As we scraped past a yellow thicket, I said, “Did I forget to mention our dear, dead uncle is here?”
“He’s alive?” She came to such a sudden halt that she almost slipped from my hold.
“Yeah.” With a sigh, I looked toward Remo, whose expression turned even graver. “He’s the reason Remo and I had to tie the Cauldron knot. Iba was afraid Gregor was grooming him for a coup.”
Giya stared between us, then all around. “Wow,” was all she said, but her writhing eyebrows told me she was thinking a heck of a lot more as we took off again. Ducking beneath a liana, she asked, “Any other dead fae lurking around these parts I should know about?”
I shook my head. I hesitated to tell her that Kingston not only harbored the apple but also an intense desire to turn me into ether. I thought she’d had enough craziness lobbed at her and didn’t need more to process, but I wanted her prepared in case we ran into his deranged ass. “He has the apple and is intent on feeding it to me.”
She gaped at me, then at Remo, whose knuckles were clenched around his machete, and whose gaze was on the shadows cast by the swaying blue canopy. “He’ll be dead—and I don’t mean field-of-mud dead—before he can even try.”
She docked her mouth against my ear and murmured, “Are you sure you can trust him, Amara?”
By him, I assumed she meant Remo. “Yes.” I smiled at my fiancé, but he neither caught my smile or her words, too busy scouring the land for danger, or rather, for Kingston. “I’m sure.”
“Wait . . . so you guys are like, actually friends?”
“Believe it or not.”
“When did that happen?”
“Somewhere between Fake Rowan and Fake Neverra.”
She frowned.
Remo tsked, then volleyed, “In the city with skyscrapers.”
“No, I did not like you then.”
He side-eyed me. “You cried when I died.”
“Because I didn’t want to be all alone.”
“Uh-huh.” He winked at me, which made Giya’s brows jolt back up.
One more shock, and she would get a kink in her forehead from all the eyebrow squirming. “This is so weird,” she ended up saying.
“You’re telling me.” I smiled at Remo, thinking: Wait till you hear the whole of it.
After a beat, my ever-perceptive cousin leaned in and spilled a shocked whisper that threatened to blow out my eardrum, “You like him like him!”
I whispered back, “Maybe.”
“I didn’t quite catch your answer, Trifecta.”
“Eavesdropping is beneath you, Farrow.”
“You think too highly of me.” His accompanying smirk hit me square in the heart.
“Wow,” was all Giya said, again, but her eyes never stopped traveling between us as we escorted her to the waterfall.
38
The Ambush
Giya scanned the depths of the frothing pool. “Please tell me there are no sharks.”
“No. No fish either for that matter. Just mollusks.” I waded up to my knees, not wanting to wet my clothes, and leaned over to scoop up some water. I drank my fill, then splashed the rest on my face. And then, because I was still a kid at heart, I splashed Remo, who was standing vigil on the beach.
He whirled around. “Oh no you didn’t, Trifecta . . .”
When he came at me, I took off laughing. He caught up way too fast, grabbing me around the waist, locking my back against his front.
“Don’t throw me in,” I begged, between giggles.
I could feel him smile against my hair. “Give me one good reason?”
“Because then I’d be wet.” I tried to wriggle away from him, but his arms were steel bands around my middle.
“And?” His voice brushed up the shell of my ear.
“And this fabric isn’t half as concealing as my suit.”
“Not a convincing argument, Trifecta.”
“You’re not the only man around.”
He grunted, and his arms loosened. “Fine. Consider yourself spared.” He dropped his mouth to my ear again. “But next time . . .”
I turned in Remo’s arms and stole a kiss.
“You guys are seriously not some weird hallucination? ’Cause there was this cell where”—she shuddered—“where no one was real.” Her body gave another hard shake, which made the water around her submerged calves tremble.
What had my poor cousin endured? “We’re real. I promise.”
She waded in to midthigh, soaking her brown suede leggings while her long, cream chiffon top billowed atop the surface. For some reason, I was only noticing now what she wore and how stained it all was. “So I need to get used to”—she orbited her finger in the air, wrapping us in an imaginary circle—“this?”