Chapter 15

The feel of something hot and fuzzy nuzzling my cheek and neck drags me from the familiar fog of a leaden, murky sleep. A sickly sweet taste sticks to my tongue making it difficult to swallow. It feels like there's cotton plastered to my mouth and throat. Thoughts drag thickly like molasses, and it takes me longer than it should to place the slow groggy feeling working its way through my veins.

My muscles are stiff, back is aching, like I've been asleep for a long time

I feel like I've been drugged. Drugged *again*.

Shit.

My eyes fly open at the feel of something cold and wet pressed to my cheek. With blurry vision, I can just make out a pair of sharp russet eyes*familiar* eyes.

"Alfie?" I croak. The fox, whines low in his throat, burrowing his warm, orange head into my neck again in greeting. He snuggles in agitation as if demanding to know where I've been and lets out another low whine.

I work through my sluggish thoughts, trying to recall how I'd gotten here. After speaking to Commander Lothbrook and the guards in my rooms, they'd left me to finish my dinner and meet with the captain who had sent the message along to the King. They needed to go over the details of how they were going to get me home. After a while, another guard had brought tea by to help me sleep...

*The tea*.

I want to slap myself in the forehead for drinking it down without question, not worried about being drugged in the slightest.

Suddenly, Lucia-the *real* Lucia-appears over me, face hovering near Alfie's. "Lily!" She exclaims.

My eyes prick with tears at the sound of the one voice as familiar to me as my own. If I resemble an icy frostbitten morning, then Lucia is a golden afternoon in the midsummer. She's always been the sparkling gold to my pale silver. Her face, the color of deep warm sunshine peers down at me as if not quite trusting her eyes. Flowing golden hair falls on my face, tickling my nose. The delicate freckles lining the bridge of her nose are wrinkled now as she stares down at me in concern. Familiar bright green eyes-the antithesis to my pale wintery gray ones-fill with tears that she rushes to blink away.

"You're home," she chokes out, throwing her strong arms around me, her familiar scent of lilacs and vanilla filling my nose. "Thank the Mother. Gods, I can't believe it," She breathes in my ear. After a long moment, she leans back to get a better look into my face. I don't realize I've been crying until she reaches up to brush away the tears sliding down my cheeks.

"What happened? I don't understand how I'm here." I say, voice a dry rasp.

"They told us they were going to bring you back, but we couldn't quite believe it. I *still* can't believe it. They wouldn't tell us how or even when. We only knew you were back when Alfie alerted the maids. Healer Monique believes you were drugged."

That lines up with what I already suspected-- matches with the cottony feeling in my mouth and the sluggish pull of my thoughts.

"Gods, are you alright?" Lucia demands, "Did those savages hurt you?"

My eyebrows come together, "*No*. No, they didn't hurt me. Not at all."

Her full lips pinch together in a hard line, "You don't have to pretend with me, Lily. I've heard what they're like. If those mountain-roaming barbarians did something to you, I need to know. We can get you help."

I don't know why her words make my breath catch in my throat and make me feel the need to defend them, but they do. "They didn't hurt me. They didn't even question me for information. They were actuallykind." I say after a hard swallow. It's the truth, though. The only injuries I experienced during my time there were from my stubbornness in trying to get the shackles off my wrists and the same sickness I always deal with.

No, they didn't hurt me. Far from it, I realize with a jolt. They protected me when they didn't have to and somehow managed to bring me my medicine when I suddenly fell ill. Looking back on it now that I'm home in my bed I have my head spinning. I don't know how to make sense of it all.

Hesitantly, I meet Lucia's eyes. My stomach twists at the horror painted over her face, blood draining from her tan cheeks, "For the love of the Mother, please don't tell me you feel any sympathy for the shifters. That your irrational draw to*wild* things now includes *them*."

I jolt in shock, stomach-turning to the ice at her brusque, harsh assessment of me, "*Of course not*. They kidnapped me, Luce, how can you even ask that?"

She sighs, rubbing a hand over her forehead in a gesture of exhaustion, as her green eyes soften with remorse, "You're right, I'm sorry. You're my baby sister. It's my job to assume that everyone is trying to manipulate you. It's my job to keep you safe. AndI failed."

I reach out and grab her hand, squeezing gently. Her skin is warm against my icy fingers, "Don't say that. You didn't fail, Lucia. I'm alright. Really."

She blinks back the moisture in her eyes, her usual, fierce expression returning, "You're damn right you are. And they should thank whatever demon they worship in those mountains that that's the case. I'd electrocute their grungy little ant hill to the ground if it were otherwise."

My lips tip up at the corner, hearing the meaning behind her words, "I missed you too."

Her fingers squeeze mine back once and then she releases my hand, standing from the bed in a single graceful movement, "Let me get Petra. You need a bath. Badly."

I snort out a laugh, and she grins back at me as she crosses the bedroom to the door to the sitting room. At Lucia's departure, Alfie rushes in to take her place, snuffling at me as he curls up against my chest. I smile down at him, stroking down his ginger fur with a gentle stroke.

My room is exactly the way I'd left it the night of the ball. The same lilac-colored bedding and frothy white drapes. The same floral rug that's been on marble floors for as long as I can remember. The windows are open, letting in a sun-warmed flowery-scented breeze from the gardens. The window seat remains how I left it-the place I go to sit and watch the world happening around me. Always on the outside looking in. A permanent fixture there.

I can't decide if the fact that everything is the same as I left it is comforting or a kind of quiet torture. How can everything be the same on the surface, while on the inside my entire world feels like it's been turned on its head?

*It's as if I'm simply waking up from a dream and the days I spent among the shifters in the mountains never happened.*

As my eyes wander, brushing over everything familiar, a flash of blue on the side table catches my eye.

My medicine.

The same bottle that the King of the Northern Mountains tossed to me a few days ago. It's not where it's supposed to be. Unconsciously, I reach for the one difference in the room like a moth drawn to a flame. It's sitting atop a pile of three books. My heart hammers against my ribcage, blood roaring in my ears as I pull the achingly familiar novels into my lap.

Alfie's nose snuffles along the surface of the books as if trying to understand why I'm shocked by what's in my hands as my fingers trace instinctively over the surface. They're the books that Damien Lothbrook had lent to me. The books that I'd spent my time pouring over the last few days.

Confusion mixes with a spike of warmth through my chest as I flip through the familiar pages, my heart stopping yet again as a loose piece of parchment flutters from the bed and onto the floor. With a leap, Alfie disappears over the side of the bed before nimbly leaping back up. He brings the unfamiliar piece of paper back with him gently clamped between his teeth. I absently pat his head in silent thanks as I tug the paper free.

It's a note written in strong swooping handwriting.

*It wouldn't feel right to keep these when we both know they belong to you now. -D*

The sound of returning footsteps outside of my bedroom has me shoving the parchment under my pillows, my heart pounding an irregular beat in my ears as Lucia and Petra glide through the doorway. The words from the letter echo in my head as they help me get to the bath, as Petra insists on washing my hair herself. They linger even as I scrub away my time in the stony mountain rooms.

They whisper in my head as I soak in the bubbly water until the temperature turns cold and I can't help but wonder if those words echoing in my head will ever leave.