“I really should let you rest,” Raze says softly, even as I feel myself start to sink into darkness.

“Yeah,” I agree, lips barely moving, suddenly annoyed with him for a reason I can’t explain. “Leave me alone.”

Before he leaves, before I fall back into restless, delirious sleep, I think I hear a low laugh and feel his hand brush gently over my face.

chapter thirty-nine

The next time I wake, I’m alone in the dark. All the candles have burned out, and the only light is a soft red buried in the dying embers of the fire.

I sit up so fast I feel sick, shaking at the nightmare that woke me. In the moment between blind panic and fully awake, a wave of magic overwhelms me with light and heat and a roaring in my ears. Fire erupts from my fingertips, and I just barely manage to direct it into the fireplace.

My heart beats low and heavy, and nausea rises in my stomach as I watch the yellow flames crackle and try to take hold on the burned-out wood. I can control this.

For one horrible moment, all I can remember is the last second of the dream. The feeling of tendons snapping under the force of the knife in my hand as I drove it through my sister’s heart.

Not my sister.

I collapse back onto the pillows, breathing hard, as I come to my senses. That creature wasn’t my sister, no matter how much she briefly resembled her. But her confusing, truthful words still echo in my mind.

Everything that everyone thought they knew about changelings is wrong.

Everything that I thought I knew about changelings is wrong.

There were no faerie kidnappers, no babies stolen from the cradle. Only a normal human child, and a faerie spark of life. Isolde wasn’t a prize that had been snatched away from our parents.

She was given. We both were.

I was the child my mother bore, but that doesn’t matter—we’re both hers.

Both human. Both changelings.

I have to tell Isolde, I think numbly. I have to tell everyone.

Not right now, though. I can’t seem to move, even though all I want is to get up. My fingers brush something crackly, and I realize I’ve singed the sheets. Even though I just summoned a jet of fire, the magic is still overwhelming, desperate for release.

I expect to hear Gossamer’s voice in my head again, scolding me, but the faerie still hasn’t reappeared. I don’t dare to hope that’s permanent. I’ll be waiting for him, ready whenever he does turn up again.

But this time, I’ll have the power.

I flex my uninjured hand, fidgeting my tingling fingers. I wonder how long I’ve been asleep and how long it’ll be until I feel like myself again. Not that I mind this—I feel like my old self would be much more concerned about where I am and how I got here and where my sister is and what’s going on. About the strange, strained feeling between Raze and me, where the firedrake ended up, and getting rid of Gossamer forever. I used to be afraid of everything, every twist in the road and unexpected turn around the corner.