And then there’s the way he uses that name again…
I wave at the grass, gesturing toward the space. “Does he know about this?”
“He does.”
“You’re kidding me.”
Saxon shakes his head. “The truth is that he sent me here for this purpose. He wants you to take the circle back. He wants you to leave Faerie.”
I don’t know if I should be angry or hurt. “And he couldn’t tell me himself?”
“No.” With a solemn frown, the Seelie guard says, “Siúcra demands a sacrifice.”
“I know that.”
“I won’t ask you what you gave to the prison to be set free. But Rys… he sacrificed his soul mate.” He turns. The frown slides from his face, an emotionless mask taking its place seconds before he drops the bomb: “He sacrificed you.”
What?
“Me?”
“You’re his ffrindau. His mate. He didn’t want to believe it, but he must now. He promised his ffrindau to Siúcra in order to escape. If you were who he feared you were, once the prison let you go, he’d never see you again.”
“So he knew we would be separated.” I think of what he said to me. How we might be separated and that I should go to the inn and wait. “And… he sent you?”
The only guard in Siúcra that he trusted because, for whatever reasons, Saxon owes him. And because, all along, Rys has had a plan for everything.
“Yes. I gave him my word that I’d see you to the fairy circle. It’s not safe for you here, Elle. Rys understood that even if I can’t say that I do. The
re’s nothing in either world that’s worth losing the one thing I want, but he chose your safety over his own happiness. Don’t make his sacrifice be in vain. Go home. It’s where you belong.”
No. It’s where I used to belong. It’s where Helen Andrews belonged.
But Elle…
But Leannán…
I palm the seeing stone, squeezing it so tightly that the smooth edge of the rock bites into my flesh. “And you’re sure that the fairy circle will bring me back home?”
“Sure enough.”
That’s not a yes.
My mind is racing. I’m still stunned that I’m supposed to be Rys’s mate—that he guessed all along—and that he purposely sacrificed me to break out of Siúcra.
I don’t get it, though. I’m so confused.
The fairy circle shouldn’t work. Not if my sacrifice meant anything. I gave up my ring as well as any chance of going home. Since that’s all I’ve wanted since I came to Faerie, it was the only sacrifice that was big enough to get me out of Siúcra.
I look at the patch of grass. Without the seeing stone, that’s all it is. The memory of what was there is still playing out in my mind’s eye.
Soul mate. That’s what Saxon said. I’m Rys’s soul mate—and he gave me up.
Oh, hell no.
I step away from the circle.
“I’m not going. Not until I talk to Rys.”