, murmuring my name over and over and over again. His hands run down my shoulders, down my arms. They rest on my hips, tighten, then one splays across the center of my back, all as if he’s still not sure I’m here. I cup the back of his neck and kiss him harder, proving I’m not a dream.
I want to keep kissing him, keep touching him, but Aren presses his lips against mine one last time then takes a half step back. He looks at me, almost as if he thinks his hands are deceiving him. He needs to prove I’m alive with his eyes now, so he takes me in. The relief I was searching for earlier reaches his gaze. It doesn’t completely chase away the shadows of his pain, though.
“I saw you at the edge of the cliff,” I tell him. “I heard you scream my name, and it killed me.” I loop my arms around him, pull him close again so I can rest my head against his shoulder. He’s warm and deliciously solid. “I tried to get your attention, but Tylan had me. He…”
I lift my head. “He took me to the remnants’ camp. It’s in the Corrist Mountains.” I draw in a breath to tell him more. “I told Naito—Paige is there. A fae named—”
“No, shhh.” He lightly touches a finger to my lips. “Unless the remnants are going to attack the palace in the next hour, I don’t want to hear a report. You’re always putting the Realm before yourself. It stops now.”
With that, he scoops me into his arms. It’s sudden and unexpected, but I’m holding on to him instinctively. He climbs the rest of the steps and takes me to my room.
To my bathroom. He kicks on a lever, and water begins to fill the round, tiled tub. When Aren sets me on my feet, I steady myself by holding on to the black pipe that travels up into the ceiling. A reservoir of water is up there. A palace employee fills it every time it’s drained.
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Aren says, studying me, “but you look like you’ve crossed the Barren.”
Crossing the Barren, a stretch of land in the Realm where no fae can fissure, is an idiom that basically means I look like shit, and damn it, I do. Dirt is packed under my fingernails, the sleeves of my gray shirt are torn and streaked with brown and black, and, when the edarratae flash across my skin, they look dim under the thick layer of grime. I don’t want to think about what my hair must look like.
“God, no wonder you tried to kill me.” I take my hands off him, step away.
He chuckles and pulls me back. “I wasn’t in my right mind. Even like this, I want you.”
A million chaos lusters somersault in my stomach, and when he kisses me this time, I’m undone. Nothing matters but him and us and this, the way he makes me feel like I’m everything to him. Sometime in the last month, he’s become everything to me.
He pulls my shirt over my head, cups my face between his hands, and drinks me in. Edarratae leap from me to him in excited, frenzied bursts, and I decide then that I’m never letting him go.
“I never told you,” Aren whispers against my neck. “How difficult it was.” He plants a kiss on my bare shoulder, just to the right of my bra strap. “Not to touch you in Cleveland.”
Cleveland? Too many thoughts are spinning through my head, too many sensations driving through my body for me to make sense of his words.
“You scared me then.” His hands are between us, unbuttoning my pants. “I wasn’t sure you’d wake up until I dropped you into the tub.”
“Ohh.” I mean that “oh” to be silent, but just when I realize he’s referring to the safe house he took me to after Germany, he pulls my earlobe between his teeth. My entire body turns molten.
I feel him smiling against my neck, and I fall for him even more. I didn’t think that was possible, but making him happy makes me happy, and all I want to do is make him smile.