The six herons wrapped their talons around her arms, three on each side. They beat their wide wings and lifted her into the air. Snowflakes ghosted past. Twigs and heron feathers swiped her nose and legs. They broke through the canopy and Skye gasped in wonder. How gorgeous the wild island and the inlet looked from up here, all frosted with snow. Across the water sprawled the vast forest: home.
As they soared across the inlet toward the woods, Skye began to laugh. In fact, she cackled.
Grady awoke with the impression he had heard something. The bed lay empty beside him, and he looked around the shadowy room for Skye. It had been so sweet to fall asleep next to her, and too easy to sleep deeply. He threw back the covers and crept across the room until he could see that the bathroom door stood open and no one was inside. He turned to the front window, caught sight of the snow-blanketed deck and beach, and drifted across to look. He settled his hand on the doorknob, feeling a strong pull to go out. That might have been what he heard—Skye slipping out ahead of him, following the same urge.
Grady hesitated, unmoving, hand on the cold metal, listening to the barely-discernible sounds of Kit and Livy breathing upstairs. Goodbye, he thought, with only the slightest twinge of regret, nothing at all like the torture he’d gone through when trying to compose a will the other evening.
Everything was all right now. Or would be soon. He felt light as a snowflake.
He slipped outside and silently shut the door behind him. Shivering in his socks, pajama pants, and T-shirt, he followed Skye’s footprints until they stopped under a tree. He looked up into the branches. Falling snow scattered across his face, making him blink. “I want to follow her,” he whispered. “Let me come too.”
A handful of voices giggled above, and a glow caught his eye from below. A path appeared in front of him, lined on both sides by curled snow sculptures that reminded him of seashells. Skye’s footprints led down it, filling up with falling snow. He followed the prints until they stopped again.
“Thank you, clever boy,” a voice said.
Grady saw a tarnished brass key, dangling low, followed by the goblin who wore it as a necklace. Somehow he knew it was a she. She crawled headfirst down a tree trunk, barely a foot from his face.
“Hi,” he said, unconcerned.
“We could not summon you. Rules are rules. But if you summon us, then all is well!” She and the rest of the goblins laughed.
Grady nodded, still shivering, arms wrapped around himself. The snow was soaking through his socks.
“Here.” The goblin thrust a huckleberry toward him.
Some faint part of his mind screamed, Don’t eat anything!, but he’d left that portion of himself too far behind now to heed it. He had come to be with his mate. His tribe.
He ate the berry. The chef in him cringed at the dismal quality of the fruit, the moldiness of the flavor, but he dismissed that thought too. And soon forgot it in the delightful rush of warmth that flooded him. Even his sodden feet burst back to full comfort levels.
“Better?” the goblin asked.
“Oh yes.”
“Ready?” She changed into a giant bird—as did all the others.
He watched, pleased, and felt himself smiling. “I am.” He unfolded his arms and reached up to his new tribemates.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
LIVY KNEW SOMETHING WAS WRONG EVEN BEFORE SHE OPENED HER EYES. SHE LAY LISTENING, BUT HEARD NOTHING except Kit’s steady breathing. No wind from outside. No sound from Grady and Skye downstairs.
She loathed to climb out of the luxurious warmth of the bed. It was her first night staying over with Kit, and she’d found it cozy even though they hadn’t tried to have sex, not with Skye and Grady within earshot. She longed to cuddle up close to his heat and go back to sleep, but…not if something was wrong.
She slipped out of bed, shuddered at the drafty air, and padded across to the loft’s half-wall to look down into the living room. The house was dark, but the snow coating the ground outside sent a filtered light through the windows, enough to see by. Enough to tell the sofa-bed’s blankets were thrown back, and the pillows unoccupied.
Livy darted to the spiral stairs and flew down them, mostly trying to stay quiet, but increasingly letting go of that concern in the face of panic.
They weren’t in the bed. They weren’t in the kitchen, or the bathroom, or anywhere in the house.
“Kit!” Her voice shattered the silence. She ran to the front window, then to each of the side windows, looking out in vain. No one moving. Nothing to see but snow. People had died of hypothermia in conditions like this…
Kit’s feet thumped on the floor upstairs. “Liv? What is it?”
“They’re gone! They’re not here.”
“Shit.” He thundered down the stairs to the front door, which he flung open.
They stuck their heads out into the icy air.
“Footprints.” She pointed.
They looked at one another.
“I’m suiting up,” she said.
Within two minutes they were both dressed for outdoors, in snow boots, coats, and gloves. They ran out into the cold. Livy wore the gold ring on a length of yarn around her neck to keep from dropping it, and clutched her gloved hand around it.
They followed the footprints, seemingly Skye’s and Grady’s both, until they stopped under the large alder at the edge of the property.
“They just disappear,” Livy said in wonder.
“They took a path.” Kit’s face had tensed, hardened. “Into the fae world.”
“I thought that wasn’t supposed to happen from the island!”
“Well, it can. Just doesn’t usually.”
“Okay.” She turned to him. “You have to go somewhere else. Out of sight, off where you can’t hear me. I have to summon the locals and I have to be alone.”
He nodded, and took her by the shoulders. “Listen. I don’t know what they’re going to have you do. There’ll probably be weird rules, things that don’t make sense. So…if there’s some kind of magic where they need a sacrifice, someone’s life, someone taken into their world forever—I’ll do it. Give them my name. I mean it. Mine, not yours.”
Tears stung her eyes. “You kidding me? I’m saving all four of us. We’re not handing over lives tonight.”
“Livy.” His voice was almost just a breath. His grip tightened on her shoulders. “It may be you don’t have a choice. If that’s how it is, pick me.”
“What fun would I have around here without you?” Her voice cracked a little.
“I love you. Shit, I haven’t loved anyone for—I don’t know, ever. I want you to know that. But I also want you to pick me if you have to pick anyone. The rest of you have more to live for.”
The tears in her eyes blurred his face. “I’m not sure I can promise that. Because I love you too.”
“Nah, you don’t. Maybe you could someday, and that alone makes me happy. So go save those two, okay?”
“I do love you,” she insisted.
“But you love Skye more.” When she hesitated, he added, “As you should. So go.” He let go of her. “Bring them back.”
She stepped forward and locked him into a long kiss, storing up all the details in case she never saw him again: the soft warmth of his lips, the bristle of his beard, the cozy lingering scent of pillows and sleep. Then she pulled back, bracing her shoulders. “Okay.”