With a shrug, I made my way back to my quarters, hoping my guest wasn’t another healer fey, waiting to pounce the second I walked through the door. My middle was aching again, a low, constant throb, but it wasn’t too bad. I could walk, at least. Still, the thought of lying down for a few minutes became more tempting with every step. If there was a healer faery lurking in my room right now, I wouldn’t say no to a painkiller.
Wearily, I pushed back the door, bracing myself to be set upon by a swarm of small faeries in long white coats.
And Mackenzie St. James looked up from my bed.
* * *
“Hey, tough guy.”
I stared at the girl on my bed, unable to do more than blink. That was her voice, her straight black hair and brown eyes, her smile breaking across her face. She was here. How she’d accomplished it, given how impossible it was to travel through the Nevernever alone, I couldn’t comprehend. Just that she had, completely unexpectedly and unexplained, shown up in my room in the middle of the Iron Realm.
“Kenzie?”
Kenzie leaped off the mattress and, in the two seconds it took for my brain to unfreeze from shock, crossed the room and threw herself at me.
Pain shot through my stomach as the girl collided with my chest, throwing her arms around me and squeezing tight. The stab through my gut was instant and breathtaking. I yelped and staggered back, and she immediately let go.
“Oh, God! I’m so sorry, Ethan, I didn’t realize—”
Recovering, I grabbed her wrist, yanked her forward, and covered her mouth with mine.
She gasped, before kissing me back with just as much fervor. Her hands clutched the front of my shirt, though she kept her touch light, probably not wanting to hurt me again. But I wrapped my arms around her waist and pulled her close, wanting to feel her body against mine, the heart beating wildly in her chest. Her hands climbed my shoulders and buried themselves in my hair, and I held her tighter, not caring about the pain. Kenzie was alive, and...here. In the Iron Realm, though, truthfully, I shouldn’t have been surprised. Of course Mackenzie St. James had made her way through the Nevernever to find me. Once she set her mind to something, there was no force on earth that could stop her.
Her eyes were suspiciously bright as we pulled back, though she gazed up at me with a wry smile. “Well,” she whispered, “I was wondering if you’d be happy to see me when I finally got here. Guess that answers my question.”
I stroked her cheek, just taking her in. Her straight black hair was shorter now, just brushing the tops of her shoulders, and the neon blue streaks were gone. Crazily enough, I missed them; they’d seemed part of her, part of who she was. But other than that, she was the same small, stubborn, brown-eyed girl I’d fallen head over heels for. “How did you get here?” I finally asked.
“Razor showed me the way,” Kenzie replied, nodding to the far corner. I looked up, and the spindly, bat-eared gremlin buzzed and waved maniacally from the dresser. Unable to help myself, I grinned back, absurdly happy to see the hyper thing.
“Hey, Razor. Good to see you, too. Have you been taking care of Kenzie?”
He nodded vigorously. “Razor help,” he stated, more serious than I’d ever heard him before. “Razor here. Take care of pretty girl.” His glowing eyes narrowed sharply. “Funny boy died,” he accused, making my heart skip a beat. “Funny boy made pretty girl sad. Razor take care of her. Bring her here. Not sad anymore, right, pretty girl?”
I swallowed hard. Abruptly, Kenzie shivered and ran her hands down my chest, making my stomach knot. “You’re here,” she whispered, her voice catching a little. “You’re really okay. I wasn’t sure if... I thought—”
She shuddered, and my heart gave a violent lurch as the girl leaned forward, pressing her face to my shirt, and began to shake with sobs. Not knowing what to say, I wrapped my arms around her, while Razor flattened his ears and glared at me from the dresser.
“I thought you were dead,” Kenzie whispered. “I waited for you in the hospital, and when you didn’t come back, I was afraid something awful had happened. I tried to convince myself that it was nothing, but I knew deep down that something had gone really wrong. So I sent Razor to find you. When he came back...” She shivered again. “He told me you were dead. That you had been killed in Ireland.”
“I’m okay,” I told her, because that was all I could think to say. “I’m fine, Kenzie. I’m not going anywhere.”
She sniffed and took a deep breath, trying to regain her composure. “What...happened in Ireland, Ethan?” she asked, gazing up at me with tear-glazed eyes. “I tried to get the whole story out of Razor, but he kept saying that Keirran stabbed you.” She blinked, looking grief stricken, incredulous and furious all at once. “Keirran was the one? Is that true?”
I hesitated, then nodded slowly. “Yeah,” I muttered. “Yeah, he did.”
“Why?”
“Because I was a sacrifice,” I went on. “The Lady told him as much. My blood was supposed to tear away the Veil, so that the human world could see the fey, and all the Forgotten and exiles would be saved. That’s what Keirran wanted, more than anything else, I guess.” My eyes narrowed. “So he stabbed me and left me there to die.”
Kenzie’s face went white. “Oh, my God,” she whispered. “That’s where it started. Why everything went crazy that night.”
My blood chilled. “What happened?”
She licked her lips. “I knew something was up when the nurse came in and started screaming at Razor like she could really see him. So I turned on the news, and there were all these live reports about weird creatures and crazy circumstances. People were talking about ghosts, vampires, aliens, you name it. That’s when I knew something big had happened in Faery.” Her brow furrowed, and she wiped her eyes. “It was weird, though. Maybe ten, fifteen minutes after it started, it just...stopped. I couldn’t find any more information, the news reports stopped talking about it, and it was never mentioned again. Everyone just forgot about it.”