A sound echoed over the hill, the laughter of a child whom I’d never seen before, but somehow knew as intimately as I knew myself. The giggle echoed across the land, bursting with joy and buoyant silliness.
Ethan’s smile widened, his eyes alight with joy and hope as he watched the horizon, waiting for the child to crest the hill. He moved forward to be one step closer to the child . . . But the wind lifted and turned cold. The earth shuddered, and we stood once again in Chicago.
Wherever we’d gone, we’d come back.
I knew it hadn’t been real, that nothing we’d seen had been real, so it couldn’t have been taken away from us. But that didn’t matter. The grief was instant and as deep as an ocean, leaving me empty and aching, and hollowing out a part of my soul I knew would never be filled. Not when I might have stayed in that world forever, waiting for the child to run into our arms.
The child whose existence was no longer guaranteed.
A hand gripped mine, and I looked at Ethan, found that same look of longing on his face. And as the moment passed, that longing faded to understanding. We’d been there in that world for only a moment. And neither of us had wanted to come back. From the expression of the vampires around us, we weren’t the only ones affected.
No wonder so many fairy-tale characters disappeared, accidentally (or intentionally) stepping foot into the land of the fae, never to return again. They hadn’t been captured by the fae, or not literally. They simply hadn’t wanted to return. They’d have lived contentedly in Emain Ablach for an eternity.
I was pretty sure I hadn’t even heard the phrase before. But it had been slipped into my thoughts like a secret note, a hidden message that I would remember for an eternity, and a place to which I’d probably never return.
I shifted my gaze to Claudia, saw that she knew at least something of what we’d seen, what we’d experienced, and also saw what looked like arrogance.
Claudia looked at me, and I found myself unnerved by her attention. Her eyes seemed to see too much. “You have seen much.”
I shook my head. What I’d seen wasn’t for her. And I didn’t have time to dwell on it right now, so I pushed it aside. “What is Emain Ablach?”
“The green land. Our land.”
“You have access to the green land again,” Ethan said, every word carefully spoken.
Claudia nodded. “I can see home, as I have shown you. I cannot physically travel there, but I can see it. That is . . . a change.”
“And you’re here to show us,” Ethan said. “To demonstrate your power.”
“Or to flaunt it?” I asked.
My tone hadn’t been friendly, and neither were her eyes.
“I chose to sacrifice my connection, however undeserving the recipient of my gift. The deal was done. The power should not have come back to me.”
Her eyes, so vividly blue, darkened, like seas beneath a roiling storm. And there was fear in her eyes. Even Claudia, who was as egotistical and dangerous as they came, was worried.
“Why is it happening?” Ethan asked.
Her brows lifted. “I am not here to answer your questions, bloodletter.”
Ethan’s expression remained implacable. “And yet, you’re here. In my territory, without permission, to seek an audience with me.”
Claudia growled, anger flashing in her eyes. “You did not stop her when you had the chance.”
No question as to the “her” she intended.
“To the contrary. We stopped Sorcha; the humans allowed her to escape. You believe she’s the reason your power has returned?”
For the first time since I’d known her, there was uncertainty in Claudia’s expression. “There is power in this land. Power the shadowed girl worked to contain.”
“The shadowed girl?” Ethan asked.
But I understood. “She means Mallory,” I said. She’d been shadowed by dark magic. “Mallory reversed Sorcha’s magic. There shouldn’t have been anything left of Sorcha’s spell.”
And that had been bothering me—how could there have been magic left over to create the delusions if the battle at Towerline had eradicated it?
With impeccable timing, and before Claudia could answer, Mallory and Catcher strode through the gate and down the sidewalk.