I walk back into Oak’s bedroom and perch on the edge of his bed. “I need to know if you came here because you were told to come,” I say. “I need to know if this is a trap set by the High King to lure me into violating the terms of my exile.”
Taryn looks surprised, but to her credit, she doesn’t ask me why I would think such a thing. One of her hands goes to her stomach, fingers spreading over her belly. “No,” she says. “But I didn’t tell you everything.”
I wait, unsure what she’s talking about.
“I’ve been thinking about Mom,” she says finally. “I always thought she left Elfhame because she fell in love with our mortal dad, but now I’m not so sure.”
“I don’t understand,” I say.
“I’m pregnant,” she says, her voice a whisper.
For centuries, mortals have been valued for their ability to conceive faerie children. Our blood is less sluggish than that of the Folk. Faerie women would be fortunate to bear a single child over the course of their long lives. Most never will. But a mortal wife is another matter. I knew all that, and yet it never occurred to me that Taryn and Locke would conceive a child.
“Wow,” I say, my gaze going to her hand spread protectively over her stomach. “Oh.”
“No one should have the childhood we had,” she says.
Had she imagined bringing up a child in that house, with Locke messing with both of their heads? Or was it because she imagined that if she left, he might hunt her down as Madoc hunted down our mother? I am not sure. And I am not sure I should push her, either. Now that I am better rested, I can see in her the signs of exhaustion I missed before. The red-rimmed eyes. A certain sharpness to her features that marks forgetting to eat.
I realize that she has come to us because she has nowhere else to go—and she had to believe there was every chance I wouldn’t help her.
“Did he know?” I ask finally.
“Yes,” she says, and pauses as though she’s recalling that conversation. And possibly the murder. “But I haven’t told anyone else. No one but you. And telling Locke went—well, you already heard how it went.”
I don’t know what to say to that, but when she makes a helpless gesture toward me, I come into her arms, leaning my head on her shoulder. I know there are a lot of things I ought to have told her and a lot she ought to have told me. I know we haven’t been kind. I know she’s hurt me, more than she can guess. But for all that, she’s still my sister. My widowed, murderer sister with a baby on the way.
An hour later, I am packed and ready to leave. Taryn has drilled me in the details of her day, about the Folk she talks to regularly, about the running of Locke’s estate. She has given me a pair of gloves to disguise my missing finger. She has changed out of her elegant dress of gossamer and spun glass. I am wearing it now, my hair arranged in a rough estimation of hers while she wears my black leggings and sweater.
“Thank you,” she says, a thing the Folk never say. Thanks are considered rude, trivializing the complicated dance of debt and repayment. But that’s not what mortals mean by thanking one another. That’s not what they mean at all.
Still, I shrug off her words. “No worries.”
Oak comes over to be picked up, even though at eight he is all long limbs and gangly boy body. “Squeeze hug,” he says, which means he jumps up and wraps his arms around your neck, half-strangling you. I submit to this and squeeze him back hard, slightly out of breath.
Setting him down, I pull off my ruby ring—the one Cardan stole and then returned to me during our exchange of vows. One I can definitely not have with me while posing as Taryn. “Will you keep this safe? Just until I get back.”
“I will,” Oak says solemnly. “Come back soon. I’ll miss you.”
I am surprised by his sweetness, especially after our last encounter.
“Soon as I can,” I promise, pressing a kiss to his brow. Then I go to the kitchen. Vivi is waiting for me. Together, we walk out onto the grass, where she has cultivated a small patch of ragwort.
Taryn trails after us, pulling at the sleeve of the sweater she’s wearing.
“You’re sure about this?” Vivi asks, plucking a plant at the root. I look at her, shrouded in shadows, her hair lit by the streetlamp. It usually looks brown like mine, but in the right light it is woven through with strands of a gold that is almost green.
Vivi has never hungered for Faerie as I have. How can she, when she carries it with her wherever she goes?
“You know I’m sure,” I say. “Now, are you going to tell me what happened with Heather?”
She shakes her head. “Stay alive if you want to find out.” Then she blows on the ragwort. “Steed, rise and bear my sister where she commands.” By the time the flowering stem falls to the ground, it is already changing into an emaciated yellow pony with emerald eyes and a mane of lacy fronds.
It snorts at the air and strikes the ground with its hooves, almost as eager to fly as I am.
Locke’s estate is as I remembered it—tall spires and mossy tiles, covered in a thick curtain of honeysuckle and ivy. A hedge maze crosses the grounds in a dizzying pattern. The whole place looks straight out of a fairy tale, the kind where love is a simple thing, never the cause of pain.