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H is voice was raw. He’d bellowed for her, screamed for her to stop. But he couldn’t get to her.

You buried her under the wrong hawthorn.

It had taken him too many minutes to understand. To grasp the gravity of her statement.

His mother had called the Fae to Dublin. He didn’t know how, but he knew it was the truth in his bones. And Atta had figured out how to make it stop.

He’d left the others fighting for Imogen’s life and ran around the house, shouting for her, searching for her, but when he saw the missing book from her room, he knew where she’d gone.

thought his head would explode, his heart would beat out of his chest, his lungs collapse. He’d been lost in a wood that was not his own for what felt like an indeterminate amount of time.

“ Atta !” he bellowed again, his voice cracking, all used up.

And then the world exploded in white just before a BOOM shook the earth, knocking to his knees.

He covered his ears and closed his eyes, nearly blinded by the explosion.

Another BOOM came before the sounds of crashing stones, trees cracking, glass shattering, branches falling, the world being destroyed. His world.

And then everything went silent.

“ Atta !” he screamed, and he was on his feet, tripping, stumbling through the fallen forest.

He found her body beneath the collapsed hawthorn, still. Too still.

Tears crowded his eyes, his throat, as he fell to the ground next to her, pushing at the hawthorn helplessly. He finally managed to get it off of her, but her chest didn’t move.

That was when he saw the uncorked vial around her neck.

“ A stór , no.”

bent his head over her chest and wept.