Watching the stranger, I felt a glimmer of recognition. We’d met before, recently in fact. This was the same presence I had felt in my nightmare of the Iron Realm, the one keeping just out of sight, holding me to the dreamworld. And as my memory returned with the shattered pieces of my composure, I finally recalled why we were here, who we had come to find.
“You are … the seer?” I asked softly. My voice came out shaky and was swallowed by the coiling fog, but the robed figure nodded. “Then … you know why I’ve come.”
Another nod. “Yes,” the seer whispered, its voice softer than the mist around us. “I know why you are here, Ash of the Winter Court. The real question is … do you?”
I took a breath to answer, but the seer stepped forward and pushed back its hood.
The world fell out from under me. I stared, staggered and frozen in a way that had nothing to do with winter.
“Hello, Ash,” Ariella whispered. “It’s been a long time.”
CHAPTER SIX
THE SEER
I stared at the figure before me, hardly able to wrap my mind around it. It looked like Ariella, sounded like her. Even after all these years, I knew the exact lilt of her voice, the subtlest tilt of her head. But … it wasn’t her. It couldn’t be. This was a trick, or perhaps a memory, brought to life by the depth of emotion around us. Ariella was dead. She had been for a long time.
“No,” I whispered, shaking my head, trying desperately to regain my scattered wits. “This … this isn’t real. You’re not real. Ariella is … gone.” My voice broke, and I shook my head angrily. “This isn’t real,” I repeated, willing my heart to believe it. “Whatever you are, leave this place. Don’t torment me further.”
The robed figure glided forward, coils of mist parting for her as she came toward me. I wanted to move, to draw back, but my body wasn’t working right anymore. I might as well have been frozen, helpless, as the thing that looked like Ariella drew very close, so close I could see the flecks of silver in her eyes, smell the faint scent of cloves that had always surrounded her.
Ariella gazed at me a moment, then raised one pale, slender hand and laid it—cool and solid—against my cheek.
“Does this feel like a memory, Ash?” she whispered as my breath hitched and my knees nearly buckled. I closed my eyes, unwilling to hope, to have it ripped from me once more. Taking my limp hand, Ariella guided it to her chest and trapped it there, so I could feel the heartbeat under my fingers. “Does this?”
Disbelief crumbled. “You’re alive,” I choked out, and she smiled at me, a sad, painful smile that held all the years of loss and despair I knew so well. Her grief had been just as fierce, just as consuming, as mine. “You’re alive,” I whispered again, and pulled her to me.
Her arms slid around my waist, drawing us even closer, and she breathed my name. I held her fiercely, half-afraid she would dissolve into mist in my arms. I felt her heartbeat, thudding against mine, listened to her breath on my cheek, and felt the centuries-old grief dissolving, melting like frost in the sunlight. I could barely believe it; I didn’t know how it could be, but Ariella was alive. She was alive. The nightmare was finally over.
It seemed like an eternity before we finally pulled back, but my shock was no less severe. And when she looked at me with those star-flecked eyes, my mind still had trouble accepting what was right in front of me. “How?” I asked, unwilling to let her go just yet. Wanting—needing—to feel her, solid and real and alive, pressed against me. “I watched you die.”
Ariella nodded. “Yes, it wasn’t a very pleasant experience,” she said, and smiled at my bewildered expression. “There are … a lot of things that need explaining,” she continued, and a shadow darkened her face. “I have so much to tell you, Ash. But not here.” She slid back, out of my arms. “I have a place not far from here. Go collect Robin Goodfellow, and then I can tell you both.”
A strangled noise interrupted us. I turned to see Puck standing several yards away, staring at Ariella with an open mouth. His green eyes were wider than I’d ever seen them.
“I’m … seeing things,” he stammered, and his gaze flickered to me. For just a moment, I saw hope flare in their depths. “Ash? Tell me you see her, too.”
Incredibly, Ariella smiled at him. “Hello, Puck. It’s good to see you again. And, no … you’re not seeing things. It’s really me.” She held up her hand as Puck took a breath. “I know you both have many, many questions, but this is not the place to ask them. Follow me, and then I will try to explain everything.”
NUMBLY, I COLLECTED MY SWORD from where I’d flung it discourteously into the briars, and we followed Ariella through the mist and brambles, her spectral form gliding through the fog like a ghost. Each time the mist coiled around her pale figure, my heart twisted in fear, certain that when the tendrils pulled away she would be gone. Behind me, Puck was silent; I knew he was just as dazed, trying to come to terms with what we had just seen and heard. I was still reeling from the shock, from questions that swirled maddeningly in my head, and Puck was the last person I wanted to talk to.
We trailed Ariella through a thick hedge, where the mist cleared away and the briars formed a protective wall around a snowy glen. Glamour filled the tiny space, creating the illusion of gently falling snow, of icicles that hung on branches and a chill in the air, but not everything was fantasy. A clear pool glimmered in the center of the clearing, and a lone elder tree stood beside it, its branches heavy with purple berries. Shelves full of jars, dried plants and simple bone tools had been worked into the bramble, and a narrow bed stood beneath an overhang of woven thatch and ice.
Ariella walked over to a shelf and brushed imaginary dust from between two jars, seeming to collect her thoughts. I gazed around the clearing in wonder. “Is … is this where you live?” I asked. “All this time, you’ve been here?”
“Yes.” Ariella took a deep breath and turned around, smoothing back her hair. She’d always done that when she was nervous. “Sit, if you want.” She gestured to an old log, rubbed smooth and shiny with use, but I couldn’t bring myself to sit. Neither could Puck, apparently.
“So, how long have you been here, Ari?” he asked, and I instantly bristled at the casual use of his old nickname for her. He had no right to speak to her as if nothing had happened. As if everything was all right now. “Have you been here since … that day? All alone?”
She nodded, smiling tiredly. “It’s not the Winter palace by any means, but I make do.”
Irritation boiled over into real anger now. I tried to stifle it, but it rose up anyway as the blackest years of my existence seemed to descend on me all at once. She had been here all along, and never thought to see me, to let us know she was still alive. All those years of fighting, killing, all for nothing. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I demanded, and she winced as though she’d been expecting that question.
“Ash, believe me, I wanted to—”
“But you didn’t.” I stalked over to the elder tree, because I couldn’t remain motionless any longer. Her gaze followed me as I whirled back, gesturing to the glade. “You’ve been here for years, Ari, and you never came back, never made any attempt to see me again. You let me think you were dead! Why?” I was near shouting now, my composure shattered, but I couldn’t help it. “You could’ve sent word, let me know you were all right! All those years of thinking you were gone, that you were dead. Did you know what I was going through? What we both were going through?”
Puck blinked, startled that I would include him as well. I ignored him, however, still facing Ariella, who watched me sadly but offered no argument. I let my arms drop, and my anger vanished as quickly as it had come. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I whispered.
“Because, had I returned, you would have never