I gripped the sword handle, steeling myself. Puck stood rock-still, waiting. I raised the sword again…and whirled away with a roar of frustration, f linging my weapon into the nearest bramble patch.
Puck couldn’t quite conceal his sigh of relief as I stalked away, retreating into the mist and out of sight before I fell apart. Dropping to my knees, I slammed my fist into the mud and bowed my head, wishing the earth would open up and swallow me whole. I shook with anger, with grief and selfloathing and regret. Regret of what conspired here.
That I had failed. That I had ever made that vow to kill my closest friend.
I’m sorry, Ariella. Forgive me. I’m weak. I wasn’t able to keep my promise.
How long I knelt there, I didn’t know. Perhaps only minutes, but before I could really compose myself, I had the sudden knowledge that I wasn’t alone. Wondering if Puck was really foolish enough to bother me now, I raised my head.
It wasn’t Puck.
A robed figure stood at the edge of the mist, pale and indistinct, blending into the surrounding fog. Its cowl was raised, showing nothing but darkness beneath the hood, but I could feel its eyes on me, watching.
I rose slowly, muscles tensed to leap away should the stranger make any move to attack. I wished I had my sword, but there was no time to regret that now.
Watching the stranger, I felt a glimmer of recognition. We’d met before, recently in fact. This was the same presence I had felt in my nightmare of the Iron Realm, the one keeping just out of sight, holding me to the dreamworld. And as my memory returned with the 79/387
shattered pieces of my composure, I finally recalled why we were here, who we had come to find.
“You are…the seer?” I asked softly. My voice came out shaky and was swallowed by the coiling fog, but the robed figure nodded. “Then…you know why I’ve come.”
Another nod. “Yes,” the seer whispered, its voice softer than the mist around us. “I know why you are here, Ash of the Winter Court. The real question is…do you?”
I took a breath to answer, but the seer stepped forward and pushed back its hood.
The world fell out from under me. I stared, staggered and frozen in a way that had nothing to do with winter.
“hello, Ash,” Ariel a whispered. “It’s been a long time.” PART TWO
CHAPTER SIX
THE SEER
I stared at the figure before me, hardly able to wrap my mind around it. It looked like Ariel a, sounded like her. Even after all these years, I knew the exact lilt of her voice, the subtlest tilt of her head. But…it wasn’t her. It couldn’t be. This was a trick, or perhaps a memory, brought to life by the depth of emotion around us. Ariel a was dead.
She had been for a long time.
“No,” I whispered, shaking my head, trying desperately to regain my scattered wits. “This…this isn’t real. You’re not real. Ariel a is…gone.” My voice broke, and I shook my head angrily. “This isn’t real,” I repeated, willing my heart to believe it. “Whatever you are, leave this place. Don’t torment me further.”
The robed figure glided forward, coils of mist parting for her as she came toward me. I wanted to move, to draw back, but my body wasn’t working right anymore. I might as well have been frozen, helpless, as the thing that looked like Ariel a drew very close, so close I could see the f lecks of silver in her eyes, smell the faint scent of cloves that had always surrounded her.
Ariel a gazed at me a moment, then raised one pale, slender hand and laid it—cool and solid—against my cheek.
“Does this feel like a memory, Ash?” she whispered as my breath hitched and my knees nearly buckled. I closed my eyes, unwilling to hope, to have it ripped from me once more. Taking my limp hand, 81/387
Ariel a guided it to her chest and trapped it there, so I could feel the heartbeat under my fingers. “Does this?” Disbelief crumbled. “You’re alive,” I choked out, and she smiled at me, a sad, painful smile that held all the years of loss and despair I knew so well. Her grief had been just as fierce, just as consuming, as mine.
“You’re alive,” I whispered again, and pulled her to me.
Her arms slid around my waist, drawing us even closer, and she breathed my name. I held her fiercely, half-afraid she would dissolve into mist in my arms. I felt her heartbeat, thudding against mine, listened to her breath on my cheek, and felt the centuries-old grief dissolving, melting like frost in the sunlight. I could barely believe it; I didn’t know how it could be, but Ariel a was alive. She was alive. The nightmare was finally over.
It seemed like an eternity before we finally pulled back, but my shock was no less severe. And when she looked at me with those star-f lecked eyes, my mind still had trouble accepting what was right in front of me.
“How?” I asked, unwilling to let her go just yet. Wanting—needing—to feel her, solid and real and alive, pressed against me. “I watched you die.”