Page 50 of Lost

And then…

What did you do?

That last question hit me hard. It made my insides freeze as they had in the dream. It made me slow down and start panting, breathing heavily like I was about to have a heart attack.What if it wasn’t a dream?It had to have been. It felt like one. But here I was, in the woods, running for my life—running from my friends, my brother, myhome.

I was alone in the woods, by myself, with nowhere to go and no one to turn to.

I was lost.

And it was all my fault.

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I was jumping to conclusions, skipping ahead. I wanted to believe that. I wanted more thananythingto believe that. But now that I was out of the village and on the other side of the creek, I couldn’t ignore the fact that the world smelled… different. It felt different. It even looked a little different.

There weren’t words to describe what I felt, not words that I knew at any rate. It was a feeling, something in my gut, in the pit of my stomach. Something that told me everything had changed in ways I couldn’t possibly even begin to comprehend.

Everything.

Once I felt like I had left the hunting party behind, I pulled myself up to my feet and continued on foot. A wolf scent was a lot stronger than a Fae scent, so if I wanted to avoid them, this was the best mode of travel. I was lucky I had gone to sleep in my cloak, otherwise I would have been freezing out here.

Stopping for a moment to catch my breath, to think, to cry… I did all I could to try to recover my composure. I couldn’t believe what had just happened, but I wasn’t waking up from this nightmare, either. It was no longer just a memory of a bad dream, it had become reality.

You have need of it still.The creepy words that woman had said when I told her the dream pushed themselves forcibly to the front of my brain.

“Pull yourself together, Amara,” I said to myself. “Think. Don’t let the panic overtake you.Think.”

The problem was, there was far too much to think about. Too many questions, and not enough answers. Zero answers, to be precise. I needed to find some, but I didn’t know where to start looking. The cave was gone, and I hadn’t been able to trace the scent. I didn’t have a single lead to go on, nor a compass to guide me toward one.

“What the hell am I going to do?” I asked myself, my hot breath coming out in steamy clouds.

That was when I saw it. A shape in the woods—dark, and humanoid, and moving amidst the trees. I couldn’t quite get a read on who, or what, it was, not from here. Figuring there was a chance I hadn’t been spotted yet, I moved around behind the tree I had been standing next to and watched the figure approach.

Then I heard it speak.

“Amara?!” came a voice that was familiar, and yet entirely out of place all the way out here in the forest. “Is that you?”

I shook my head and put my hand up against my mouth. This was some kind of trick—it had to be.

“Princess!”

I swallowed hard, and against all of my instincts, I came out from behind the tree… and there he was.Valerian.He was wearing a black cloak over his shoulders, his silver hair held up in a top-knot, away from his antlers, and he had a sword in his hand, but it was him.

“I’m not going to fall for it,” I said, my voice quaking. “You can’t trick me again!”

Valerian stopped his approach. When he saw me, he sheathed his sword. “It’s you…” he said.

I stared at him through the light flurry of snow falling all around us, scanning him, waiting for the wind to carry his scent over to me. It was him. Itreally wasValerian. His scent, unlike that of the rest of the world, was totally unchanged.

“What… are you doing all the way out here?” I asked.

Valerian paused. “I was hoping you could tell me.”

CHAPTERSEVENTEEN

Backing up a step, I shook my head. “This… doesn’t make any sense,” I said, puffs of warm steam forming around my lips. It was afternoon, I had been asleep for a long time, but the sun’s rays still found their way through the trees, creating shafts of light between Valerian and me. “You shouldn’t be here,” I added.

“That’s where you’re wrong,” he said, his voice low, and a little gruff. “I am exactly where I’m supposed to be.”

“What does that mean?”

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