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I leaned forward. “If you think what these teens are doing is so dangerous, why don’t you report them? Don’t the LeyGuard have rules?”

Silence struck the room as Fiska, Mother, Vannie, and Kian all stared at me. My outburst left a residue that felt almost tangible, a shocked tremor hanging in the air.

The address on the old woman’s note led us out of the city, an hour’s drive down dusty back roads which appeared more overgrown and disused the further we went on.

At Sloane’s statement that someone had let the Dullahan through fifteen years ago, Rake sighed and sat up straight, pushing the hair back from his green eye.

I had already consumed a few pieces of fruit and two slices of cheese, plus a mug of water Fiska had poured for me, when a knock sounded on the doorframe.

“This feels wrong,” Striker whispered, “even for me.” Striker and I sat in the two recliners in the old woman’s living room, keeping watch on the girl as the boy sat with the old woman against the far wall, helping her pack some quickly made sandwiches and other hurried supplies she’d brought out from the kitchen.

Sloane let out a low hiss as he turned to stare at Rake. “Rumors about some magical Traveler? I thought I taught you better than that, boy. You let yourself be seen?”

I glanced back at the Selkie—apparently called Mira—then stared at Faolan. “Who else knows she’s here?”

Striker groaned, but bit back any arguments against me taking the girl across the barrier alone. He could see I wouldn’t back down—or maybe he just didn’t want to argue in front of this crazy Fae woman.

Sloane’s teasing—and Rake’s silent agreement to it—didn’t sit well with me, especially after everything I’d gone through to follow Rake here… and Rake seemed to realize my displeasure.

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.