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“Different?”

Caden nodded. “You seemed... I don’t know... just better .” He shrugged. “Happy. I think if the king made you happy, then you should go back.”

Kate bit her lip to keep from crying. “Would you miss me?”

“Of course I would,” Caden replied. “But that doesn’t mean you should stay. You’re always so sad here.”

“How did you get to be so wise?” Kate asked, her voice trembling.

Caden’s eyes were serious. “I have a really smart older sister.”

Kate threw her arms around the little boy, hugging him against her chest. She breathed in the scent of him and pressed her lips to his golden hair. She would carry the memories of him with her always like a shield into every battle.

“I will miss you more than you know.” Her words were barely a whisper, because if she said them any louder, she might lose the strength to go.

When at last she let go of him, he smiled, but his eyes were full of tears.

“I believe in you, Kate. You just have to believe in you too.” Then, without looking back, he left and closed the door behind him.

Kate glanced around her bedroom once more. Her home, her clothes, her books, everything would be left behind. But that was the old Kate’s life. She didn’t need any of it anymore...

Except her mother’s book of fairy tales.

She retrieved it from the floor and pressed it against her chest, shutting her eyes.

How do I get back to you, Roan? Are you even alive?

“Show me the way back...” she murmured to the night.

She didn’t know if it would work, but she had to try. She couldn’t live the rest of her life not having taken the chance to go back.

Nothing happened.

Kate opened her eyes, still in her room. She closed them again. “Take me back, please .”

She waited. Still nothing.

“Damn it...” She stifled a sob, but she refused to give up. Roan had said he opened roads to travel between worlds. Roan could open those roads as he pleased, but she wasn’t Roan. So how...?

Lightning crashed outside and rain poured from the skies. Just like the night when she got into her car and...

“Oh my God...”

She remembered driving through the storm past the edge of the woods, where Roan in his owl form had crashed into her car.

It was a liminal place between worlds, according to the fairy tales.

She remembered her mother telling her that places “in between” could help a person find their way to the land of the Fae.

Kate scrambled to change out of her PJs and into her jeans and a sweater.

She then pulled on a raincoat and tucked the book in one of the pockets, along with the feather.

She left her house and slipped into the night.

The clouds above shuddered with thunder, and a bolt of lightning tore across the sky.

“I’m coming, Roan. Hold on.” She ran down the street, straight toward the dark outline of the woods.

I wish to return to the labyrinth. I wish to go home. S he repeated the words in her mind like an incantation, praying it would work.

Lightning struck a tree at the edge of the woods. Fire sparked through the leaves and shot down the trunk, breaking the tree clean in half. There in the center of the split tree was a shimmer of light, bending and refracting in a way that was not of this earth.

She ran toward that sliver of light. Ignoring the fire that now wreathed the area, she leapt through.

The tides of time carried Kate away from the place she’d once called home. Blinding colors and flashes of light pulled Kate across thousands of universes. All she could do was hold on to the image of Roan in her mind.

I wish to go home. To Roan .

* * *

It was night, with a full moon overhead, yet Kate couldn’t recognize where she was.

She only knew that she was no longer in her world.

Was this the right place? Nothing looked how she remembered it.

The ivy-covered walls of the labyrinth had fallen into ruin.

The once intricately carved towering gates lay in pieces on either side of the entrance.

Charred evidence of fires blackened the once pale stone.

The air was thin, as though nothing grew here anymore.

What had happened to this place? She remembered how deeply parts of it had smelled of flowers, where others smelled of darkness and decay, but the scents had been rich and real.

Now the place smelled stale, empty, lifeless.

It was as though all the dark and beautiful things that had lived within the labyrinth were but a dim memory.

Kate got to her feet and removed the book of tales from her raincoat as she stared at the labyrinth and the pale moon far above. Where had the bright moonlight gone?

Kate slapped a balled fist against her chest as fresh agony sliced through her heart. She was too late. Roan’s world could only look like this if Roan was no longer here to see it grow and flourish.

The air around her suddenly crackled with energy, as though lightning was about to strike.

Then in a blinding flash of light, a figure appeared before Kate.

She shielded her eyes until they adjusted.

The woman in front of her wasn’t Thalia Moondove, but she was a familiar face that gave Kate a burst of hope.

“Eudora?”

Lady Eudora didn’t smile. Her blue eyes were so filled with grief that it seemed like they would never carry joy again.

She wore a court gown of deep purple and silver, and on her brow was a circlet of glowing pearls and diamonds.

She looked just as beautiful as she always had, yet she seemed to have aged from the grief in her eyes.

“I had hoped after all these years that you would come back.”

Kate drew closer to the other woman. “What do you mean, ‘all these years’?”

“It has been a hundred years since the battle of the labyrinth... a century since you left...”

“A hundred years?” The words punched Kate in the stomach.

Eudora shook her head. “Time is less stable here than it once was. The years speed up and slow down without control compared to your world. Roan always held time in place, mastered it better than any of us.”

Kate felt ill. It had only been a short time in her world, half an hour at most?

“Much has changed since you left,” said Eudora.

“What about Roan?” They were the only words that Kate could get out right now.

“He is frozen in a deathlike sleep. After Roan sent you home, our mother appeared. She cast the most powerful enchantment I’ve ever seen upon him. She laid his body to sleep in the heart of the labyrinth, and Rath chose to stay with him until he wakes. I haven’t seen either in a century.”

Kate didn’t understand. Rath and Eudora were in love... and they’d been parted for that long? “Why didn’t you go visit him?”

“The labyrinth grew far more dangerous after you left. I tried many times to find the center, but I always lost the way.” Eudora paused to clear her throat.

“Mother left the mists of time and returned to us. She gave me the right to rule the Unseelie, and she returned to the southern lands to rule the Seelie court.” Eudora’s voice quivered.

“But I have no desire to be queen. I only wish for my brother to return.”

Kate placed a hand on her arm. “Can Roan be saved?”

“I don’t know. Mother said only you would know the way.

” She glanced around at the dim and dying world.

“We need him. All of us, from the Sidhe down to the smallest pixies, need him. This world is nothing without his light.” The Fae princess spoke, her heart in her eyes. “You must bring him back to us.”

“Can’t you show me the way?”

Eudora shook her head. “I only know he lies in the heart of the labyrinth. It opened briefly at my mother’s command to allow Rath to carry Roan in and just as quickly closed behind them. Now, the heart is just as impossible to find as it’s always been.”

Kate turned toward the gates, taking in the dark path that was half filled with stones and shadows. She had failed to find the center before—how could she do so now?

After a moment, she opened her mother’s book and stared at the story on the page. “The Ballad of the Bride of the Dark Woods.”

The bride put her hand in the king’s, and she smiled at her husband. “You know I’ve uncovered your secret. You are the woods, and the woods are you.”

“The woods are you...” The hairs on Kate’s neck rose as she realized that all this time she’d had the key to solving the puzzle right before her. How had she not seen the connection before? She was the bride and Roan the king of the dark woods.

Only here, Roan was the labyrinth . The labyrinth was Roan. Therefore, the center of the labyrinth was and always had been the heart of its king.

“You’ve found the way?” Eudora asked as she joined Kate at the gates.

“Yes... I think so.”

Eudora embraced her with a fierce hug. “Then we shall arm you to fight whatever dark creatures you may meet on your way. Babbitt!” Eudora summoned the brownie, who appeared instantly in that way only brownies could.

“Mistress Kate!” Babbitt cried in delight and hugged Kate’s hips like a small child. “You’re back!”

“She is, and we need to prepare her for battle, Babbitt,” Eudora said as she touched the brownie’s little shoulder.

“Battle, yes.” The brownie studied Kate, and with a snap of her fingers, Kate’s clothes changed before her eyes.

She now wore a lightweight chest plate intricately carved with Celtic knotwork over dark-colored trousers and a comfortable white tunic top.

Her arms were shielded with adjusting plates like dragon scales.

“And food, you’ll need food!” Babbitt provided her with a bag to sling over her shoulders that had fairy bread wrapped in cheesecloth and a bottle of something blue that had a cork stopper in the top.

“Eat only a bite and drink only a sip as you need it,” Babbitt advised.

“Take this.” Eudora offered her a dagger that she remembered all too well. Roan’s dagger.

“What, no sword?” Kate tried to joke.

“Without training, you are more likely to hurt yourself with a sword,” Eudora said. “For now, this will be your weapon.”

Kate tightened her grip on the dagger’s hilt. It felt familiar, comfortable, as though she’d carried it for decades.

“Good luck, Kate of the Winslows. The sister of my heart,” Eudora said.

Kate held the book out to her. “If something goes wrong... if I don’t make it, can you make sure Caden gets this?” Her brother would treasure one of her mother’s gifts if he knew Kate had sent it to him.

The Fae princess accepted the book, and Kate faced the gates again. The roots and fallen trees seemed to draw closer together, preparing to stop her from entering. Drawing a deep breath, she nodded to herself. She could do this.

Kate burst into a run. She flew across the ground as if she had wings, passing through shadows, leaping over fallen trees.

The more she thought of Roan, the stronger her instincts seemed to know which way to go.

No hesitation whether to go left or right, just a certainty of the path ahead.

She no longer feared the darkened paths.

If Roan was the labyrinth, she would trust herself to find the center, his heart, because she loved him.

She could still remember the taste of that last kiss between them and the tears that had flowed down her cheeks as she stopped denying how much she loved him and wanted to be here with him.

The walls began to crumble away, revealing straighter, truer paths toward the center of the labyrinth, toward the heart of the man she loved.