mouth of the cave as two lucionaga dragged in an indignant Kiera. “Massina, we’ve canvassed the cell and found one more prisoner. What would you like us to do with her?”
Nima and Lily spun around.
“Let her go.” Startlingly, it was my voice which rang out.
Although Kiera stopped snarling at the thick-armed guards restraining her, she narrowed her red-rimmed eyes on me. She hated me. I hoped that in time, she would see I wasn’t to blame for Quinn’s suicide. The guards looked between Nima and me, and then they looked at Remo.
“You heard your prinsisa,” Remo growled. “Unhand the girl!”
At least now I knew where I stood on the ladder of command—under Remo.
“Thank you,” I murmured to him.
“They shouldn’t defer to me.” His jaw was so clenched it was a wonder he managed to produce words, much less entire sentences. He stalked toward his fellow guards, and the rest of us followed.
Kiera’s eyes glinted as brashly as the strand of claws and fangs clinking around her neck.
“Kiera Locklear,” Nima said in wonder. “You’re alive.”
“No thanks to any of you.” She spit at Nima’s sandaled feet.
Everyone froze. The lucionaga’s eyes jumped to my mother’s filigreed throat, probably assuming she would admonish the Daneelie for her slight with a handful of dust. My mother didn’t raise her hand, didn’t ball her fingers either. Calmly, she said, “Joshua’s waiting for you beyond the portal, Kiera. He’s very impatient to take you home. What do you say we get out of here?”
Kiera blinked. Because of Nima’s calmness, or because of the storm of emotion rising within her? If we’d already been in Neverra, I had no doubt the girl’s disquiet would’ve lacerated the sky with lightning. Nima looked over her shoulder at me and held out her hand. I took it, and together we walked out into the white light of the forever sunless, night-less sky.
I thought we would have to scale the cliff walls to reach the portal, but it had relocated itself, shimmering like a mirror right beyond the opening of the grotto. Lily and Giya slipped through first. Then Kiera and one of the guards. And then it was mine and Nima’s turn.
I wanted to clutch Remo’s hand, but sensed my mother wouldn’t let me go. Not until I was safely home. As my fingertips touched the gelatinous surface, I turned my head.
“I’ll be right behind you,” he murmured, knowing exactly the direction of my thoughts.
I melted through the inky darkness between the worlds with my head still angled toward Remo and didn’t look anywhere else until the broad lines of his body formed on a framed painting of Neverra cloaked in mist.
45
New Regime
“Amara!” My father’s voice made my attention whizz off the painting and the redheaded boy who’d just climbed out of it.
He stood beside Kajika, Lily, and my cousins by a bay window that gave onto the Gorge of Portals. So Joshua had been right about yet something else . . . the portal did relocate.
I raced toward my father and flung my arms around his neck. His answering hug was bone-crushing. “Oh, Iba.” I thought I’d been done crying but nope. In seconds, my cheeks were damp again. Unlike in Gregor’s prison, though, my tears evaporated almost as fast as they fell. “I missed you so much.”
His chest gave a violent shudder. “Oh, amoo.”
I closed my eyes, relishing the steel of his hug. “I found Kingston, Iba,” I whispered. “You were right. Gregor didn’t kill him.”
He pressed me away, holding me at arm’s length. “Son of a . . . Where’s that scheming brother of mine?”
“Dead. He’s dead.”
“I thought—”
Giya draped her arm around my shoulder. “Amara fed him the apple.”
“The apple?” My father’s tired blue eyes roamed between us.
“If wita and beheading had a love child, it would come in the form of a red apple.” Giya rubbed her stomach, then added under her breath, “Don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m never eating apples again.”
I smiled while Iba just blinked, first with shock, then with pride.
“I’m so sorry the task befell you, amoo,” he finally said.
Sook’s head bobbed above Iba’s shoulder, and a small sound escaped my lips. “Sook!”
“Hey, cuz.”
I jumped at his neck, hugging him tight. “Thank you for coming after me.”
“Like I could let you have all the fun.”
“Fun?” I barked out a laugh. “Yeah, sooo much fun. I’m still not sure what I liked best, the torture or that damn mud field.”
“I’m pretty sure I know what you liked best,” Giya said,