"Jace!"

My choked scream echoes around us. It's probably unwise to be hollering and potentially attracting more monsters to us, but I can't help it. The pain tearing through my chest has no other outlet and somewhere in the back of my mind, I think that maybe if I scream his name again and again, I'll conjure him up again. That he'll appear at my side laughing about the prank he pulled.

That his body wouldn't be crumpled at the bottom of the cliff, on the same creature that he helped slay.

"Adria!" I spin around and find Savannah running to me.

She has an unconscious Tia slung on her shoulder. "We need to leave."

"Not without Jace." Before my mind is even aware of what I'm doing, I’m already clambering down the cliff. But I don’t make it far before a hand snags around my waist pulling me back.

"Adria!"

"Don't be stupid," Paisley says quietly and in that moment, I hate him so vehemently I can taste it. I hate him for stopping me from going after Jace, for dragging me back to this dreadful reality. I hate him for all the awful truths he's said, how calm he is now that he's safe and I'm falling apart.

I hate him being alive while Jace is dead.

"I’m not leaving without Jace," I struggle to extract myself, but then Savannah joins in pulling me back. I fight both of them, fighting Paisley so hard that I elbow him in the eye.

"Damn it," he swears and I want to do it again, just for good measure but then more hands join in.

"Let me go!" I scream at all of them, hating all of them, the taste of my own tears bitter in my mouth.

"Adria." It's the Prince's voice I hear now and through watery eyes, I see his steady gaze. "We have to go."

Then without saying anything else, he slings me over his shoulder.

"Let me down damn you," I shout. I kick his chest with my knees, slamming my fist into his back.

"No," he says and breaks into a run.

I scream and rage and eventually, as energy drains out of me, I sag against his back, letting the tears flow pour out of me. Jace. I can't believe it. I can't believe he's gone just like that.

I catch sight of Savannah's pitying eyes with Tia in her arms.

"Tia," I whisper. "What happened?"

"She came back for us when she heard the commotion," Savannah pants as she runs. "She was near the opening, saw the sunlight but came back for us and got hit by the monster before we took it down. She said she marked the path though and that's where we're going. Brute should already be there."

"I see." Even in my grief, I start to think. The forest probably showed the opening because she was tired. She was weak from the fighting and didn't have the strength to cast illusions anymore.

“Where’s Wolf?” I ask, noting his absence.

“He’s somewhere,” Savannah says. “Let’s get out of here first."

“We can't leave without Wolf."

“And I’m not leaving without you. Wolf will be fine, he's in here all the time. He'll find his way out."

"Not with those monsters he's fighting."

"We already neutralized one of them," the prince says. "Wolf is facing the last one and he told us to leave."

"Last I checked, he was winning too," Savannah adds. "Now shut up and let's get out of here, before something else attacks."

I finally relent.

"Alright. Let me down." I order the prince.

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"I'm not taking the chance," he says as the beginning of natural sunlight starts beaming through the branches.

I thought I would be happy to see the sun for the first time but I'm not.

Especially since, the second we break out of the forest, we’re instantly surrounded by Elite Guards, dragging us off each other shooting questions at us about where the gem is.

I wonder what they're ordered to do if we don't have it. Maybe send us back in.

"Enough!" The prince puts me down and I stumble back as he holds up the gems and says, "I have it."

That earns us a moment of silence where I can survey our surrounding. Brute is on the grass a cloth wrapped around his bleeding hand.

Savannah lays Tia next to him. Her eyes are closed and from this angle, I finally see the blood staining her hair.

“What are you waiting for?” I ask them. “She needs a healer!”

One of the soldiers, a cool-eyed, white-haired man raises an eyebrow at us.

“The healer has been called,” he says stiffly but he looks affronted that I would even dare to ask the question. "They will treat wounded Northerners first."

In that second, a wild emotion whips through me. I hate him, that white-haired bastard. I take a few steps to him, ready to hit him with all the rage and despair I feel.

Nearly my entire team is gone. Tia is on the ground bleeding out. Wolf is lost in the forest and Jace is….I refuse to think about it.

“Adria,” Savannah says, laying her hand on my shoulder. I see the sympathy in her eyes but I don’t need it. I don’t want it.

I want revenge.

I want the King and all his people dead.

Jace and Tia thought they would be fine. I told them to stick to Wolf and they tried to. We all knew the risk we were taking, but they still felt confident that this would work out. Because it has worked out with everything else. They followed my lead without question, sure that I knew what I was doing.

And now I've led them to their doom.

I glare at the white-haired guard for so long, and his eyebrow raises.

"Do you have something to say, muzungu?" Threat laces his tone as his hand travels to the hilt of his weapon.

Don't do it, Adria.

Fighting him serves no purpose. It will only waste your time and lead to more pain.

Still, I've never wanted to hit another human being so much in my life.

Instead, I turn for the forest again, and once again, a hand wraps around my arsm, “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Let me go.”

“Why,” White Hair sneers. “So you can go save your boyfriend?”

I can’t take it anymore. I spin around and spit in his face.

The rest of the guards gasp around us and the man draws back his hand to slap me. I rip out his weapon, planning on stabbing him before it does, but a spark spikes up my hand and I drop it.

"Stop." The Prince's quiet voice stills everything but I don't look at him yet. I'm still staring at the weapon on the floor.

It was like it...repelled me.

"Let her go, Vincent."

"But your highness–"

"Let her go."

The white-haired bastard releases me with a glare.

I finally face Prince Caster who is giving me a measured look.

"I'm going back in to help Wolf."

“I’ll go with you,” Paisley says quietly and I glare at him. He turns his face away at my glare, pressing his lips together.

If I were feeling more magnanimous, I would feel sorry for how haunted he looks. I can't.

I blame him almost entirely for the Jace fiasco.

The rest of the blame, I assign to myself.

But it's also hard to take my anger out on him either because the misery and guilt in his eyes is too palpable.

He didn’t want this to happen either.

A part of me isn't ready to accept that though.

"No one is going anywhere," says the prince. "Wolf doesn't need your help. You'll likely only get in his way."

"But Jace might need my help. He might be waiting for me right now."

Pity glints in his eyes. "Jace is dead, Adria."

No he's not. I refuse to accept until I feel his pulse, and hear his own heartbeat stop.

"I’m here,” comes a familiar panting voice and we all look over in unison to find Seir jogging to us with a knapsack at his side.

“You’re back.” My urgency is temporarily beaten back by my surprise at Seir's appearance.

“Yes," he says and shoots me a meaningful look before he gets down on his knees before Tia.

"The Northerner first, healer," the white-haired guard, Vincent, snaps.

"I can't do much for him now, and you've already stopped the bleeding. You'll need the Farrow Witch to help regrow the arm if it's possible."

He immediately starts to take potions out of his bag and I inch toward him trying to see what he’s doing.

“Will she be okay?” I ask.

He nods. “I think so. She’s breathing. I’m just treating the wound and trying to revive her." Then he glances at me and seems to mouth extra words at the end of his sentence.

I frown. Is he trying to say something? What could he possibly be trying to tell me?

He meets my eyes. Understanding that I didn't catch what he said, he mouths it again.

Pearl. Does he mean Pearl? He's seen her? Is she okay?

As he works I analyze his face and note that he mouthes something down to Tia before biting his lip down in concentration.

Gem, he said.

He wants to know if I have the gem.

But I don't.

Yet another thing I failed at getting, and yet another reason I have to return to the Dark Forest.

But wait...if he wants the gems does that mean he knows how to create a cure for Pearl?

That's one good news at least that has come out of this disaster. And if I couldn't save Jace or Wolf, then at the very fucking least I need to save Pearl.

I wait for a moment while everyone is concentrated on Tia and distracted. I inch away slowly, towards the forest.

And then, when I'm sure I can get away, I make a run for it.

"Adria!" I hear the Prince shout. Savannah cries out behind me too and the white-haired guard orders people to chase me.

But they won't make it before I do.

I tear into the forest, going past the first section, and hear an enraged, disembodied, "Leave!"

But I don't.

I keep going in deeper, and deeper.

And then everything goes black.