on. I didn’t know how to move forward. The only thought keeping me moving was the idea of becoming the kind of girl who could hunt one of those monstrous creatures down. Because there was a truth that I’d tried to ignore, one that would make the ache explode into excruciating pain.
The Redcaps were drawn to me, if these four guys were to be believed.
If Bree hadn’t been with me, she wouldn’t have died.
And I had been unable to do anything to stop it.
So, I stepped forward onto the grass. For a moment, nothing happened. In the distance, I could still hear the familiar honk of yellow cabs, and I could see the lights of the buildings casting an orange glow on the cloud-studded sky.
But then everything began to change. The world rippled, the ground shook. And suddenly, everything went strangely, eerily silent. Night turned into day, and the dark sky morphed into light. I whirled in a circle, heart stuck in my throat. I was still in the Faerie Ring, in the clearing between the trees, but it was quiet now, so quiet. And everything had gone strangely bright.
It was as if the city had vanished and had been replaced by an endless sea of trees.
The four guys blurred in before me, and I jumped back with a sharp cry. One moment, they hadn’t been there. The next, they were mere inches away.
“Welcome to Otherworld,” Finn said with a wink. “So, now you see we weren’t lying.”
“I don’t understand. Where did everything go?”
“It didn’t go anywhere,” Kael said, voice gruff. Almost as if my very existence irritated him. “Manhattan is still where it’s always been. We’re just not there anymore. The Faerie Ring transported us into Otherworld.”
“Which is the…fae realm.” It sounded so insane that it felt like it wasn’t my own voice that said the words. We’d been transported to a fae realm through a ring of flowers? Maybe I really was going insane. Maybe this entire thing was a hallucination, a result of seeing my only friend in the world killed by a vicious wolf.
I felt a little lightheaded now, a dizziness sweeping through my body. Stumbling forward, I pressed my hand to my mouth and tried to breathe around the panic in my throat.
A strong pair of arms encircled me, saving me from face-planting onto the dewy grass. “Whoa there. Can’t have you passing out on your first night at the Academy.”
I twisted to look up into a pair of sapling green eyes. They were kind but mischievous, and a strange thrill went through me. He’d caught me once before. I was sure of it now. He’d been the one who found me passed out in the alley. And he’d caught me again now. I felt a strange tug toward him, a need to have his arms hold tight just a little bit longer.
My face flushed, and I yanked my gaze away. That was ridiculous. I didn’t want him to hold me up. This guy was a weird stranger who was calling himself a fae, and calling me a….changeling.
“Right.” I pulled myself out of his arms and brushed off invisible specks of dirt, hoping he couldn’t see the red in my cheeks. “So, you’ve convinced me that maybe the fae realm is real, though I don’t know how I’m supposed to know that this is really it. Still. Even if all that is true, it doesn’t necessarily mean I’m a changeling.”
Finn laughed and shook his head. “Norah, only fae can travel through Faerie Rings. If we want to bring a human here, we have to carry them through ourselves. In our arms. Kind of like how I was just holding you.”
He winked. He actually winked. The redness in my cheeks deepened another shade.
“So, because I was able to travel through by myself…” I trailed off, understanding immediately the implication of his words.
He nodded. “It was your final test. You’re fae. And you’ve got the ears to match, though they’re still growing.”
“But why now?” I couldn’t help but ask. “If I’m really one of you, wouldn’t I have noticed a long time ago?”
“Fae don’t begin to reveal their abilities until their eighteenth birthday. It’s a right of passage and cause for celebration here in Otherworld. For changelings, it’s a bit more complicated. You were lucky that your birthday was a mere few days before the Solstice, which is the day all changelings return to their realm. Otherwise, you would have had to deal with all of this