I feel Raze tense. “What did you do to Olani?”

“She’s not the one you need to worry about.” Aris smirks. “Focus on your own feathers.” The reminder of his magic’s limitations doesn’t sound like a friendly joke, like when Olani said it. Instead, it’s a pointed jab.

“That’s enough, Aris.” Leira steps forward from behind one of the largest thugs, flanked by two gleaming dragons. They might be the same ones from the manor, graceful and sinewy, moving in perfect sync with her as if they’ve trained for this all their lives. Leira rests a hand casually on one of the dragon’s heads, palm flat against its crest. In the other, she holds a compass.

It’s a real compass, not an enchantment, made of metal and glass gleaming in the white light, but I can still sense the magic seeping from its case.

Olani groans, rolling her neck. She’s coming to. I just thank Fate she isn’t dead.

I finally find my voice, even as a tingling shiver runs up my spine. “Let them go.”

Leira gives me a pitying look before her attention goes to him again. “Oh, Raze,” she sighs, disappointed. “Raze, Raze, Raze. Where did I go wrong? You could have at least made it a challenge. All I had to do was wave that ring under your nose and you snatched it up without a second thought.”

Raze’s fingers curl automatically around the dull ring he stole from Leira back on the mountain road—his father’s ring. “You put a tracking spell on it!” I knew that they were related, I knew that she raised him, but it still strikes me how much he sounds like a defensive child.

“You managed to disappear for a few days—not bad. But the second you landed back in the mortal world, I knew exactly where to find you.”

A few days? I didn’t think we’d been in the faerie realm longer than a single night.

She’d wanted him to take the ring. She’d wanted us to get away. All of this—everything we sacrificed—was for nothing. “You weren’t...trying to get me,” I say, rubbing the spot on my palm where the enchantment used to be.

Behind Leira, Olani blinks, brow furrowed as she slowly comes to. One of the dragons sniffs, curling its lip slightly, like it’s waiting for her to wake so it can attack. Isolde is still struggling weakly. Anger starts to thaw my surprise. What did they do to her?

Leira looks at me as if she forgot I was there for a second. There’s something predatory in her green eyes, like she’s a snake and I’m a tiny, delicious mouse. “Why bother? I could just let Raze and your merry gang of misfits do the hard work of retrieval and be here waiting for you at the end. Speaking of which—” she holds her hand out, just like she did to me on that night “—hand over the firedrake egg.”

Raze’s arms close protectively around the egg. His wide eyes meet mine, and we share a moment of shock and confusion.