Soft sand presses under my palms as I push up onto my hands. I can feel more grains caking my face and hair, finding their way into my clothes.

I don’t know where we are, but it isn’t Wildline Manor.

I open my eyes, still coughing water from my lungs. My chest shakes with the effort. Raze’s hand closes around my arm, like he’s checking that I’m still here.

“Raze,” I rasp through another mouthful of water, crawling until I’m peering over him. Water drips from my loose hair, drops splashing his cheeks. “Raze, look.”

“Not...how I remembered home,” he chokes out. His head turns, and he meets my eyes through wet lashes. Emotions flash over his face in quick succession, like a Revelnox fireworks show: confusion, relief, fear, confusion again for a grand finale.

Confusion at the blue sky behind my head and the ivory sand under our bodies. At the green grass and the wild tangle of trees, the sparkling silver water we dragged ourselves out of.

Raze props himself up on his elbows with his knees poking up at awkward angles and spits out a long stream of water.

I sit up, too, panting but finally catching my breath.

The world of smooth, sharp peaks and unforgiving stone has disappeared. In its place is a picture-perfect landscape, a large lake as smooth and bright as glass, its surface spotted with deep violet lilies, surrounded by soft, sandy shores, and rolling meadows giving way to forest on all sides.

“This is different,” Raze observes, in a voice so calm it nearly circles all the way back around to absolute panic.

No cliffs.

No caves.

No way back.

The air is thick with magic like pollen in the springtime. I can feel it coating my throat, I can smell it, I can hear it on the wind. I know the truth, even before Gossamer appears in the corner of my eye, frowning like a particularly smug marble pillar.

This isn’t Wildline Manor. This isn’t even the mortal world. I don’t know if it was my error or Gossamer’s interference, but somehow, we’ve found ourselves in a faerie realm.

Again.

chapter thirty-four

“I suppose there’s good news and there’s bad news,” Gossamer observes blandly.

“Where are we?” I force myself up on shaking legs, turning in a slow circle to take in the view. It looks like a vacation spot. Like there should be fancy lake houses dotting the abandoned shores.

“I don’t know,” Raze says, at the same time Gossamer says, “I’d tell you, but I don’t think you’ll like the answer.”

Which confirms something I suspected and feared: even here, in a realm of magic, only I can hear or see the faerie.

But this place doesn’t feel like the enchanted forest. It feels sharper, darker, wilder. The sun is hotter and brighter, the shadows cast in starker relief.

I don’t know what I expected the Unseelie Realm to look like, but it wasn’t this.

Raze can’t seem to believe his eyes, either. He takes everything in with an expression of confusion and maybe frustration—it’s impossible to tell. He pushes himself to his feet, standing beside me.