68. Chapter 68
Chapter 68
Kat
“I don’t know what is happening. I don’t know what is happening. I don’t know what is happening!” Agatha wails.
“Will you just shut up ?” Mary spits. “If we have any hope of getting out of here, you cannot be announcing our location to every fae that wants our blood in the vicinity!”
“This way!” I call, diving deeper into the servants’ tunnels. I hold Becky’s hand tightly and, brave girl that she is, she runs beside me and does not make a sound.
“You are bleeding!” Oliver hisses at Mary. “Is that your leg? Do you need me to carry you?”
“I’m fine!” she replies. “No—really, I’m—Lord Oliver!”
I glance back just as he scoops an arm beneath her shoulders, supporting her weight. She looks up at him and purses her lip, but does not protest further. Agatha trails behind, her entire body trembling as her eyes dart about in terror. Then she looks at me and bursts: “I never should have sold your horse! I was a horrible stepmother to you! I am so sorry! I know this is my punishment!”
I shake my head. “It’s fine. Just be quiet and keep up!”
“You know the way out of these tunnels?” Oliver asks me. “Is it because you were the . . . whatever they were calling you back there? The Ivy Mask? What even is that? I tried not to panic in there, but I have no idea what is going on!”
I reach a fork in the tunnel and stop, searching either direction. “Mary can tell you later. This way!”
We hurry down the tunnels, getting closer and closer to the exit. For the first time, my breath comes a little clear. We might actually make it. We might—
A door up ahead opens abruptly.
I skid to a halt as a very large, very fae body enters the tunnel, blocking our path. If that is a guard, we are all dead. I turn on my heels. “Back! Back! Back!”
“Kat!” Rahk cries. “It’s me! And Pavi!”
I stop. My knees turn to liquid. “Rahk?”
His arm sweeps around my waist, supporting me before I collapse in relief. “We have a minute or two before Lady Nothril pursues us. We must be gone before then!”
“She killed Papa!” Pavi chokes a little on the words.
“This way gets us out. We’re almost there!” I press forward, my energy renewed. Rahk’s hand does not leave me, shifting from laying on my back to lightly holding my arm. As though he is afraid that, if he stops touching me, we will be separated forever.
“Are these the servants’ tunnels?” Rahk glances around us as we run. He looks down at me again. “How well do you know them?”
“Like the back of my hand.”
I’m so focused that it takes me a moment to realize he is staring down at me incredulously.
“How many times have you raided Nothril?”
I direct us all to veer down a sharp left turn. “This was my twelfth. Here, this door always slows me down because it’s never unlocked. Give me a knife.”
He pulls a knife from his boot and hands it to me, slightly skeptically. I press the tip into the pad of my thumb and press it to the door. It unlatches. I push it open and keep moving.
“What?” I demand, looking up to find Rahk staring at me, his jaw slack.
“You can bypass fae locks with human blood? How did I not know this?” He shakes his head. “I always knew you were clever. I never realized you were a genius.”
His praise floods me with unexpected warmth. “I had to be, to evade you,” I reply cheekily.
At once, we stumble out of the tunnels, spilling into gray foliage of the world adjacent to the Wood. I leap onto the Path. Rahk immediately divides our party into groups so no one accidentally falls off the Path. “Pavi, you take the lead with Becky. Kat, you, Mary, Oliver, and Agatha go next. I will take up the rear in case we are followed.”
Thus grouped, we burst into full sprints. My vision blurs. The edges of the Path move and morph. I blink hard to get it to straighten. I end up following closer to Pavi and relying on her stronger view of the Path to keep from straying off it.
Then, abruptly, the entire Path shudders.
I stop. “What was that?”
Rahk glances in every direction. The Path shudders again. His eyes suddenly widen. “Lady Nothril is destroying the Path!”
“Rahk! The Path!” cries Pavi from the front—
—just before the entire thing vanishes.
Leaving us stranded in the middle of Caphryl Wood.
I whirl in place, looking for any sign of the Path, even though I know it’s gone.
“Kat?” Mary asks uneasily. She still leans on Oliver, his grip tight on her waist. Blood soaks through her dirtied uniform, marking an injury somewhere on her calf.
“What is wrong?” Oliver demands.
“We are going to die!” wails Agatha.
“Are we truly going to die?” asks Becky softly.
My jaw flexes, fire erupting in my gut. “No one is going to die. We’re going to figure out a way out of this. Rahk, how did you navigate the Wood when you were chasing me? You can navigate the Wood without a Path, right?”
Rahk’s face is pale. “The Wood cannot be navigated without a Path. I used a spell. You take an object of the earth and place your destination inside it. It guides you through unnavigable places.”
“That’s perfect!” I cry, searching the ground. “What do you need? A stick? A rock? Are these pine needles enough?”
“You cannot set the spell inside the Wood.”
I go still.
Rahk rakes a hand through his hair. “When I saw that you had gone into the Wood, I retraced my steps, worked the spell, and returned. That was how I could hunt for you and then get us both out.”
I hold his gaze for a long moment. “So you are saying we cannot get out of the Wood.”
He does not answer. Not even a small shake of the head.
Agatha’s wails crescendo. I curse, pacing in the small clearing we stand in amid an endless death forest in every direction.
“Can we not just . . . pick a direction and head that way?” Oliver asks. “We can keep going the way we were heading. Surely we will find our way out somehow?”
“That is not how the Wood works,” Pavi whispers quietly.
“My mother got out somehow,” I say to Rahk. “Surely there is a way.”
His voice is so low, a deep rumble in the curious silence of the Wood. “I do not know how anyone can navigate this place. You cannot control it. It decides where you go and what you encounter.”
“So if the Wood wants us to go back to the very frightening queen who wants all of us dead, it will take us there?” asks Oliver.
“I should have known she would destroy the Path.” Rahk clenches his fists. “I should have taken the precaution of making the spell. Then we wouldn’t be in this mess.”
“I never should have sold that horse!” wails Agatha. “If I hadn’t, we never would be in this mess!”
That—is actually very true. Here I have been, blaming myself for all these woes, when other people have had equal responsibility in these crimes.
Kat. This way.
I turn toward the shocking familiarity of that voice. A voice I have not heard in so, so long. A voice that cracks my heart in two.
“Kat?” asks Rahk.
This way. I will take you home.
There. Between the trees about a stone’s throw away, is a small, blue light. Hovering in midair.
“Do you see that?” I point to it.
Rahk tenses. “It is probably a lure for a spirit to trap you.”
“Yes,” I reply, even as I take a step closer. “But I know this voice.”
It is a woman’s voice. Soft. Tender. I know the way out.
My legs begin shaking. I take one step toward the glow, almost too terrified to say aloud the name I long to call.
You do not need to be afraid, my sweet. I came here to find you. Now I have found you, and I will take you home.
Even as I watch, the blue glow shifts. Her face appears, and the shadowy outlines of her body follow. The gentle lines of aging around her eyes crinkle into a smile. She lifts one arm, her finger pointed. Her voice is not afraid, not angry. Let me show you the way.
“Mama?” I choke. Then I stop myself, turning to Rahk. “It is a trap, isn’t it? Oh, this cursed Wood!”
Rahk steps to my side. His hand lands on my back, but when I look up at him, his face is strangely . . . awed . “I do not think it is a trap.”
Everyone in our group has gone silent.
Hope soars in my chest like never before. I turn back to the blue glow of my mother, floating at the edge of the clearing.
“I have never seen this,” he murmurs. “It has always been said that Caphryl takes slips of spirit from everyone who enters it. I never thought that meant those same spirits could . . .” He trails off. Swallows. Then continues. “Somehow, your mother found a way out of Caphyrl without a Path. This is the remnant of her spirit.”
I look back at the glowing version of my mother, my voice utterly gone. She smiles, all liquid warmth and tenderness. I have missed you so, so much. I am so glad to have found you. Please let me take you out of here so you can go home.
I surge toward her. My legs cannot carry me fast enough. When I reach her, my hands go straight through her. A cry escapes my lips.
Do not be saddened, dear girl, whispers my mother softly. I do not have a body with which to embrace you, but my heart is with you always. She reaches out glowing tendrils of hands. They glide over my face, and when I close my eyes, I can feel the barest warmth at her touch. Everything inside me softens.
“You don’t hate me,” I breathe.
No. Mama smiles, as if the notion is silly. I never have, and I never will. It was my love for you that guided me through this Wood back to you. Now please let me take you out of here. It is dangerous, and I could not bear it if anything happened to you.
I swallow the gathering tears, the rock in my throat, and draw in a deep, clear breath. The last remnants of my fear, of my self-hatred, of my brokenness all evaporate. She loves me. She always did. She never hated me or blamed me or wished I had died that day instead of fallen into the Wood. She came after me, not out of guilt or a sense of responsibility, but because she loved me.
I grow lighter than air with relief.
Follow me, Kat, Mama calls. This is the way home.
I reach out and grip Becky’s hand. “Let’s get you back to your mother.”
My mother turns and shows the way. We hurry after her. I never let my gaze stray from her form, drinking in the way her hair flows behind her and the bit of profile visible to me.
It seems like only moments before she stops and points. Toward the sun shining through the branches of the Wood. The human sun .
“We made it!” Pavi cries, running forward.
“I’ve got you. Just a little bit longer,” Oliver says to Mary. He takes more of her weight as they disappear into the human world. Everyone in our party seems to rush forward, to throw themselves out of the Wood.
But I stop, turning around.
Mama hovers at my side, smiling down at me. All this time I hated her for abandoning me, when she was here. Always searching for me. Ready to help the moment she found me.
“Thank you,” I whisper, my voice cracking. “I miss you. I don’t want to leave without you.”
She only comes to me and presses her formless lips to my forehead. Warmth fills my core, soothing the last ragged edge of my pain. You aren’t leaving without me, she replies.
I memorize every inch of her face for the last time.
Then her glow winks out.
Instead of loss, a golden glow of peace fills the deepest parts of my heart and grows, until every part of me, down to my fingers and toes, is finally at rest.
I turn.
Rahk has stopped, too. The last one still in the Wood besides me. His neck twitches as he cranes his head to follow the trees to their towering tops. My heart goes out to him. I step to his side and slide my hand in his.
He looks down at me and squeezes my hand. A long, low sigh escapes him. Then his jaw sets in determination.
We step over the border of Faerieland for the last time.