You wanted this, I reminded myself. You insisted on coming. You argued with Meghan to be here. This is your own damn fault.
A lump settled in my stomach as I remembered the heated words from this morning and the hasty actions that led to this trip.
* * *
“Sire, you’re not supposed to be up.”
I glared at the faery in the long white coat, wondering if he had been lurking outside my door, waiting to pounce as soon as I got out of bed. It was early afternoon, and I’d already been poked, prodded and fussed over far longer than I thought was necessary. Meghan was off ruling the Iron Realm, so I had been left to the mercy of several attentive but annoying healer fey, who swarmed around me with needles and thermometers, asking multiple times if I was in any pain. My repeated assurances that I was fine seemed only to convince them that I was not. Finally, after deciding for themselves that I was in no danger of dying a second time, the swarm had left me, with firm instructions to stay in bed and not push myself.
Yeah, like that was going to happen.
“I’m fine,” I told this new healer, who arched his bushy eyebrows at me, making me wince. I’m fine seemed to be their code for I’m really feeling quite awful and need immediate medical attention. “Where are my clothes?” I went on, hoping to stall him from calling the rest of the swarm. “I don’t need to rest—I need to talk to my sister. Where is she?”
He gave me a dubious look. I glowered back. Truthfully, I wasn’t feeling the greatest. My legs were shaking, and just standing up was making the room sway, a side effect from being horizontal the past several weeks, I guessed. But I couldn’t lie there like a vegetable while so many things were happening around me. Last night, after Meghan had dropped that bombshell about Keirran, the healer swarm had arrived, preventing me from asking the ten thousand questions swirling through my head. I’d tried waiting until they left to resume talking to my sister, but whatever faery concoction they made me drink must’ve been a sleeping potion of some kind, because the next thing I knew, I was waking up.
I didn’t need more sleep. I needed to know what was going on, with Keirran, the Forgotten and the entire Nevernever. I needed to contact my parents, let them know I was all right.
And Kenzie. My insides churned. Where was she now? What had happened to her in the time I’d been gone? Was she still waiting for me? Or had she given me up for dead and moved on, returning to her old, normal life, one without dangerous faeries and deadly magic?
A chill crept up my spine, and I almost dropped onto the bed again. One month in Faery likely meant several had passed in the real world. How long had it been since I last saw Kenzie, lying in that hospital room? Her illness...
The cold spread to all parts of my body, and I was suddenly torn between curling into a ball on the bed and punching the walls until my knuckles were bloody. What if...what if she’d never left that hospital? What if I went back home, and Mackenzie St. James was no longer there?
“Sire.” The healer stepped forward, a note of concern in his voice. “You really should lie down. You’ve gone quite pale.”
“No,” I rasped, waving him off. I’d done enough sleeping, and I couldn’t get home to see Kenzie now. I had to get out and do something before I drove myself nuts. “I’m fine. I just...need to find my sister.”
He blinked. “Her Majesty is in the war room with the prince consort and her advisers. But they’re in a private meeting and have ordered that no one disturb them. Are you sure you don’t want to lie down, rest a bit?”
I left him sputtering protests and walked into the hallway, pausing a moment to get my bearings. I had no idea where the war room was and didn’t think the healer would give me directions. An Iron knight, tall and imposing in full plate armor, shot me a sideways look from where he stood at the end of the hall, but the stern face and large sword made me nervous. A gremlin, bat-eared and razor-toothed, peered down from a chandelier and gave me a sharklike grin, but I was not going to waste time trying to have a sane conversation with a gremlin. Two packrats—short, hunched faeries carrying enormous mounds of junk on their backs—waddled down the hall, chittering in their strange, squeaky language, and I pushed myself off the frame.
“Hey,” I called. “Wait a second.” They stopped and blinked up at me as I stepped in front of them. “I need to find my sister. Where’s the war room?”
They cocked their heads, and I wondered if this had been a good idea after all. I knew they could understand me, but I didn’t speak packrat and didn’t have time for a game of charades in the middle of the Iron Palace. “I don’t need a detailed map,” I went on. “Just point me in the right direction.”
They held a short, squeaky conversation with many head bobs and hand gestures, before turning and beckoning me to follow. Relieved, I trailed the faeries down several long, winding hallways, passing knights, gremlins and countless other Iron fey. They stared at me with varying degrees of curiosity, wariness and awe. As if I was the monster, the thing out of place.
I supposed I was.
Finally, they took me through a wide-open doorway into an antechamber I’d seen once before, large and airy, with a massive iron chair at the end of a long carpet. Meghan’s throne room. It was mostly empty now, only a few Iron knights standing in corners and one wire nymph polishing the steps of the dais. The packrats hung back in the doorway but pointed across the chamber to another door on the far wall, guarded by a single Iron knight. I smiled and nodded, letting them know I was grateful without thanking them outright. I didn’t know the particular rules of the Iron Court, but saying the words thank you in Faery was generally a no-no. The packrats smiled back, chittered something I didn’t understand and waddled away.