“Which is probably why Thorne instructed me to return to Seelie the day you arrived.”
Tegan cackled. “I’m flattered.”
“Tegan,” Emersyn hissed.
Tegan shrugged. “I am.”
He was there? When? Where? How could I have not known? I looked up him and shook my head. “You said that before that you were there the whole time. Were you really? I never saw you…or felt your presence.”
“I was there you just never saw me,” he said softly.
“How is that possible?” I asked in a rush. All those years I was alone, with only a single friend here and there.
He stared at me for a long moment and then walked toward me. This time, no one stopped him and he wasn’t even looking at them. He rounded the corner of the table, then took a single step and his silver magic wrapped around him. It faded a step later — I gasped.
It was Ray.
In my peripheral vision I saw everyone else jump back but my eyes were locked on him. On Ray. The teenaged tribe boy who I’d befriended because he’d reminded me of Tennessee. He’d been my first friend that wasn’t a relative.
Ray paused in front of Tennessee and nodded his head toward him. They had the same hair and skin color. “I chose this identity because I knew it would remind you of him, your friend,” Ray said in that voice I hadn’t heard in centuries.
Ray took two more steps forward and that silver magic wrapped around him. I bit my lip, waiting for Riah to come back – then gasped again. It wasn’t Riah. It was now Victoria.
“What?” My jaw dropped. “H-how?”
Victoria kept walking without missing a beat. She wore that same modest gray dress with the poofy skirt thing. “I knew you missed your mother, so I tried to emulate as best I could.”
Tears stung the backs of my eyes and burned up my throat. She always gave me bedding, blankets, and food. She would come and sit with me for hours just talking. “She was YOU?”
Victoria nodded. But then she took a few more steps and that magic flashed again.
I held my breath.
And then young, five-year-old Jonathan appeared and the sound that came out of me was not human.
I slammed my hand over my mouth and shook my head. “No. Not Jonathan too? Don’t play with my heart. That’s not funny—”
“I have never. I would never,” Riah said in suddenly teenaged Jonathan’s voice. He was only a few feet away now. “I learned from my mistakes and started our new friendship from the youngest age possible…”
I cried and it was an ugly sound. I knew everyone was watching us but I just did not care.
He changed mid-step into old man Jonathan and gave me that wrinkly old smile I’d missed so much. “I wanted us to have the most time as one person.”
I shook my head and tears spilled onto my hands.
He stopped in front of me as old Jonathan. And then I saw it, the parts of him shining through. The sparkle in his eyes. The curve of his smirk. The soft cadence of his speech. And then his silver magic flashed and he was Riah again. The real Riah.
He held his hand up in front of him, holding a yellow rose. “I was there. Always.”
A wild, ugly sob ripped up my throat and I threw myself into him. I buried my face in his chest and sobbed. His thick arms wrapped around me tight, holding me flush to his body. I slid my arms up his back then gripped his shoulders —
“Wait, what are you doing up?” I gasped. “You need to heal!”
Riah pulled his shirt down to show his bare, non-injured shoulder. “I am healed, see?”
I reached up and traced my fingers over the healthy skin. “How…”
“I heal quicker than most. It’s…part of my gifts.”
Cooper cleared his throat. “Um…not to interrupt, forgive me a moment, but I need to clarify…so let me get this straight…you’re telling us that you, your brother, Thorne and Sage are on our side?”
I nodded while smiling up at Riah. “Yes. When I was trying to get back here I kept jumping out in different years – wait, Riah, doesn’t Thorne control the tunnels?”
Riah’s smile tightened. “Thorne and Sage created the tunnels and they control them. Most of the places you were sent was because Thorne was trying to show you.”
I gasped. “He wanted me to see how you and Malachi helped Henry—"