His hand covered my mouth, pushing me flush against the tree. My eyes widened. My breath caught in my throat. He’d never behaved like this, and my body was not sure how to react. The Unseelie Prince was right there, I knew I needed to be nervous and careful . . . but Everest was right in front of me. The warmth of his skin pressed against my mouth sent a string of sinful ideas racing through my mind without my consent. Every nerve ending in my body was tingling and hot. I needed more, I needed him, and it was such horribly bad timing for my body to lose control of itself. But it wasn’t my fault. He’d bitten me and claimed me as his soulmate, letting the mark show itself on my skin for the first time, and then left. I hadn’t seen him since, except for those three dreams, which had been fleeting moments that came and went too fast. And those hadn’t been real. I hadn’t been able to feel the softness of his skin against mine. That cinnamon scent of his hadn’t invaded my senses. Need and passion had me reaching out and grabbing fistfuls of his white sweater and dragging him flush against my body.

Yet his gaze didn’t meet mine. His hand remained firmly in place, torturing me as every second the inferno of desire burned hotter and hotter. His blue and white eyes were locked on something to my right with intense concentration. In the back of my mind, I knew that he was watching the Unseelie Prince and was trying to conceal me from his sight, but none of that mattered with him finally this close to me. I pulled him even closer, reveling in the heat radiating through his clothes. His breath swept over my forehead. I looked up at his face and swooned, my insides going all warm and mushy with emotions. He was so beautiful. In this foreign blueish light of Seelie, his hair almost looked blue—Wait a second. No, it IS blue. Everest’s normally white-blond hair was now a pastel blue. It made his beauty near God-like. All I could do was stare.

A single pink rune glowed above his head. My eyes widened. He still hadn’t looked at me, so I reached up and touched the symbol with my fingers, causing a whole list of blue and pink symbols to appear beneath it. I now knew what this meant. This was a potion my soulmate needed. The blue symbols were typical potion ingredients, and I recognized them from when the bottles were lined up on the table: birch tree bark, mother of pearl, seashells, and moonstone. But the pink symbols were angelic runes, which meant he needed Heavenly ingredients . . . and he needed all five, just like Tegan had. I stared up at the symbols, threatening my brain into storing the image to memory.