With that thought, I lift my head to see the woman in front of me step off the bank and into the sheer five-foot drop to the river—only to vanish into thin air.
“Go on now,” the woman behind me says. “It’s your turn. Don’t hold up the line.”
“I just . . . jump?” I ask.
She laughs. “No, silly. If you jump, you’ll fall right into the river. You have to walk to the portal above the water. You must believe it’s there, or it won’t work.”
I gape at the rushing river beyond the bank. Fear climbs on my back and weighs me down.
“Go on,” she says. “What’s the worst that can happen?”
“I fall into the water, get pulled under, and have the rapids beat my body against the rocks until I drown?”
She laughs as if I just said something hilarious. “Go on now.”
“Right. Just believe.” So simple.
“Have any of you ladies seen a redheaded young woman with a scar on her wrist?” someone asks farther down the line. “She’s a thief, and we have a cash reward for the first person who helps us find her.”
The woman behind me drops her gaze to my wrist.
I press my palm to my amulet, and I don’t just walk over the riverbank. I run.
Chapter Five
MY BACK TEETH CLANG TOGETHER as I slam onto my knees. Pain radiates up my legs, and when I open my eyes, a clear moonlit sky shines above me. I scramble to my feet and turn back to the river, but it’s gone. The forest beyond is also gone. The only trees are far in the distance. All around me, streams of women appear out of thin air, arriving from portals all over Elora.
This is it. This is Faerie. I made it.
An undeniable energy buzzes along my skin. As if the air is different here, as if it’s charged—an electric spiderweb waiting to trap humans like flies.
I scan the faces around me, looking for any sign of the woman who looked eager to turn me in for the reward. I can’t find her in the crowd—not that she could do much on this side of the portal. Instead, I see young women rushing happily toward a golden footbridge that leads to a mammoth castle. Golden spires line the horizon, poking up into the night sky. The stone walls shimmer in the starlight. Mother described it just like this in our bedtime stories—castle walls of crushed quartz, floors of marble, the night sky an endless blanket of shimmering stars.
When we were younger, Jas and I used to dream of this place. It was like a game. We’d imagine running away to Faerie through the solstice portal and finding Mother. We’d describe how excited she’d be to see us and list the countless reasons that had kept her from returning. As the years passed and Mother never visited, when she never returned to free us from our contract, the game held less and less appeal for me. I didn’t want to think of my mother, or the reasons she’d failed us. I didn’t want to talk about her anymore, and imagining a reunion made my stomach hurt.
But now that I’m here, I can’t help but wonder if she is too, if she survived this dangerous land all these years, if she’s . . . happy.
I’m at least a hundred yards from the footbridge and castle gates, but even this far back, swarms of women line up eagerly. I expected the crowd to be overwhelming, but I never could have imagined this. Women push past one another to take their place in line. Their desperation makes me equal parts sad and on my guard.
“Oh, girl,” the woman behind me says. “You won’t get in like that.”
I stiffen as I turn to her. “What do you mean I won’t get in?”
She frowns, looking me over, then pulls a handkerchief from her purse. I don’t know how I look, but she is radiant—a canary yellow dress with a fitted bodice and full skirt, her dark hair falling in perfect bouncing curls over her shoulders.
I look down at myself for the first time since Nik woke me. The silk dress she gave me is a bright red that nearly matches my hair. It sags at my chest and clings to the sharp angles of my hips before flaring out above my knees. The thin fabric exposes every underfed angle of my body, from my jutting hipbones to my sunken stomach. On Nik, its simplicity is probably sultry and seductive. On me, it looks a bit pathetic and ragged. Normally I don’t have time to worry about things as superficial as appearance, but next to this glowing woman I feel self-conscious.
“Don’t worry. I’ll help,” she says, offering the handkerchief to me. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
My arms are streaked and smudged with dirt. When I pressed into the shadows in the alley, I was thinking of hiding, of surviving, not of cleanliness. “Thank you.” I accept the soft fabric and gently wipe the dirt from my skin. “I guess I was in such a rush to get here, I didn’t even realize.” Beneath the filth, pink scratches—from running through the brush in the woods—crisscross up and down my arms. I’m not exactly a picture of beauty. “What do you mean they won’t let me in? Don’t they let everyone in?”