Strange. I’d left her shortly after breakfast, and she’d said she wanted to get some planting done today. Why would she have told Ruairi to meet her in the kitchens instead of the gardens? I checked her rooms, but they were empty. She wasn’t in the tower with Keelynn either.
I checked the gardens once more, and even asked Oscar if he’d seen her. He said she’d come out around half an hour ago and met Ruairi by the fountain. Then they’d gone for a walk, same as they had every other day this week.
Only Ruairi wasn’t on a walk with Aveen. He was in the feckin’ kitchen.
The humid air felt too thick for my lungs. I tried to drag in a breath but couldn’t. “Which way did they go?”
“Down toward the cottages.”
I didn’t hear another word he said, sprinting through the wards. If she had a thirty-minute head start, there was no telling how far she’d gone. My gaze met the line of trees in the distance. In thirty minutes, she could’ve made it to the feckin’ Forest.
I evanesced to the cottages and went straight to Anwen’s stoop. The moment my fist connected with the door, the barrier flew open. Anwen’s eldest stood on the other side, glaring.
“Have you seen the human I keep at the castle?” I asked, not caring that I sounded like a raving lunatic.
“The pretty one with curly hair?”
“Yes.”
The girl pointed toward the forest. “She went that way with the handsome lad she’s courtin’.”
Is that what people thought? That Aveen and Ruairi were together? Sure, why wouldn’t they? I’d been taking her out every day glamoured as the beast.It doesn’t matter. If anything, I should’ve been happy that the rumors were helping my ruse.
I evanesced straight to the Black River, searching for any traces of my human on either side of the shore. I couldn’t find her. No footprints. No sounds. No body . . .
Bile burned up my throat.
What if she’d already crossed? What if the Queen had taken her? What if she was gone forever? I was about to evanesce to the Queen’s castle when I heard a scream that brought winter to my soul.
My boots slipped. It was impossible to pinpoint where she could be. Evanescing would be useless. So, I ran. And ran. And with each step, I prayed. Even knowing no one had ever answered my prayers, I prayed.
Through the trees, I glimpsed a flash of blue. Her shrieks of terror would haunt me until my final days. I evanesced, finding Aveen in a ball on the leaf-strewn ground, her hands bound with coarse rope, the skin beneath raw and bleeding.
I pressed a hand to her back, racking my brain for who could have done this. She rolled, punching and kicking and scratching my arms, my face.
“Aveen, stop.”
She blinked and blinked, my horrified expression reflecting in her still-searching eyes, as if she couldn’t see me kneeling right next to her. “I’m here.”
“I can’t see,” she wailed. “I can’t see. Help me. I can’t see you.”
“I’m right here.”I’m here. I’m sorry. I never should’ve left.I smoothed my thumb along her tear-stained lashes, sending healing magic to remove whatever spell the fiend had used to steal her sight. When I found the person responsible . . . He would pray for death.
“Open your eyes.”
Aveen blinked up at me, eyes still swimming with tears. I gathered the hair from her dirt-streaked cheeks, searching for lies of comfort that I couldn’t find as I glanced over at the river and Forest beyond. She’d almost been sacrificed to the Forest, and it was all my fault. I was a fool for believing she’d be safe.
I shifted my dagger, cutting the ropes before inspecting them. Nothing special. Thick and brown, inexpensive. Could’ve been found in just about any tool shed.
I slipped my arms beneath Aveen, holding her trembling body against mine. Getting us both back to the gates drained far too much magic, but I did it anyway. I glowered at each and every suspect as we passed. The unfamiliar pooka cleaning his nails with a pocketknife in the stables. The grogoch transferring peaches from a cart into a basket. The two women carrying baskets of clean laundry. The leprechauns chatting next to the stairs. The merrow on the fountain’s edge.
Aveen’s eyes remained screwed shut, but some of the color had returned to her cheeks by the time I brought her into the parlor.
When they saw me, Tadhg and Ruairi rocketed to their feet, their expressions darkening as they took in Aveen’s state.
“What happened?” Tadhg demanded, raking a hand through his hair. For once, his eyes weren’t bloodshot.
“I found her tied up in the forest, shrieking like a feckin’ banshee.”