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Fiska and I sat by Mother’s bedside, keeping her company, until she became tired and drifted off to sleep again. Though Vannie had gone to fetch Kian what seemed like hours ago, no one had ever returned to check on Mother. After the spectacle the king had made of our unwelcome status in his city, I wasn’t about to go roaming the palace halls to look for them.

Striker raised an eyebrow at the old Fae woman, who was still eyeing the spot beneath my jacket where I kept my runed pistol.

My pulse whooshed in my ears as my alarm swung toward anger. “A stun? Rake, he has a heart condition! What did you do to my father?”

I tore my gaze from Fiska’s disapproving stare, hurried over to where Mother lay on the cot, and dropped to my knees beside her.

I knocked on the window of the truck’s cab as we neared the address on the paper the Shoppe’s cashier had given me. “Up ahead on the right,” I called through the rear window. “Maybe two more blocks.”

I stared out the truck window, trying to figure out a way to explain why Rake was here that wouldn’t sound one-hundred-percent insane.

The healer named Kian rushed toward me, his focus entirely on Mother, whose head Fiska and I had carefully lowered to the table. “How long has she been unconscious?”

The teen trailed behind Striker and me as we crossed to the door of the shop.

One of Pops’ eyebrows quirked up as he glanced between me and the map he’d pulled up on the computer. “A small town, huh? Where’d you hear about this place?”

I was still processing my shock over what the VeyldFae had managed to build inside a mountain, when a girl about my age came rushing out of one edge of the city and up the stone ramp toward our platform.

The ding of the bell above the unopened door hung in the air for only a split second as Striker met my stare, then we both spun into action.

I eked out about an hour more of research before the library began to close, but what I found in that hour made me wonder if I was losing my grip on reality.

A figure clad in leather breeches, an earth-toned tunic with a hunter-green hooded cape, and brown leather boots stepped out through the archway from the Void. It snapped shut behind him as soon as his boots hit the grassy hilltop.

The bell on the glass door of The Shoppe dinged as I shoved it open. My gaze scanned the aisles—empty of people—as I stepped inside.

Rake had promised to be home when I got back, but the trailer was spotless, like it’d just been cleaned for a brand new tenant.

We stopped at the spring when we reached it, and Fiska and I helped mother down onto a rock to rest. Fiska used a canteen from her pocket to retrieve fresh water for mother, while Fiska and I drank gratefully of handfuls scooped straight from the cold flow of water.

I crouched on the ground outside the woods, examining the unconscious girl’s bitten ankle. If she really was only half-Fae, she’d need treatment for the Shadowvein from that bite, and fast—without the correct runestone or faespell to cure her, she could be dead within a day.

I cowered, gaping at Joe’s furious face, as Rake stood protectively in front of me.

As soon as Fiska confirmed my magic had returned, she turned back to my mother.

Striker and I took off running for the trees.