THE CORRIDOR WAS PITCH dark without a faery light to guide me. Worse, the head cook had demanded I remove Aiti from her domain when I left this time. So the trip took three times as long as it should have, my mother drifting sideways while I coaxed her down the stairs and around the bend into the cavern itself.
There, the slap of water against the rock ledge must have alerted her to our location because she murmured actual words for the first time all day. “My boat?”
Unfortunately, the question wasn’t exactly rational. Had she forgotten her stint in the Savage Glen? The canoe shattered and unsalvageable? My throat tightened as I shook my head. “No boat.”
No boat...and no fated mate for Aiti. Because Melissa had followed me out as I left the kitchen. “The divining spell worked,” she’d to
