The hounds howl behind me. Everyone else has gone silent with tension, so there’s nothing but unearthly echoes and my pulse rushing in my ears.

I pull harder. Something sharp and cold shudders through me and, with a gasp, the tension releases.

Magic simmers in the air, bright and stinging, so strong I can smell it. Everything looks exactly the same as it did a second ago, but the cord in my chest winds from me to the space between two trees.

“What did you—?” Olani starts, looking at me with something a little like fear, but I don’t let her finish.

“Go!” I point. She takes one look at the fast-approaching faerie mob behind me and obeys. The moment she passes between the trees, she winks out of existence. Raze throws himself into the portal, reaching his hand out in an unsuccessful attempt to pull me with him as Isolde freezes uncertainly in place. He disappears instantly, leaving me, my fox-sister, and the faeries. I bend to scoop Isolde up, holding her tight to my chest as I risk one last glance over my shoulder.

Fate, I hope I did this right.

Something whistles behind me, but I don’t allow myself to flinch, even when it buries itself into the bark of one of my trees.

I dive into the mortal world, faerie hounds snapping at my heels.

PART THREE

chapter twenty-five

The portal shatters like a mirror behind me, and not a second too soon. I’m braced to land on soft grass, and the shock of my weight on smooth stone echoes up my legs.

Isolde transforms in an instant, as if her body is catching up with the human world. I can’t hold her like this at her normal size, and she lets out a thoroughly human scream as she plummets to the ground. Her bright eyes meet mine, filling quickly with tears.

“Sol!” I throw myself forward, wrapping her in my arms. In my mind, she was already half-dead, but she’s not dead at all. She’s alive, she’s human, she’s going to be okay. We’re all still in our faerie clothes, so they must be more than just glamour, and Isolde wears a strange gown of sheer black gauze over a tight-fitting shirt and leggings.

She hugs me back, clinging to me like I’m a lifeline. She’s shaking.

“I’m so sorry,” Olani and I say at once, voices overlapping.

“Are you okay?” Raze adds, which is a stupid question and very on-brand for him. No, obviously, she’s not.

I draw back, trying to take in everything at once: the tear Isolde wipes quickly off her cheek. My own shaking hands. Dark drops of Olani’s blood on the ground. The moon-bathed courtyard we’ve found ourselves in, smooth white stone in a stretch at least the size of the village where I grew up.

We’re in some kind of valley circled by the mountains, with dark cliffs rising up on all sides high enough to block all but a patch of sky. The Western Range, I think. I’ve never seen these peaks before, but where else could we be?