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But Mara, at the head of the line, didn’t hear him, or else she was ignoring him. She kept pressing on through the snow, her arm up to shield her face. She turned back to us, waved her other arm. It looked like she was saying something, but I couldn’t tell what.

“Mara!” Ryder shouted. “We can’t hear you!”

Gemma tried next, cupped her hands around her mouth. “Mara, wait!”

My stomach sank as the realization set in: something was wrong. Freyda was flapping wildly around Mara’s head, pulling at her hair with beak and talons, but soon Mara was lost to the darkness between the swaying, creaking trees. In her absence, Freyda was suddenly beside herself, shrieking a desperate falcon’s cry, flying again and again into the shadows only to come shooting back toward us as if flung from a catapult.

Ryder held up his gloved hands and called out to Freyda in Ekkari, the same phrase over and over. He’d be hoarse after this, his voice torn to shreds by the wind. Finally she alighted in his arms, her feathers in complete disarray. He held her close to his chest and shielded her from the snow with his coat, and I felt a rush of relief; at least Freyda was safe, which had to meansomethinggood. But a moment later, I heard Talan cry out, and I whirled in a panic to find Gemma running along the path Mara had cut through the snow. Talan tried to hurry after her, followed by Gareth, but they didn’t get far. Something—some invisible force—was pushing them back, making them stumble. It looked almostas if they were fighting to wade out into the sea, but roaring, unseen waves kept shoving them to their knees.

And as I watched Gemma’s blurred shape disappear into the trees just as Mara’s had, an idea came to me—the sort of horrible, sinking-feeling guess that I knew at once was correct. It was as though the idea were a living thing, with claws and muscles and a tenacious will. As soon as the thought formed in my mind, I felt compelled to move—forward, always forward, faster, and faster. The feeling ofturn around, ofgo no farther, transformed at once into something warmer, sweeter:Come home. Come to me. Finally. At last, you’re here.

Whatever thing was here—whether a phenomenon of magic or Olden creature or strange moonlit palace where the sun never shone—I knew without a doubt that only my sisters and I could reach it.Fae blood, Gemma kept insisting in my mind. I laughed a little, frantic and frightened. The ridiculous idea of fae blood running in my veins seemed suddenly to be the least terrifying explanation.

The next moment, I found myself tromping fast through the snow, following the sloppy footprints my sisters had left behind. I ignored the frustrated shouts of Ryder behind me, Gareth’s frightened voice calling my name. There was no song in the air this time, pulling me through the Middlemist toward some unknown destination. I would not emerge on the other side of this and find the woods where we’d fought the Brethaeus, the yellow field, Talan’s old house by the sea. No, this was different. This felt…familiar. A voice I knew was calling me, and yet not a voice at all, really; it was more a feeling, so distinct and eager that I could hear it welcoming me, even without words.

Squinting against the wind, I pushed forward through the darkness, the looming trees, the whirling snow. I tried to call out for Gemma and Mara, but the roaring storm stole my breath, and I gasped at the cold, gulping for air, groping for some kind of solid anchor in the frigid darkness, until all of a sudden I was…through. A wall of something Icouldn’t see—some force or power, some shift in the air—gave way at my touch, and all at once the world around me changed: warmth instead of cold, a gentle breeze in place of a gale. When I breathed in, choking on the sudden easy bounty of air, I smelled a cooking fire, the perfume of roses. I heard the drone of honeybees, and my snow-crusted boots trampled tiny yellow wildflowers.

Dazed, I look around, my cheeks still burning from the cold, and was astonished to see the same forest I’d just been in—only these pines were a vivid green, and the forest floor was rife with moss and flowers. New spring growth bloomed everywhere, and above the canopy stretched a sky of cloudless blue.

“Farrin,” said a voice—somehow both a jubilant shout from a great distance away and a gentle whisper in my ear.

I blinked, struggling to clear the frost and tears from my eyes, and once I could focus on the figure calling my name, what I saw broke something inside me. I shattered; my heart burst open.

Impossible. Itcouldn’tbe.

And yet there she was, standing in front of a pretty thatched-roof cottage, my sisters on either side of her, clinging to her, crying and laughing, both of them reduced to the little girls they had once been.

There was only one word to say, and the very shape of it felt wrong in my mouth:

“Mother.”

Chapter 15

For a few moments, the world moved as it often did in my nightmares of the fire, my dreams of the shining boy: flames all around me, my young legs not strong enough to carry me, the floor shaking underfoot. Each passing second was an agony of confusion. The very air was a mire, pushing against me as I clawed desperately for any door, any window, frantic for a proper breath.

Such was the feeling of watching my mother walk toward me, her arms outstretched and a peaceful smile on her face. She wore a green dress the color of the bright spring buds, plain but fine, and she was barefoot, her feet brown with mud. She carried flowers in her pockets, and on a thin cord around her neck hung a polished black pipe. Beyond her, Gemma sobbed into Mara’s sleeve while Mara looked on, silent tears streaking her face.

“Farrin, my dearest heart,” Mother said, reaching for me. “Look at you. Look at all of you. Such lovely women you’ve become.”

Her hand touched my sleeve. The sensation jerked me out of my stupor. I took three quick steps back, out of her grasp.

“What is this?” I said, my voice coming out hoarse, my throat tight with anger. “Who are you?”

My mother’s smile melted into something even kinder, even gentler, as if I were the child I’d once been, come to her for comfort after scraping my knee. “Farrin, it’s me,” she said, trying once more to reach for me. “It’s your mother.”

This time I shoved her hard. My own force surprised me; I stumbled back, nearly fell. “I have no mother,” I snapped. “She died years ago.”

Her brow furrowed slightly. A shadow fell over her face. She lowered her hand and stepped back. “Clearly I didn’t die.”

“You might as well have. In fact, it would’ve been better if you had. Instead, youleftus. Or she did. What are you, some Olden creature? A figment guarding Moonhollow, sent to confuse us, lull us into inattention?”

“Moonhollow?” Her head tilted to the side, inquisitive. “What’s Moonhollow?”

I whirled around, scanning the trees that encircled the little cottage. I couldn’t look at this person anymore; her face was too familiar, pale and oval-shaped, as Mara’s was, but softer, rounder. And her eyes were the same blue as Gemma’s, and her hair was long and dark brown, also like Mara’s, and even the way she stood upon the earth was the same. She took up the same amount of space in the world as I remembered, moved with the same easy grace.

And her mouth was thin, a little pinched, her brows sharp and angry even when her face was at rest.

Pieces of my own face, staring back at me.