Page 23 of Harnessed in Gold

“But whoever made the macguffiin did?”

Rime smirks. “Macguffin?”

“Google it.”

“I know what google means now,” he says, grinning proudly. How can a man be so cute and so formidable at the same time? “But, yes, we think themacguffin,” wink, “was designed to control nature, not bond with it.”

I can only imagine what ‘control nature’ means. We humanshave tried. We’ve paved the wild places, razed the Amazon, irrigated deserts, buried megatons of plastic in landfills—and the consequences have been catastrophic.

Because nature seeks a balance.

But with powerful faerie magic, could this ring completely override nature’s laws? “That’s why all the freaky stuff happened on Browne’s Hill, right? The mutations and all that?” The stuff everyone’s hoping I’ll be able tofeel.

Rime nods and answers with a disheartening, “Yes.”

Across the river, the low winter sun shines pink through the trees. It’s one of those fleeting moments when the beauty of nature leaves me aching for some long-forgotten part of myself. I’m floating a foot above the ground, still in disbelief that I touched a wild kingfisher. The way it trusted me, and the way all three of them trusted Rime—I witnessed something sacred today.

And that’s why they’re so worried about the macguffin. If Brier wants to use it to control nature, that sacred bond would be broken. No,morethan broken: corrupted, desecrated, destroyed. No more beautiful, trusting birds, no more sunlight streaming through the leaves. With the flick of a hand, he could blast away an entire forest or kill off an entire species.

We have to find this thing. Fast.

I swallow. “Any news on Brier’s search party?”

Rime shakes his head.

“Would you recognize them?”

“We’d recognize River, but since fae can’t use glamours on one another, we’d know the others, too.”

“Oh, so then all you’d have to do is look for pointy ears?”

He grins, probably wondering why I’m so obsessed with this one feature. “Yes. Or people no one else can see.”

Can you tell by looking at someone that no one else can see them? It seems absurd, but when I think back to the times Leo glamoured himself invisible, there were signs: Lara’s confused expression when Leo was there one moment and gone the next, Zander notreacting at all to Leo sneaking out of the O-Chi pantry right behind him.

A samba tune blasts from Rime’s chest. He takes out his phone and swipes. “Leo’s here.”

I choke on a breath. Here? Hopefully, that means he’s waiting up in the parking lot, not rapidly approaching.

Rime asks, “Do you want a ride back to your dormitory?”

“No, thanks. It’s actually faster for me to walk.”

As we tromp up the path to the practice fields, I match Rime’s quick pace, hoping I can clear the area before Leo decides we’re taking too long and gets out of his car to find us.

But no such luck. As we crest the hill, I see him, an elbow on the tennis court fence and his head bent over his phone. The match is over and the crowd gone, leaving me nowhere to hide. When Rime whistles, Leo looks up. Right at me. He flicks his wind-blown hair out of his eyes but holds my gaze—the entire century it seems to take for Rime and me to reach him.

“Did you find the spot?” he asks, flipping up the corner of his jacket to stuff his phone in his back pocket.

“We did,” Rime replies. “Well, I should sayshedid. She wouldn’t let me tell her where it was.”

“I wanted to see if I could feel it first,” I explain.

Leo almost smiles. At me. “Smart.”

It’s Rime who describes what I sensed, because apparently the cat got my tongue and threw it in the river. I recognize that half-smile, that I-knew-you-could-do-it look in Leo’s eyes. I could dismiss it as condescension, but the admiration I’m picking up from him is hard to ignore.

When Rime admits that I nearly collapsed, Leo’s eyes flash and his expression hardens. Voice gruff, he asks me, “Are you okay?”