Page 45 of The Court the Fae Forgot
No more than it already did, as we walked along the roads at night, and avoided its depths during the day. I only assumed the others felt it, because the stronger it was, the more irritable Shiel became.
I could only imagine what it brought out in me. My own thoughts were filled with images of the river, of tender caresses, of bodies intertwined, of …
Of …
Of thoughts that had to be battled away before they stole my mind first, and my body next.
It was on one of these occasions, when the call of the Wildness had grown so strong that I kept thinking I saw the dark fae standing behind every tree and every rock that Shiel finally had enough. We’d come to a proper city, the streets so busy leading up to it that we’d had to resort to a complicated sort of hide and seek to keep from being spotted by the townsfolk. He recruited Finch to follow him into town and made Zev swear not to so much as step outside of the small clearing he’d finally found for us to hide.
And then, with a great deal of muttered swearing under his breath, and his eyes downcast as if avoiding visions of his own, they left us.
I doubted Shiel would have left us for a second if he knew what I was seeing, too—if he knew how much I’d already invited the Wildness in, how I’d more than justentertainedit.
But I didn’t care.
I was too worn out to care.
Too worn out to fight the Wildness when it called to me, too, apparently.
I didn’t mean to wander into the forest the first time I was left alone. I didn’t even mean to be left alone.
I didn’t evenknowI’d been left alone.
One moment, I was dozing off beneath the meager shade at the outside of the clearing, the next, I was standing at its edge. A dreamlike haze hung all around me, the mirage of heat and moisture heavy in the air. My vision blurred at the edges, turning filmy every time I blinked.
The first sign that something was wrong was that Zev, my ever-faithful, if quiet, guardian, was nowhere to be seen.
The second was that my sister, Ada, stood not ten feet away from me.
She shivered beneath the simple, torn shift that she wore. It was many sizes too big for her, the fabric bunching up on her shoulders as if she struggled to keep it from slipping off her entirely. She shouldn’t have been shivering in the heat, even in the shade of the forest as it grew darker, but then I saw why. She was dripping wet, soaked from head to toe.
It was my shift she wore, but not just my shift.
She wore my bruises too. My marks from the lash. Her bones poked from beneath skin drawn tight with hunger.
Fear gripped at something deep inside of me.
What if my father hadn’t heeded Zev’s warning? What if he knew we were too far away now to do anything to protect Ada? What if he’d been willing to take his chances, willing to risk it all in order to take out his untamable anger on the only target he had left?
I knew, in my mind, that the figure standing, sobbing in front of me wasn’t her. It wasn’t Ada. She couldn’t be here. Even if she’d run away after I left, there was no way she’d have been able to keep up with us—let alone remain undetected all this time. I’d seen the way the others watched the roads and forests.
I’d seen my father too, seen the terror in his eyes. As vile as he was, he wouldn’t dare touch Ada—not for her sake, but his own.
That was why, when I saw my sister, I thought for sure it had to be a dream.
Another delusion.
Nothing more.
But part of me knew otherwise, too.
I knew when her willowy figure beckoned me deeper into the forest, when I felt the grass between my toes and the scrape of twigs on my shins and the brush of cool air on my cheek that it was more thanjusta dream. It was the same as the past two delusions, some mixture of illusion and reality that drew me in, deeper and deeper until I finally realized what was happening, and by then, I was too far gone.
Twice those delusions had been broken by the dark fae, but this time, this time as I followed my sister, ever beckoning, ever staying just out of reach, the dark fae wasn’t there. And that was what made all the difference. Because, lord of this dark place or not, he’d saved me. I didn’t realize it until it was too late, until the Wildness had fully drawn me in.
Because without him, the Wildness had no intention of letting me go.
CHAPTERSEVENTEEN
