Mina turned to help Ferah, but the Fae girl was gone. She’d disappeared, leaving only a slight impression where her body had lain on the grass. Mina was about to call out for her when she grew cold and a large shadow beast appeared before her. She wasn’t afraid as the shadow dissolved into Teague’s Fae form.
“You ran away, Elle. Why?” His voice didn’t give any hint to his feelings. But she knew from experience with Jared, that he wasn’t asking. He was accusing.
She couldn’t answer him, so she turned her back on him and continued to scan the forest for Ferah. If the girl came back now, she’d be in worse trouble than before. She hoped Ferah had the sense to stay far away.
“Answer me, Elle.” His voice rose, and she could hear the anger he was trying to hide.
Mina sighed and turned, holding her hands at her side. “I’m trying to find my way home.” She couldn’t make eye contact with him, so she continued to stare at the grass.
“I don’t know why you always think the worst of me. If you had passed the next test, you’d always have had a home with me. Even if you didn’t, I would make sure you’d be taken care of.”
Her heart skipped a beat, but she remembered why she was here. Teague couldn’t be trusted. Even split from his worse half, Jared couldn’t always be trusted.
“I can’t. You’ll come to hate me over time,” she answered truthfully.
“You don’t know that.” He sounded hurt.
“I do. And I also know that I can never live in the castle. That will never be my home.” She pointed back toward the hills beside the palace.
“So you would rather run away, fight a Reaper, than marry me?” He was clearly trying to stay calm, but his words were sharp and his arms flung in each direction as he spoke. “I can tell you that I’m not that bad.” He finally noticed the Grimoire laying on the ground and leaned down to pick it up.
Mina argued, “Hey wait a minute, that belongs—”
“—to me,” he finished. But Mina grabbed the journal from him and pulled.
Teague wasn’t prepared to let go, and the book ripped into two pieces. “You tore it!” He growled in frustration.
“No, you did!” she yelled back.
“I can’t believe you stole from me.” Shocked, he held his ripped half up.
“Borrowed,” she corrected indignantly.
“When were you going to give it back? After you ran away from the ceremony and killed one of the Fates’ Reapers to save a fugitive? I bet you were coming right back to give it to me, weren’t you?”
“Um, okay.” She bit her lip and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Borrowed with the intent to not return…right away.”
He crossed his arms and held the damaged book in front of her. “If you wanted it that badly, I would have given it to you.” His hand glowed, and he waved it in front the damaged book. It began reknitting itself. He did the same to Mina’s half, and her front cover and few pages filled out into a completely separate book.
“Now we both can have one. See?” He flipped his open, stopping to stare at the image of the ogre on one page and the Reaper locked in battle of scythes with Mina on another.
Mina held her half of the Grimoire tightly and eyed the one Teague held. She started to shake. It couldn’t be. This wasn’t how it all started, was it? Was she the reason the Grimoire had been split in the first place, creating the two books? Could all this really have happened before? It was too much for her to take in.
The sky spun and she felt light headed. She could barely make out Teague dropping the book and running for her as she slid to the ground in a faint.
Chapter 27
It was a maze.
The final test was a maze and Mina was horribly lost.
She’d awakened the following morning back at the Fae palace in her own bed, weak and a bit disoriented. Her head literally pounded.
No wait. It was the door. The brownie girl came in and helped Mina get dressed for the final test. The rules were simple. They would each be placed on different corners of the maze. Teague would be waiting in the middle. The maze was enchanted and would shift and change. Whichever girl made it to the tower would be worthy of being Princess of the Fae and would marry Teague.
The brownie overlooked not a single detail as she curled and pinned Mina’s hair to befit a princess. Mina’s dress flowed from her hips in swaths of lavender silk that resembled flower petals. Strips of the same lavender silk wrapped around her torso creating a fitted bodice. She had no jewelry, nothing to adorn the beautiful dress, but it really didn’t need anything else. She looked like a beautiful chrysanthemum.
“You did a beautiful job—not just today—but every day that you’ve helped me.” Mina felt sad that she hadn’t spoken to the brownie before this.
Her deep tanned face grinned, making her eyes sparkle with pride. “My charge will be on equal playing ground with the others. Doesn’t matter if you’re not from here. You belong with the prince.”
Mina’s stumbled in her borrowed shoes. “How do you know I’m not from here?”
The brownie smiled knowingly and pressed her finger to her nose. “We brownies are smart.” She waited a moment before adding, “Plus, I found something in your coach when you first got here. I was looking for your trunks, but all I found was this.” She handed over the seam ripper.
As Mina felt the cool silver tube in her hand, she wanted to cry. “How? Why are you giving this to me now?”
“I had to make sure it wasn’t dangerous, so I brought it to my brother who studied it and took it apart. We had to make sure it wasn’t a weapon.”
“You took it apart? What if it doesn’t work now?”
The brownie looked offended. “He wouldn’t have broken it. See? It looks as good as new.” She paused and looked eagerly at the silver object in Mina’s hands. “But he didn’t know what it does. What does it do?”
Mina lied. “Nothing. It’s just a good luck charm.”
Now the Fae had the schematics to make a seam ripper. All because of her. Things were getting stranger by the minute. She tucked the seam ripper in her pocket next to the Grimoire.
“Thank you.” Mina answered, unsure about what she was supposed to do next. Captain Plaith, wearing his sun and moon emblazed armor, was the one who appeared at her door to escort her to the final test. He seemed on edge, worried. Similar to how she’d seen him when she and Nix snuck into the palace before. Though this time, he had less gray hair.
Everything was a daze. She barely registered walking the halls. One minute she was in her room, the next she was outside being led across the dew-covered palace lawn. There was a slight chill in the air, and a morning fog crept along the ground which only added to her dismal mood. The fog hid the maze until she was almost right on top of it.
Green. Walls of twisted green bushes rose out of the ground, ten feet high.
“The maze is over two square miles in size. In the very center is the glass observatory. That is your goal.” Captain Plaith relayed information to her the same way he relayed information to his troops—formal and direct.
She could hear voices on her near right and caught a glimpse of Ever and her escort just before they disappeared into the morning mist.
