“Tomorrow they may be. But Caelynn used a lot of her magic, and Rev is still injured, or he wouldn’t have run. We still have the upper hand, but not for long.”
Her expression crumples, but she follows after Drake, sprinting through the Whisperwood and away from us.
I swallow hard, watching them disappear. “Fools,” I whisper. Although that’s not the right word.
“Assholes,” Caelynn corrects. Yes, that’s better.
They’re willingly abandoning Kari. I should be most annoyed with Drake—she’s his friend. His ally from the beginning. But it’s my friend I’m most angry at. Brielle should have fought for Kari. Refused to follow him, and he’d have had no choice. She chose the easy route.
We sit in silence for another full minute before I dare another utterance. “What now?”
Caelynn crawls from the nook and rolls her shoulders before pulling out her compass. She chuckles darkly. “I love this game.”
“What?” Tyadin asks.
Caelynn’s lips flick into a wicked grin that I can’t keep my eyes off of. “They assumed the portal would spit them out in the same direction they were previously heading.”
I blink.
“We go that way.” She points back past the portal.
“The way we came?”
She nods. “The portal turned us around. That way is north and we have to go ‘backwards’ to correct it.”
Genius, I think but don’t dare say the word aloud.
We quietly scamper back down the path away from Brielle and Drake, but Caelynn stops as we cross the stone archway. Her eyes linger on it.
“What?”
She turns back toward the forest. “Cover them?” she requests quietly to no one at all.
Shadows leaps from the twisted foliage, and I jerk back. Little black mist-hands cling to my arms and legs. “What are you doing?” I say too loud.
“Stay here,” she says. “The sprites will hide you if they figure it out and come back this way. There’s something I need to do.”
