LIVY KNEW SOMETHING WAS WRONG EVEN BEFORE SHE OPENED HER EYES. SHE LAY LISTENING, BUT HEARD NOTHING except Kit’s steady breathing. No wind from outside. No sound from Grady and Skye downstairs.
She loathed to climb out of the luxurious warmth of the bed. It was her first night staying over with Kit, and she’d found it cozy even though they hadn’t tried to have sex, not with Skye and Grady within earshot. She longed to cuddle up close to his heat and go back to sleep, but…not if something was wrong.
She slipped out of bed, shuddered at the drafty air, and padded across to the loft’s half-wall to look down into the living room. The house was dark, but the snow coating the ground outside sent a filtered light through the windows, enough to see by. Enough to tell the sofa-bed’s blankets were thrown back, and the pillows unoccupied.
Livy darted to the spiral stairs and flew down them, mostly trying to stay quiet, but increasingly letting go of that concern in the face of panic.
They weren’t in the bed. They weren’t in the kitchen, or the bathroom, or anywhere in the house.
“Kit!” Her voice shattered the silence. She ran to the front window, then to each of the side windows, looking out in vain. No one moving. Nothing to see but snow. People had died of hypothermia in conditions like this…
Kit’s feet thumped on the floor upstairs. “Liv? What is it?”
“They’re gone! They’re not here.”
“Shit.” He thundered down the stairs to the front door, which he flung open.
They stuck their heads out into the icy air.
“Footprints.” She pointed.
They looked at one another.
“I’m suiting up,” she said.
Within two minutes they were both dressed for outdoors, in snow boots, coats, and gloves. They ran out into the cold. Livy wore the gold ring on a length of yarn around her neck to keep from dropping it, and clutched her gloved hand around it.
They followed the footprints, seemingly Skye’s and Grady’s both, until they stopped under the large alder at the edge of the property.
“They just disappear,” Livy said in wonder.
“They took a path.” Kit’s face had tensed, hardened. “Into the fae world.”
“I thought that wasn’t supposed to happen from the island!”
“Well, it can. Just doesn’t usually.”
“Okay.” She turned to him. “You have to go somewhere else. Out of sight, off where you can’t hear me. I have to summon the locals and I have to be alone.”
He nodded, and took her by the shoulders. “Listen. I don’t know what they’re going to have you do. There’ll probably be weird rules, things that don’t make sense. So…if there’s some kind of magic where they need a sacrifice, someone’s life, someone taken into their world forever—I’ll do it. Give them my name. I mean it. Mine, not yours.”
Tears stung her eyes. “You kidding me? I’m saving all four of us. We’re not handing over lives tonight.”
“Livy.” His voice was almost just a breath. His grip tightened on her shoulders. “It may be you don’t have a choice. If that’s how it is, pick me.”
“What fun would I have around here without you?” Her voice cracked a little.
“I love you. Shit, I haven’t loved anyone for—I don’t know, ever. I want you to know that. But I also want you to pick me if you have to pick anyone. The rest of you have more to live for.”
The tears in her eyes blurred his face. “I’m not sure I can promise that. Because I love you too.”
“Nah, you don’t. Maybe you could someday, and that alone makes me happy. So go save those two, okay?”
“I do love you,” she insisted.
“But you love Skye more.” When she hesitated, he added, “As you should. So go.” He let go of her. “Bring them back.”
She stepped forward and locked him into a long kiss, storing up all the details in case she never saw him again: the soft warmth of his lips, the bristle of his beard, the cozy lingering scent of pillows and sleep. Then she pulled back, bracing her shoulders. “Okay.”
“Good luck with that magic shovel.” They both smiled as bravely as they could manage, then he turned and walked away.
She waited until he was around the cabin and out of sight. Then she wiped her eyes, drew a deep breath of the snowy air, and wrapped her hand around the ring on its chain. “I need your help,” she told the silent trees. “Please come.”
This time they came. The wind gusted, and dark shapes popped up out of the snow: mushrooms, growing fast. They formed a dotted line leading between bushes and trees. Somewhere down the path, a frog-like voice said, “Come, Olivia Darwen.”
Livy held onto the ring and did what she was told to never do: she took the path. It wasn’t a long path, just five yards or so, but when she looked back at the end of it, Kit’s cabin and all other signs of civilization were gone. Fear and wonder shivered through her. It was the wild version of Crabapple Island.
Some of the mushrooms were moving. Walking, coming up to form a circle around her, where they were joined by a few of the locals she’d glimpsed before. The flying clump of spruce needles zoomed in along with the grotesque-faced dragonfly, and the golden, luminous frog floated down to face level again.
“The goblins have taken your tribemates,” the frog said. “It is time for you to be brave. Are you willing to walk a path to reach them?”
Livy nodded. “How do I do it?”
“The goblins have protected their lair with many enchantments. To guide you through them, we can open a fourfold path, one for each element.”
Livy understood almost at once. She wore them on her ankles, after all. “Earth, air, fire, water.” The ring’s four symbols, too, now that she thought about it.
“Yes. If you take this path all the way into their dwellings, we can follow you and change the goblins into new shapes, different fae, so that they will do less harm and more good. We have long wished to be able to, but we could not break through. We needed someone from your tribe, with a rightful claim to retribution, to walk this path for us.”
“Then I will. And Skye and Grady will be saved?”
“Only if you complete the task before dawn. They are beginning to be transformed into goblins now. We can change them back if we reach them before the night ends. Otherwise…” The frog pursed its wide lips. “I cannot guarantee they will ever be the same again.”
Livy shivered, not wishing to ponder what that meant. “Then show me the path.” She took out her phone and checked the hour. “It’s just after midnight. I suppose that means I have seven or so hours.”
“Time moves differently in our realm,” the frog warned. “Often faster. You must not delay.”
“We’re on the island, right? How do we get across the water? Is there a bridge?”
“Yes, the goblins have taken your tribemates to the mainland. Our path will guide you there. As long as you stay upon it and keep hold of the ring, you will remain safe and end up where you need to be.”
“So when I get to their dwellings, what do I do?”
“You must capture their central source of magic and give it to us. The token of their leader: the ring with the red stone.”
“I have to steal Redring’s ring?” Livy almost shouted it, remembering too clearly the blood and bruises that resulted from Kit’s attempts to fight the goblins. “They’re strong, they’re immortal! How can I?”
The frog looked grim, twitching its sparkly wings. “You must be clever. And quick, and brave.”
“Oh, holy crap.” She looked down in near-panic at her phone.
“There must be no contact with your world,” the frog added. “It will break the spell and strand you, and your opportunity will be lost.”
Livy turned off her phone, and zipped it into her coat pocket. Mentally she said a farewell to the human domain, which she half suspected she’d never see again. But Skye was worth the risk. “Then let’s get started.”
“The first element of your path.” The frog drifted aside. “Earth.”
The ground tore itself open before Livy’s feet. The coating of snow gave way to the black soil of the forest, in a yawning hole that reminded her of the ragged craters left behind when trees fell over and ripped their roots out of the earth. But this hole went deeper, and as she watched, green glowing worms and centipedes squirmed out of the dirt and formed themselves into two parallel lines, with a foot of space between them: a path, pointing straight into the underground darkness.
“I…follow that?” she said.
“You must not leave the path,” the frog cautioned again. “The fae of each element will guide you. I will see you again only when you have completed the four parts. You may walk, crawl, or climb as need be, but the path is the only place you are sure to be safe.”
“Safe.” She pulled in a deep breath. She could think of plenty of safer approaches than crawling through a pitch-black tunnel of dirt under the forest floor. Then again, the fae’s rules weren’t going to make sense. Kit had warned her of that. She stepped closer, examining the opening.
“If you complete the path through the earth element,” the frog said, “the next will open for you.”
“If ? Wait, what happens if I can’t finish it for some reason?”
“It is hard to say. The enchantment will break, and at best you will find yourself back on the surface in the human world. At worst, the element may trap you forever.”
“The element.” She stared at the black tunnel into the ground, full of wriggling bugs and dangling roots. “Earth.” Buried alive, in other words.
She hesitated, trying to calculate how deep this tunnel might go and whether she’d be able to dig herself out with her hands, through earth frozen solid.
The frog drifted closer. “Time is wasting. Set out now, or your tribemates may be lost.”
Skye would tunnel under the earth with her bare hands to save Livy, if their positions had been the other way around. Livy knew that without question.
She walked forward between the lines of glowing creatures, and dropped to her hands and knees. The frozen earth felt hard and sharp under her gloves. The path loomed black inside the hole; the illuminated lines faded a few yards down—for down was the direction the path slanted. Livy took one look back at the hovering frog, the other fae, and the snow-covered landscape. She drew in a last breath of the open air, then crawled forward into the earth.