She throws her head back dramatically. “I want you to be yourself!”

“You want me to be who you want me to be.” I start stomping away, even though I have nowhere to go. “You, but magic. If you had my powers, you wouldn’t even need me!” The fire flares when I pass it, then dies away completely, plunging us into darkness. I keep walking.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Isolde isn’t about to let me get away that easily. “You’re just trying to change the subject.”

“Well, you’re just trying to leave me.” I crash into a low branch and swear, but I don’t stop moving. My hands are shaking. I can’t stop moving. I have to get away. But the memory of the faerie-ring warning sign still lingers at the back of my mind, and I’m scared to stray too far, so I end up just circling the dark campsite.

“I’m literally following you so you can’t run away!”

I whirl around to the sound of her voice. “Shut up!” I scream. “Just shut up, Sol. You don’t have all the answers. I don’t want to hear your excuses. I’m not going to talk about this anymore, now or ever, and I’m not running away. Leave, if you want. See if I can stop you. I don’t care.”

Clearly, I don’t care. That’s why hot tears are streaming uncontrollably down my face as I scrape my voice raw snarling at her. I’m almost where I started now, smoke from the extinguished fire filling my nose.

“Seelie.”

I ignore her. I’m done talking. That part, at least, was true.

“Seelie, stop!”

I’m barely listening anymore, but something else pulls me up short.

“Oh,” says a voice from behind me, between us, a voice that I recognize somehow but can’t place. “Am I interrupting something?”

The sound sends a chill up my spine and turns my stomach. I twist in place, slowly, to face Leira Wildfall.

chapter twenty-three

The first thing I notice is that Leira is just as finely dressed as she was on Revelnox, without so much as a dried leaf clinging to her long embroidered skirts. Threads of smoke trail into the sky from the smoldering campfire between us. My hands automatically jump to the same position I held them in while training, magic sparking along my nerves.

Isolde’s blade glints in the moonlight. “How long have you been there?”

Leira smiles calmly, like she’s indulging a misbehaving child. “As a nightingale? Long enough. What a delight to finally meet the company my nephew’s been keeping these days. I’m Leira Wildfall—but you already knew that, didn’t you, changeling?”

I’m so used to hearing the word said casually, without judgment, that it stings twice as hard to hear it in Leira’s smug, sneering tone.

Where are Raze and Olani? I don’t know if I want them to show up and rescue us or to run so they aren’t caught. I realize I’m still holding my hands up defensively, but I have no idea what to do with them. I’ve seen what kind of magic she can do. There’s no point starting a fight I know I can’t win.