“Really?” Liz said. “You combined witchcraft with your fey power? That’s … unusual. Do you recall the spell?”

I did, but I didn’t tell them. I also didn’t tell them that I’d had help ejecting Mara into the Borderlands. I’d opened the door, but I hadn’t been strong enough to get her through it. At the last moment before Mara would have eaten me whole Liam had appeared in shadow-form, torn Mara off me, and thrown her through the door. Liam hadn’t been able to follow because the iron manacles on his wrists kept him from entering Faerie. He was forever trapped in the Borderlands.

I was the one who’d clamped the manacles on him.

I hadn’t told the three women about Liam coming to help me. I knew they felt bad about convincing me to banish Liam when it was really Mara who had been feeding on the students. They didn’t need to know that Liam had saved me even after I’d condemned him to eternal pain.

Or maybe I just didn’t like to admit that the man I’d banished to eternal pain – the man I hadn’t been able to make human with my love – had saved me.

I blinked and a tear fell into the swirling water. I bent closer to the pool, pretending to study the situation more closely but really trying to hide my tears from the other women.

“Well, then,” Liz said briskly, “you should have no problem being motivated now. These undines will die if we don’t herd them through that passage.”

I nodded my head, still too close to tears to trust my voice, and lowered my face nearly to the surface of the water. The undines had formed into one circle now, moving so fast that it was hard to make out individuals. I wondered if the undines would wear themselves out if they kept up this frantic pace – or beach themselves on the bank and die tangled in the thickets. I laid my hand just above the surface of the water and felt a thrumming vibration, a nervous energy that travelled through my hand, up my arm, and lodged in my chest. Like heartburn.

I suddenly knew that the undines’ hearts were burning up. If I didn’t open the door for them, they’d die. I focused on the chink of light at the bottom of the pool and called out the opening spell.

Ianuam sprengja!

The only thing that grew was the burning sensation in my chest. And the tingling in my arm. I was too young to have a heart attack. Wasn’t I?

And you couldn’t get one from having a broken heart. Could you?

As if in response to my unvoiced question a sadness spread throughout my body – a sadness that was a hundred times my grief over losing Liam, but somehow encompassed that grief. A sadness that had a theme song.

Who will we love? It went. Will we ever find someone to love?