Freed (Imprisoned by the Fae 3)

“I would love to know that. Unfortunately, we just managed to escape them before night fell. There wasn’t any time for questions if I wanted to get out before it was dark.”

I don’t get it. “Why did it matter if it was dark or not?”

“Has Rysdan explained how time flows differently between the realms?” When I nod, he explains, “Iron… the mineral… it affects us when we’re in the Iron… the human world, that is. When we cross the veil, we have to follow the sun. The Seelie can only linger during the day, the Unseelie at night. If we don’t trade shifts, we can be weakened. We can even die. The sun burns the Unseelie, just like the night can dim a Light Fae’s light. The veil shifts with the sun, too. Skilled travelers, those who command the portals, they can make the sun work for them. As you can tell, I’m quite fortunate I made it back with your human at all.”

My knee-jerk reaction is to deny it. To say that Jim’s not my human. But… he is, isn’t he?

I push that thought away. “Are you going to be alright? I don’t know what those creatures are, but that looks like it hurts.”

“I told you not to worry about me. Besides, I had a motive of my own when it came to staying over.”

Why am I not surprised? “Yeah? What’s that?”

“Rysdan… he doesn’t want me to give this to you. It’s a good thing that he can’t use my name against me then, isn’t it?” Saxon slips his hand into his pocket, pulling out a shimmering, translucent hunk of… glass? Is it glass? “Come here. Hold out your hand.”

Against my better judgement, I do, and he drops it into my palm. I peer at it. “What’s this?”

“Crystal.”

Yeah. I should’ve known that. “Okay. Why are you giving me this?”

“In Faerie, crystals aren’t just decoration. They’re the source of most of the magic here. Think of the Iron. How everything is technology and wires and chips and a hundred other things that would never work across the veil. One of these is stronger than everything the humans worship. It can do just about anything before it’s been imprinted.”

“And you’re giving this to me?”

“Yes, because this one has been imprinted. Now stay still. And listen.”

He waves his palm over mine. He doesn’t touch me—and, holy crap, for the first time in ages, I don’t flinch when one of the fae gets within touching distance—but that quick gesture does something to the crystal. It flashes, and then, like a video with sound but no picture, I hear a melodic female voice start to intone:

…with human blood,

surrounded by sunshine and sky,

painted skin, and a thread of daisies,

she’ll be freed with a lie…

…cursed to love, cursed to lose,

cursed by the Cursed,

forever will choose

and you shall never—

A scream replaces the woman.

Something happens. It’s still echo-y enough that I know it happened at the same time as the woman was speaking, but I’m not really sure what happened. The scream is cut off by a sharp whistling sound, a loud thud, and then blissful silence.

“What was that?”

“Rys did what he was sent to do.”

The scream. The whistle. The thud.

And a memory of Rys explaining that the only way to truly kill one of his kind was decapitation. Sure, the shadows could eventually drain one of the Seelie, just like the endless summer and heat of the Summerlands is no friend to the Unseelie. But that just weakened them. Following Saxon’s explanation, I know that the Seelie can’t survive night in the human realm. The Unseelie burn in the sun. But a sword strike straight to the neck will end anyone.

“He cut off her head, didn’t he? The woman who was speaking.”