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“I’m not sure.” I speared my fingers between the braids at the roots and scratched my skull energetically. “The best would be just to cut them off I guess. Listen, how long does Prince Rha usually take to do his city business?”

“It depends on the business, I believe,” Jotti replied in her soft, soothing voice.

Under different circumstances, I would’ve probably enjoyed spending time with her. The calm manner with which she did her job was in stark contrast with the hurried tension of the Joy Vessel Kippers in the queen’s sarai .

Jotti picked a few jars from the tray with toiletries, then grabbed a pair of scissors.

“How short do you want me to cut your braids?” She turned to me with a purpose.

Even without the pile of sand now surely stuck in my braids forever, it was long overdue for me to get rid of the braids. My hair had grown, and my braids had taken quite a beating in the past two months, looking fuzzy and messy now.

However, I hesitated to accept Jotti’s help, eyeing skeptically her hair that was long and straight like a horse’s tail.

“Are you sure you know how to do it?” I asked.

She nodded confidently. “I used to take care of Shyanne’s hair, before she decided to shave it off.”

Shyanne stretched over the rocks in the shallow end of the pool.

“And she’s done a great job.” With a languid smile, she stroked her smooth, freshly shaved head.

The soft light of the wall sconces reflected in the water, making her dark-brown skin glow almost like the skin of the fae.

“I’m glad I got rid of my braids before traipsing back and forth in the fucking desert.

Forget whatever fashion you used to follow back home, girl.

These guys don’t care about how you look, only about how you feel. ”

I hesitated, but not because I was concerned about the fashion.

I’d gotten the pink braids because I wanted to look different, but now a sudden thought entered my mind…

How different did I want to look this time?

What would Kurai think if he saw me without the braids?

He knew they weren’t my real hair. But I remembered how many kisses he’d placed on them.

No matter what I did, I kept worrying about Kurai.

“What does the dungeon in Teneris look like?” I asked Jotti.

“It depends.” She spun the scissors around her thumb.

“The most hardened, vicious criminals, I’ve heard, are kept deep below the lowest habitable level of the city, which sounds like a nasty place, to be honest. But unless the Joy Guardian, who brought you in, did something horrific, he wouldn’t be placed there. ”

I chewed on my lower lip nervously. I didn’t want Kurai to spend even a day in the dungeon, regardless of what level they’d put him on.

Jotti snapped her scissors. “Well, what are we going to do about those braids?”

The sarai of Prince Rha was smaller than the queen’s sarai in Kalmena, but the gardens were just as elaborate and the furnishings just as opulent. Two- and three-story buildings surrounded the courtyard with well-kept flower beds, trickling water features, and beautiful fountains.

“I’ll get your midnight meal right now.” Jotti said shortly after bringing me to the sarai . “You’re going to love the food here. Prince Rha feeds his Joy Vessels exceptionally well.”

Worried sick about Kurai, I wondered if Prince Rha fed his prisoners at least half as well as his Joy Vessels, or if Kurai got fed at all yet .

When Jotti left, I found myself pacing in a loop around the fountain and chewing on my lip, raked by worry. I reached to tug on my braid out of habit, then remembered I no longer had any and ran my hand over my short hair instead.

I’d let Jotti cut it as short as she could without actually shaving my head. We washed all the sand out of it, and my head felt lighter without the braids, even as my heart was heavy as a rock, weighted down by concerns.

As I started on my second loop around the fountain, a male Joy Keeper entered the sarai . He came to me and bowed his head.

“Joy Vessel Ciana, Lady Dawn is here to see you,” he said proudly, as if announcing the arrival of a queen.

A blonde woman entered, running to me in a not royal-like manner.

“Welcome, welcome!” she gushed. “I’m so glad they found all of you.”

Found? Like we had been sitting around waiting for someone to find us, instead of Kurai rescuing us and then navigating the desert to bring us to safety, only for him to be arrested right after he did all of that.

“Everyone is bathing,” I informed her coolly. “I’m the only one here right now.”

She stopped in her tracks. Her eyes opened wide, and her mouth fell open. She stared at me as if seeing a ghost.

“Ciana?” she breathed out my name with a gasp.

Dawn— the Keeper had introduced her by that name. If so, she must be the prince’s lover, like Shyanne had said. Maybe she knew what happened to Kurai and could help? At the very least, she should be able to put in a word for him with the prince.

“Nice to meet you.” I softened my voice and even forced a smile.

The animosity I was feeling toward this woman was not personal. I didn’t know her and had no reason to hate her other than the fact that she was with the man who imprisoned Kurai .

“Ciana!” She grabbed me in a tight hug that squeezed the air out of my chest. “I can’t believe I finally found you!”

“Okay…Um…” I blinked, gently trying to get free from her arms, but she wouldn’t let go.

She leaned back to look at my face and finally caught on to my confusion.

“You don’t recognize me, do you? I’m Dawn.”

I knew her name, but she seemed to mean more by it than just introducing herself to me.

My eyes met hers, and my breath halted. Her irises didn’t match in color. One was blue and the other was brown. There was only one other person I’d ever known who had the same eyes—my little cousin.

The longer I stared at the face of this grown woman, the clearer the features of the child I knew and loved emerged. A huge smile spread on her face, further sealing the resemblance.

“Are you…Is that really you?” I felt like I was losing my mind with reality morphing into a dream. “But how is it even possible? Dawn is only twelve.”

“ Was twelve,” she corrected. “I was twelve when you were taken. Which was thirteen years ago. I’ve grown since. I’m twenty-five now. Which actually makes me older than you. Crazy, huh?” She smiled again, spreading her arms wide and finally releasing me from her embrace.

“But it’s been just over two months…” I muttered.

The longer I looked at her, listened to her voice, and watched her expressions, the more familiar she became. It was Dawn. As a grown woman, not the child I knew, not the girl I left behind just mere two months ago.

“Oh, right.” She slapped her forehead. “So, you don’t know?”

“Know what? You mean about the time travel and the River of Mists?” I recalled Kurai explaining it to me. Back then, it all sounded like an abstract concept.

“That part.” Dawn nodded. “The River of Mists doesn’t always drop you off in the same place and time where it takes you from.

So, when the shadow fae kidnapped you, then came back four weeks later to get me, they actually landed in our world thirteen years later.

Their shadow tunnels allowed them to return to the same time and place here, but only as long as they used the same portal to leave and return. Does it make sense?”

“In theory, maybe. But in reality…” I shook my head, struggling to believe my own eyes.

My cousin had lived for thirteen years out there somewhere in the world that had only aged two months in my mind.

“It’s incredible, isn't it?” she agreed. “We all came here about a month ago.”

“So they took you too ? ”

“Yes. Apparently, the shadow tunnels do it sometimes, they end up in the same place they’ve connected to before.” She sighed, her expression darkened. “Thirteen years later, the shadows came and took me, and Melanie, and?—”

“Melanie? Is she here too?”

It should sadden me that both my little cousins had been taken from their home—and it did.

But my heart also leaped with excitement at having family close by again.

Selfishly, I was glad to have them here with me now.

Their presence in this world made the hostile Alveari Kingdom feel more like home.

Judging by Dawn’s expression, however, she didn’t share my excitement.

“She was ,” she said somberly. “Melanie went back.”

“Back to the human world?”

“Yes, she was one of the few who managed to return. You know Melanie.” she smiled. “My sister always had determination to get what she wanted.”

“She went back…” I repeated.

My thoughts shifted like pieces of a moving mechanism in my head, rearranging into different scenarios.

“I hope she’s okay, but I fear I’ll never know what really happened to her,” Dawn said.

“Wait… I may know that. Or something close to it… ”

I pulled out the paper bookmark that I had taken from the temple. I’d put inside my bra after the bath earlier tonight. Because unlike in the queen’s sarai , here Jetti gave me a full dress, a bra, and real underwear to wear.

“I found it in the Temple of the First Priestess. It’s an impression of an engraving of the original text. See what it says?”

“It’s in English.” Dawn blinked in confusion, studying the bookmark.

“Yes. Read it.”

“‘Don’t be afraid, Dawn,’” she read. “‘After a storm always comes peace. Melanie’ Oh, my God. That’s my sister’s handwriting…’” Her voice broke off with a sob. “What…what does it mean? Is it a message? From her? But how?”

She stared at me, searching my face for answers with those huge, mismatched eyes of hers that made me think of home. I had nothing but assumptions to give her. I hoped the assumptions were true, but I wasn’t going to lie to my cousin.

“I don’t know,” I confessed. “Did she write it, then leave it at the temple while she was here?”