Page 53 of The Tracker's Dawn: Sunderverse

We shared a complicit smile.

“Where are we going?” I asked, my curiosity about ready to blow a gasket.

Jake reached in his pocket and pulled out a wooden token that looked a lot like Damien’s.

I blinked, confused. “Elf-hame?”

He nodded.

“Where did you get that?”

“From a friend of yours.”

I frowned. “A friend of mine? Do you mean... Prince Kalyll?”

“The very same.”

“How? When?”

“I have to confess something. The token is yours. I was going to give it to you right away, but then I had this... genius idea, so I decided to hold on to it for a bit.”

“What do you mean it’s mine?” He was making no sense.

“Kalyll gave me the token when we got here after rescuing Rosalina and the others when you ran upstairs and left us behind. He said he wanted you to have it. He wanted you to always be able to get to Elyndell should you need to. He said he and his family owe you a debt they’ll never be able to repay.”

I shook my head. “He doesn’t owe me anything. We exchanged favors. Besides, I didn’t even track Gonira.”

Jake shrugged. “Fae are weird. They don’t see things the way we do.” He held the token up and rotated it in his fingers. “Pretty, isn’t it?”

It really was. The carvings on its surface were intricate. The piece was shaped like a sunflower, and every minute petal and seed was absolutely perfect. I couldn’t imagine how someone could carve something so delicate. Maybe it hadn’t been done by hand. Maybe magic had been involved. Though something told me it wasn’t. The Fae put a lot of value in the different crafts they practiced. Some people could paint scenes on tiny pieces of rice, so it wasn’t so far-fetched to imagine someone carving this.

“So our date is in Elf-hame?” It felt a little bit ridiculous to wear a cocktail dress and a suit to a place where people dressed as if they were in a fairytale. We were going to stand out like two giant sore thumbs.

“It is,” he answered with a twinkle in his eye. “I was there earlier... arranging everything. I think you’ll love it.”

“Whoa, I don’t know what to say.” I was truly at a loss for words. Sometimes it was hard to reconcile the romantic man who planned special dates with the idiot who made the wrong promises and got himself into engagements involving unbreakable pacts.

Was this even the same person?

“Men grow up in spurts,”Mom told me once.“One day they’re incredibly mature and sensible, and the next they run headfirst into a wall to see if it hurts.”

Honestly, I didn’t think she was too far from the truth. But whatever the case, Jake was turning out to be a very fine man. I only hoped he was done growing up. I wouldn’t be able to survive another screw-up.

“Ready?” he asked.

If he’d said he was taking me to the end of the world, I would’ve said yes. The man owned my heart and soul. I nodded, and we vanished into Elf-hame.