When I land back in the forest, I'm prepared to face Nymia's wrath. I'm ready for anger. I'm expecting fury. Instead, my sister throws her arms around my shoulders, buries her face against my neck, and pulls me in close.

"Oh, thank the Mother," she murmurs with an unsteady voice. "I thought you were dead."

"Dead?" I pull away to stare at her. "Why?"

She shakes her head, raising her fingers to her lips, then grips my shoulders. "Don't you scare me like that again."

"I'm sorry, Nymia. I'm so sorry. I just had to see him."

"I thought he killed you."

I recoil. "He would never."

"I thought you spoke to him and broke the oath."

"But I promised I wouldn't."

"I thought maybe the blessing was a punishment."

"A punishment?" I furrow my brows. "Nymia, what are you talking about?"

"You vanished," she says, as though it's an explanation.

"I know. I went through the portal, and I know you're mad, but I just—"

"Not the portal," she interrupts. "I saw you go through. I saw you land on his bed. I saw you pet his dog. I saw all that, and then you gave him the blessing, and you both disappeared."

"Disappeared?" The word sounds strange on my lips. "What do you mean?"

"I mean I couldn't see you in the scrying water, either of you. I searched and searched and searched, but it stayed a blurred wash of colors, as though the magic couldn't find you, as though you were dead. I've been searching for hours. I really thought—" She breaks off and swallows the lump in her throat. "I was about to give up when I felt the tug of your magic on the other end of the water. I latched on, linking our power together, and then you reappeared in a garden with your human by your side as though nothing had happened."

"I gave him the blessing and we disappeared…?" I trail off, letting the question sort of hang there as I digest her words.

I gave Erick the blessing. I gave Erick magic. I gave a human magic. And after I did, Nymia couldn't find us in the scrying water.

"We disappeared," I repeat, unable to stifle the awe in my tone as Erick's words whisper through my thoughts, sending my mind whirling. Run away with me. We'll take to the sea. We'll go somewhere no one will ever find us.

I thought he was being naïve, but what if we can run away? What if we can leave these lands and take to the sea and go somewhere no one will find us? Somewhere isolated and remote? I can grow us food. He can build us a shelter. As long as we stay close to each other, no one will find us. Maybe this was Mother's true blessing all along—a way to be together.

When I look up and see the terror still clinging to Nymia's eyes, guilt coils in my stomach. How can I be excited when she's afraid? How can I be planning to leave her when she's spent all night praying for me to come back?

I don't know, but I am.

The decision happens so fast, I almost gasp from the shock. The truth slams into me like a dragon at full speed, sending me reeling even as I'm rooted in place.

I love her.

I love Erick.

I don't want to leave either of them, but if I must choose, I choose him. He only has one life and I won't miss it. I can't. My sister will be alive long after he's gone. Hopefully, one day she'll forgive me.

"What happened?" Nymia asks softly, studying my gaze. For the first time, she doesn’t seem to understand what to read in my expression. My thoughts are a mystery to her, and though it pains me to even think it, I must keep them that way.

"I don't know," I mutter, breathless and light-headed from so much happening so fast. I blink a few times, realizing she's asking about before with the blessing, not the realization currently making my mind spin. I shake my head, trying to focus on her, on right now. "I gave Erick the blessing like I told you I would, and that was it. I'm not sure why we disappeared. I didn't speak to him, but I didn’t have to. I think he knew why I came, and we spent the rest of the night saying goodbye."

"Goodbye." Nymia frowns and her eyes harden. I think the relief of seeing me alive is beginning to subside. "Goodbye for real?"

I nod as my throat tightens around the lie. Tears spring to my eyes, brought about at the mere thought of the goodbye I'll be saying to her in a few days. The very idea rips me in two. I don't know how to live without my sister. I don't know who I am without her. But deep down, I know it's something I need to figure out. Maybe, in the end, we'll both be better for it.

As it is, I'm not sure how to breathe.

"Oh, Aerewyn." She sighs and pulls me into her chest in time to catch my sob. Her kindness makes my tears flow even faster. As she holds me, running her fingers through my hair, I cling to her. We stay like that for a while, while the shadows fade and the sun rises and the new day dawns. When we finally pull apart, she wipes the water from my cheeks. "It'll be okay," Nymia whispers. "I promise."

I put her hand to my heart and hold it there. "I know."

"Come on." She pulls me to my feet. "We're supposed to be celebrating."

Hand in hand, we return to the sacred meadow and slip into the throng of faeries still dancing around the eternal fire, celebrating the Mother, celebrating her magic, and most of all, celebrating each other. I hold Nymia's hand as we spin and laugh and relish in this moment, loving who we are, and what we are, and where we are, together with our kin, united in our power, connected always and forever.

The rest of the week passes in a blur.

I savor every moment with my sister, trying to memorize it, trying to bottle this feeling, so when I'm gone and I'm missing her, I'll have some little bit of Nymia to cling to. If she suspects anything, she doesn’t say. When she's not looking, I draw up the scrying water, searching for Erick, heart skipping a beat every time my magic fails to find him. He's still vanished. He's still gone. But at night, the moon grows fuller and fuller, reminding me that I know exactly how to find him.

Six days turns to five, turns to four, turns to three, until the sun sets in the west and a perfectly round moon rises in the east, casting the world in silver. Suddenly, my time is up.

"The rain always makes me think of you," I say into the silence, rolling over on my bed of moss to watch Nymia through the blades of grass swaying in the evening breeze. We're in our usual sleeping spot near the edge of the meadow, close to the forest, far from everyone else.

At the sound of my voice, she blinks, forcing her eyes open, though I can see her dreams pulling on her thoughts, luring her away. "Huh?"

"Oh, nothing. It’s just, when it storms, I always think of you, and I thought, well, maybe you should know that," I murmur, growing quieter with each consecutive word. If I say goodbye, she'll never go to bed. She'll never let me leave. She'll try to come too, even though that life would never make her happy. I couldn't do that to her.

I can't say goodbye—but I can't say nothing either.

"Of course you always think of me," she grumbles. "Who else would dance with you in the rain, if not me?"

"No one." I smile. It’s true, and I suppose it'll be a while before I dance that particular dance again. Though it'll be comforting to know that when it storms, I can walk outside, lift my face to the sky while water pellets my cheeks, and imagine Nymia is out there somewhere doing exactly the same thing. It'll feel as if in that moment, maybe we aren’t so far apart.

"What's this about?"

"I was just thinking"—I cough to cover the hitch in my throat—"thinking out loud, I guess."

"Well, don't."

"Why not?"

"It's weird."

I bark out a laugh as the tension in my skin releases. I'm going to miss her so much. I already do and she's right next to me. "Isn't there something that makes you think of me?"

"I don't know, Aerewyn. I'm too tired."

"That's okay." I sigh softly. "Go to sleep."

"Is everything an answer?" She pauses to yawn and rolls over on her side to face me, folding her hands beneath her cheek like a pillow. "We do everything together, so I don't know if I can pick just one. I guess if I had to, maybe it'd be the stars? Because you're always dragging me through the forests at midnight on some grand adventure or another, and when I roll my eyes, they're always there overhead, mocking me with their mischievous twinkle, as though in cahoots with you."

I turn and shift my gaze, looking to the full moon, then to the stars barely visible at the edges of the horizon where the shadows still cling. They used to remind me of Erick, but now that I'll be with him, maybe the constellations can bring memories of my sister. I'll draw new ones that'll write our story across the sky, filling it with happy faerie tales instead of sad human ones. "That's good. I like that."

Silence stretches, but I know she hasn't gone to sleep. Her gaze burns my cheek. If I listen closely, I could probably hear the winds in her mind shift, spinning in a new direction, down a dark vortex she doesn't want to even consider. Just when I think she's going to forget it, she whispers my name.

"Aerewyn?"

I roll back over and meet her eyes, not surprised by the shift in her tone to something cautious. I feign ignorance. "Yeah, Nymia?"

"Please don't do anything stupid."

"Me?" I laugh, trying to calm her nerves, or my nerves, or maybe both. I should've let her go to sleep. I've never been very good at hiding the truth from my sister. From everyone else? Sure. But never from her. "Do something stupid?"

She frowns as suspicion darkens her gaze.

A bolt of heat shoots painfully down my chest, and I try to swallow it away. I don't want to fight. I don't want that to be her last memory of me for however long it is until we meet again.

"Promise me, Aerewyn," she demands, voice firm.

"I promise," I say just as clearly, telling myself it's not a lie. Because running away with Erick isn't stupid. It isn't some impulsive whim, there one second and gone the next. I'm listening to my heart, to Mother. It's the most rash, thought-out, sensible thing I've ever done.

Still, I wait for a counter.

It never comes.

A few minutes pass and Nymia falls peacefully asleep. I wonder if she thinks the protection spell will keep me trapped in faerie lands. I wonder if she thinks it's safe to leave me alone with my plans because without her help, I can't make a portal.

She's wrong.

When I was with Erick, he told me something that shocked me. All those roses I was sending through tiny portals of my own making in the weeks we were apart, all the ones I never thought made it through to the other side, he found them scattered across the castle grounds—in the throne room, in the courtyard, in the stables, everywhere except in his bedroom where I meant for them to land.

Without Nymia's help, I can't make a very good portal, but I can make a mediocre one that will drop me somewhere in the human forest. I'm not exactly sure where, but once I'm across the barrier, I'll figure something out.

I wait for my sister's breath to slow before I roll carefully to my feet. Then I stare down at her for I don't know how long. It feels like hours, though it must be only seconds. I don't know how to do this, how to say goodbye to her. So I don't. I lean down and kiss her brow, and pretend this is a night like any other as I turn around and march into the forest. I pretend half of my heart hasn't ripped from my chest and fallen to the ground beside her sleeping form. I pretend my tears are raindrops, that the ache in my chest is the warm heat of the sun, and that the words catching in my throat are a mere cough. I pretend so hard I almost believe it as I find a spot in the woods to kneel, then call the water and form a portal. I ignore the way my fingers tremble as I hold them over the surface. I ignore how my spirit fractures as I drop my hands into the water and sink through.

By the time I open my eyes in human lands, they're so blurred I can hardly see. So I let go, because for the moment I'm alone in the woods where no one can hear me. At first, I think the tears will stop, that I'll eventually cry this ache away, but I quickly realize that's not the case. Missing my sister is a bottomless pit, an absence in my soul, an abyss I won't be able to escape as long as we're apart. It's just something I'll have to learn to live with—but that's not a lesson I'll learn tonight.

Tonight, I need Erick.

Tonight, I need to feel his arms around me.

Tonight, I need him to hold me until the pain subsides enough that I can bear it, because it's not a burden I can carry on my own.

I sprint through the forest, hardly aware of my surroundings, following the tug on my heart that leads to the caves, even now, even when they're collapsed and hardly there. When I see a man in a hooded cloak, turned toward the rubble, I don't question. I race faster, because it's Erick, and I need him. My mind is too overrun to register the absence of the barking hound who should be announcing my presence, or to notice there's no burning itch deep in my throat warning me not to call out. My eyes are too unfocused to understand the figure is a few inches too short and a few inches too wide. It's not until a strangled cry echoes through the trees that I think to stop.

By then it's too late.

I stumble over my feet, falling full-speed into the stranger before me. He grabs my hand, spins me around, and slams my back into his chest as he seals a metal ring around my wrist—a metal ring no human should even know of, let alone possess.

My connection to the Mother snuffs out.

My magic drains away.

I freeze, helpless, as a snarling voice I recognize whispers into my ear. "Hello, Aeri."