Then he and the apartment vanished, and Rose was surrounded by people on their morning commute at the train station. No one even noticed her pop out of thin air. Tears and loneliness burned in her throat as she searched the station for schedules and stopped under a row of screens. She couldn’t stop shaking, trembling from head to toe. Nothing made sense. She had no idea where she was going.
She couldn’t go home to Maryland because that would put her parents in danger. God, Rose missed them more than ever. The only two people she could trust.
A face, a lovely one, framed by white-blond, fairy-princess hair floated across Rose’s mind.
Maybe there was someone else she could trust.
Fionn had said Niamh Farren was not to be trusted, but he’d said that planning to kill—
Rose felt a strong wave of nausea and searched for the restrooms. Not caring who saw, she traveled there, making a woman at the sinks gasp in fright at her sudden appearance. Dashing into an open stall, Rose slammed the door behind her and fell to her knees.
She sobbed as she threw up, wondering how she could have allowed herself to grow attached to the fucking fae who was planning to stab her through the heart.
An Breitheamh.
Shit, she should have stolen An Breitheamh.
Exhausted, Rose slumped against the stall and stared unseeingly at the opposite wall.
If Fionn didn’t want her to interact with Niamh, it was because he knew Niamh would reveal his deception. Niamh may or may not be trustworthy, but she was like Rose, and her only connection in this bizarre supernatural existence.
Other than Thea MacLennan. But Thea had changed to a wolf. What help would she be? Rose would only bring her back into a story she was lucky to escape from the first time.
Fuck.
Niamh Farren it was, then.
Rose pushed up to her feet and wiped a hand across her mouth, determination setting in. Fionn could trace her using the shit she’d left at the hotel. Although she wasn’t worried about facing him, being followed was an inconvenience. And once she did what she did next, the Irish bastard would definitely hunt her down. That didn’t scare her. Truthfully. There was so much rage inside her, Rose felt like she could obliterate him if she wanted to.
Bitter, furious, hurt, and dare she admit, heartbroken, Rose emitted so much ominous energy as she strode through the station that the humans gave her a wide berth.
Rose was no longer human.
It sunk in.
Despite the moral implications, she tried out the brain-muddle thing Fionn could do. Fueled by anger, she didn’t allow herself to feel anything about doing it. Instead, she asked at customer service what trains she needed to take to get to Zagreb, booked the tickets, and then focused all her magic on penetrating the woman’s mind.
She pictured herself handing over the correct change and demanded those thoughts transfer.
To her shock, the woman’s expression slackened and she reached out to take the invisible money, typed something into her computer that caused a cash register to pop open below, and then put nothing into it.
She printed off Rose’s tickets and handed them over. “Faites bon voyage.”
“Thanks.” Rose attempted not to feel guilty and failed miserably.
Focus on your rage.
So she did.
The first train would take her to Paris. From there she’d travel on to Stuttgart, Germany, then Munich, and then to Zagreb. Back to the beginning. The last place she’d encountered Niamh Farren.
But first, she needed something.
Now where would Fionn have hidden An Breitheamh?
Desperation.
It was a horrific feeling.
Fionn had always assumed he was desperate to open the gate to Faerie to fulfill his revenge.
However, he’d forgotten what true desperation was.
Desperation had been staring at his wife, standing next to the man she’d married while he’d been trapped on Faerie, ordering druids to curse Fionn with a fate worse than death. Desperation was wishing with every molecule of his being that her betrayal was a bad dream.
Desperation was seeing his children held back by others, grief suffusing their entire bodies as they watched their mother put down their beloved father. Desperation was knowing he might never hold his daughter in his arms again or talk with his boy as only father and son could, and frantically searching for a way to make sure all that wasn’t lost to him.
Desperation was not being able to save those five girls from themselves as they laid their bodies before the druids, offering up their life energy so they could cast the spell