No, he’s right. It isn’t worth the risk. We need to wait until Leira is already certain that we’ve given up, that she’s won, that the egg is safe. When she dismisses her mercenaries and lets her guard down.

Raze frowns. He still looks exhausted, and his face scrunches even more with thoughtfulness. “What if we could somehow get to the manor before them? Couldn’t you make a portal?”

That might work, but I realize now that it was only because of Gossamer that I was able to create one before. His influence must have been how I did the impossible for a mortal, the invisible push that shaped my magic. Maybe we could do it again.

“It depends.” I try not to react to his voice, but I still flinch, peeking over my shoulder to see that Gossamer has materialized in my periphery. He’s just watching me, judging everything I do in a cold, bored tone with cold, bored eyes. “Make me an offer.”

My magic bubbles up irritably, stirring a cool breeze against my already chilled skin. I usually consider myself to be a nonviolent person, but I’m considering making an exception for the faerie.

“What are you doing?” Raze asks, and I realize that he’s still sitting on the ground, and at some point I rose to my feet.

I let my hands card through the air, trying to feel the threads of magic. “I might... I don’t know how I did it.” It’s not exactly the truth, but it’s not a total lie, either.

His face lights with devastating hope, and he jumps to his feet, pacing tight, anxious lines beside me. “That...that would be brilliant. We’d be there waiting for her, and it’ll take them weeks to get there, so we’d have plenty of time to plan it all out. We could just wait for her to put the egg in that room, because it would definitely be in that same room, right? And then we could just grab it and free Isolde and Olani before she even noticed it was gone.”

“As long as she keeps her word and doesn’t harm them on the way home,” I murmur. Anxiety twists in my gut at the thought of Isolde’s tired, drawn face, of her wide eyes and how frail she looked.

“If they haven’t escaped by then,” Raze says with a smirk. “Which they definitely will, if they have enough time to heal.”

“Okay,” I say, wringing my hands. I can feel my pulse speeding, almost keeping up with my thoughts. My heart feels heavy, but it’s different from the weight I’ve been carrying all night; this feels like it might be able to be lifted. “Okay. Okay.”

There’s just the tiny matter of how to convince Gossamer to help.

Raze grabs my hand and squeezes excitedly. “Seelie, we might—we might still have a chance.”

I blink. He keeps using my real name. I don’t know if that means anything.

But his excitement is contagious. Beyond the sick twisting worry for Isolde, there’s hope. Hope that we can save them and get the egg. That I can have my sister and go home.