Page 58 of Fae Crown

“You’re sure?” I asked my friends even while my own certainty locked into place.

“As much as Ramana and I ever were,” West supplied, his eyes gleaming with their intensity. It was the first instance I’d heard him mention my sister in a long time where he sounded like he recalled the good more than the pain of her loss.

“I don’t remember,” I barely breathed, and this time my low volume wasn’t for the benefit of our possible invisible audience.

“The fucking cunt,” West snarled. “How dareshe?”

Obviously a rhetorical question. We knew all too well the queen’s awfulness had no limits.

“No wonder…” I uttered as I recalled how Elowyn had cried out when the queen had taken me to her bed. Watching one’s mate have sex with another was rumored to feel worse than imminent death.

“I still found my way to her, to Elowyn,” I admitted. “While … inherbed.”

“Makes sense,” Hiro answered gently. “The magic … is strong.”

My heart pounded in my chest as if I’d been sprinting. “She’s gone.”

Not the queen, Elowyn, my panic said.

“What do you mean,gone?” Ryder asked.

“In the first test. Went through a doorway and never came back. The queen sent Azariah to find her, with Ivar,” I added grimly. “He has orders to kill her on sight.”

“Where?” West barked. “Where’d she go? I willnotlet you suffer what Ihave, dammit.”

“Somewhere within a few days’ travel. That’s all Azariah knew. Still within Embermere’s borders.”

My heart pounded more furiously. I didn’t remember the events that led to Elowyn being my mate or my forgetting that vital fact, but I suddenly understood she was what I had been missing. The amputated limb.

“Find her,” I commanded the three fae I trusted most in this entire cursed Mirror World.

“Love to,” Ryder said. “You know for you we’ll do anything. But you gotta give us more to go on than that.”

“There is no more.” Panic swelled in my throat, making my voice hoarse. “Track her down. Or Ivar will kill her.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” West said. “She can fend for herself surprisingly well.”

“This is Ivar though,” Ryder argued.

West rubbed his chin. “Right.”

“No female has any chance against Ivar,” I said.

Hiro’s worried stare skimmed my face. “You really have forgotten everything about her, haven’t you?”

I didn’t answer.

“She left her dragonling with me,” Hiro continued.

My brows leapt. “Herwhat?”

“She had you forget the dragons too?” West was asking, but Ry glanced over his shoulder, at once jumpy.

“No time,” he whipped out. “We have minutes, maybe seconds. How can we helpyou?”

“Help her,” I said urgently.

“We’ll do our best but?—”

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