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find her,” he says, pulling me out of the car. His confidence is contagious
     to other fae—I think that’s half the reason the rebels were able to win the palace—but
     I’m human, and I stopped believing in miracles years ago. Paige could be anywhere
     in the Realm or on Earth. The chance that we’ll just stumble across her is virtually
     nonexistent.
    “Hey,” Aren says, tilting my chin up with a finger. “I found you, didn’t I?”
    The half smile on his lips is cocky but reassuring. It’s sexy as hell, too, and despite
     all my worries, my stomach flips. I’m trying so damn hard to be smart about this.
     I’m trying to take things slowly, to carefully wade into this relationship because,
     God knows, we didn’t meet under the best circumstances. I don’t want Aren to be a
     fling or a rebound, but I tend to forget caution when he looks at me like this, like
     I’m the only thing that exists in this world.
    A chaos luster leaps to my skin, traveling along myjawline until it reaches the nape of my neck. Whether he leans in toward me or I lean
     toward him, I don’t know, but our lips touch then—
    “Aren.”
    It’s not Shane who speaks. I peer around Aren’s shoulder and see a fae—an illusionist
     named Brenth—stepping through the thin tree line that separates the road from an empty
     field. He’s one of Kyol’s swordsmen, a former Court fae who’s sworn to protect Lena.
     His armor isn’t shoddy like the rebels’. It has a smooth, even texture and an
abira
tree etched into its surface, but he’s added four branches to it, one for each of
     the provinces Lena plans to reinstate.
    “Perfect timing,” Shane mutters, just before Brenth says in Fae,
“We were out of time ten minutes ago.”
    “It will be fine,”
Aren tells the latter.
    I’m already following Shane to the tree line because I need to walk off the tingling
     sensation that’s swept across my body. I’m hoping the heat I’m feeling doesn’t reach
     my face or, if it does, the others think it’s a result of the bright Texas sun overhead.
    “So anxious to get away from me?” Aren asks, a note of amusement in his tone as he
     falls into step beside me. He knows exactly why I needed to move.
    “Call it a habit,” I retort, but I let the smallest of smiles bend a corner of my
     mouth when I slant a glance his way. I spent the first few weeks I knew him trying
     to escape. I was almost successful a number of times, but he just wouldn’t let me
     slip away.
    He chuckles. “I promise not to make you wear a blindfold this time.”
    A blindfold? We step through the tree line and into the field on the other side, but
     I don’t recognize this place until I spot the small pond off to my right. This is
     where he brought me after he abducted me from my campus. I had no idea—and, more importantly,
     the Court fae had no idea—that this gate was here, and I thought…
    I turn to Aren. “I thought this place was hours away from my apartment.”
    He lifts an eyebrow.
    “When you kidnapped me,” I say, “it took at least three hours to get here.”
    “Ah.” His gaze goes to my left temple. That’s where he hit me with the pommel of his
     dagger less than two months ago, knocking me out so I couldn’t call the police. “We
     had some difficulties getting you off campus without any humans seeing you.”
    I snort. Yeah, that would have looked odd, me being carried over the shoulder of an
     invisible man. With the cops searching the building and Kyol still looking for me,
     it couldn’t have been easy getting me away from there.
    We reach the pond just after Shane and Brenth. The gate is just a blur in the atmosphere
     to the fae’s left. Brenth turns to it, then scoops up a handful of water. The water
     is necessary to connect with the gate, and the fissure opens gradually, the stream
     of water turning into a stream of white light as it pours between his fingers. A second
     later, a deep rumble signals the connection to