Page 251 of The Edge of Darkness

I swiped away the blood.

I couldn’t turn back. The queen had asked for our help. Niall might not have trusted the missive, but I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t at least investigate it.

My eyes opened, and I stepped forward, despite the knot that had started to tighten in my stomach—despite what the Aether had said. The strange atmosphere thinned, giving way to fresh air as I broke out of the white and into the human realm.

A few feet away, Breck was pacing. When he saw me, a breath whooshed out of him. “Where were you?”

“Just, uh . . . got turned around.” I waited for him to say I’d been gone too long, or that he’d had a similar encounter, but he didn’t say anything of the sort.

I glanced around, nervously. “Any guards?”

“None,” he said. “Let’s go. The queen shouldn’t be far—” He stopped mid-turn when he saw the blood on my hands.

“Nosebleed. Happened the first time I crossed too,” I lied.

He eyed me warily, then nodded and took to weaving between the trees.

I wondered if the queen would be meeting us at the same entrance to the underground passage, the one Weston had taken me to when we fled the castle. Regardless, I didn’t know this part of the forest in Galenagh—no human did, except for the king’s guards. And I’d been running for my life the last time I was here, so nothing looked familiar. I wouldn’t know my way back to the place I’d emerged from, or the castle, if my life depended on it.

So, how did Breck know where to go?

The anxious knot in my stomach twisted a little more.

“How often, exactly, have you ventured to this side of The Veil?” I asked him.

He let out a soft chuckle, rubbing his hands against the legs of his pants. “When we were younglings, a group of us used to cross The Veil as a game. We would mark the trees on this side with colored ribbons and try to make it to the furthest one in the forest. There was a thrill in knowing that the human guards might be patrolling, so it was a test to see who could claim the furthest ribbon without being seen.”

“Did Killian play as well?”

“He did. And he always won.”

Again, he rubbed his palms against his thighs, as if they were sweating. I folded my fingers into my own palms, checking to see if mine were sweaty too, whether the heat of the morning would have been enough to make them clammy.

Dry.

I looked back up at Breck, watching him as he touched a hand to a large tree trunk and leapt—rather ungracefully—up onto the mossy ledge beside it.

“We’re close,” he said, helping me up, then gesturing for me to take the lead.

We’re close . . . and yet . . . the queen had said that she would find me . . .

His heavy steps kept up with mine, like he didn’t want me to get more than a few feet away from him. I listened to his movements. He stayed right on my heels, letting me blindly lead us through the trees . . .

Somewhere nearby, a twig snapped, and I came to an immediate halt. Breck froze behind me, waiting. A moment passed, then two. A razor-sharp tension settled around us.

Something rustled in the distance.

I glanced down, flicking my eyes over my shoulder, noting Breck’s proximity, how he loomed just behind me.

“Breck,” I said quietly, “do you remember the day you found me?”

“Of course I do.”

“Do you remember shooting that blue bird out of the sky from horseback?”

“Yes,” he whispered, closer.

Another pang of wrongness flitted through my chest, but I willed my voice to remain steady. “You taught me one of the most important facts about magic that day.”