by H. E. Edgmon
When her voice comes again, it’s so quiet I almost don’t hear it at all. “A long time ago, my great-great-grandmother found a child in the woods.”
“Fuck.”
“My family spent years uncovering the fae’s secrets after that. And still, I never really believed my mom’s stories. How could I? It was ridiculous. It sounded like a fairy tale.” I look up to see her shaking her head. Her tongue slides over her lower lip. “But then she brought you home.”
But then she brought me home.
It makes sense now. The ease with which Briar accepted my story, those years ago, when I told her the truth about who I was. Her mother’s reaction to Emyr, cold and calculating more than afraid. Even Briar’s interest in the other witches, which I’d never thought to question much because it was so very her to want to fight for the underdog, makes more sense in the context of her believing her family is connected to my people. That any one of us could be her distant cousins or some shit.
I look at my hands. “You’re a witch.”
“We call ourselves changelings.”
My nails curl into my palms. “I told you everything about me. And you hid this. I told you everything about me, and you looked me in my face and lied.”
Who is she? I’m going to be sick. I have to stand up to suck in a deep breath, tilting my head back to catch the smell of the trees and fresh air breezing around us. Everything hurts, but nothing hurts as badly as what’s going on inside my chest.
For so long, Briar was the only good thing in my world. If I can’t trust her, the other half of my soul, a piece of my heart walking free from my body, what does that say about the world?
“No one knows about us. Not even my father. My great-grandfather, my grandmother, my mother, they all taught the same lesson. Fear the fae. Do not open your mouth and reveal yourself, because if the fae knew we existed—I mean, look at how the witches here are treated!” She takes a deep breath, joining me on her feet. “I wanted to tell you. But I didn’t know how.”
“By opening your mouth and saying it!” I’ve never yelled at her before. It feels ugly and warped and heavy in a way I can’t tolerate. “I’m—I’m me! We’re us! We don’t keep secrets! We’re—we’re—”
I don’t even know how to say it. My lungs feel tight again.
At my side, Boom lets out a pitiful cry.
Briar stares at me for a long moment. When she finally speaks, I expect another apology. I deserve another apology, right? Instead, she says, “Do you have any idea how hard it is being everything you need me to be all the time?”
My hands shake. My stomach hurts so badly I think I’m going to be sick. “What does that mean?”
She scrubs her hands against her own eyes, and some of the still-wet blood there rubs off on her face. “Never mind. It’s not what’s important right now.”
Then why did you say it? I think the question but I don’t say it, and I don’t think she hears it, because whatever door has hung open between us for so long is closed now.
Finally, I say, “You convinced your parents to let you come to Asalin. Even though your mom knew where you were going, how dangerous it would be. How?”
She meets my eyes again. She looks like she’s going to cry. “My family has as much reason to hate the fae as yours does. I wanted to learn everything I could about them. My mom...she told me to be careful. But to find out everything I could.”
“So you started spending time with the witches.”
“So I started spending time with the witches.”
“And you got it in your head you could send the fae back where they came from.”
“And I got it in my head I could send the fae back where they came from.”
“You wanted to be a hero.”
“I want to be a hero.” Her voice warbles. “I want to save people. I want justice! Is that so bad? The fae have been allowed to do as they please for so long, without repercussion, without anyone keeping them in check. That kind of power, it only breeds more and more corruption. It destroys everything around it. I wanted to do right by my family and the witches.”
“And you still didn’t tell me.”
“I was neck-deep in secrets at that point!” She paces back and forth, leaves crunching beneath her feet. “I thought maybe if Solomon and I could get the door open, if we could see what was on the other side, I could tell you then. But then Solomon had to escape, and it was just me, and I thought, well, there was probably no way I could do it by myself, anyway. But then you started waxing poetic about me having my own kind of magic. And I thought...well, you aren’t wrong about that, are you? There’s magic in me, somewhere. I thought...maybe I could do it.”
She holds out the book she’s been carrying around. After a brief hesitation, I snatch it from her and flick it open. It’s nothing but sigils, each one painted by Lavender, an explanation of their uses scrawled in her handwriting next to them.
“So, I waited until I was alone. I’ve been out here, working, trying, for two days. Trying to open this damn door. And it wasn’t cooperating. Nothing was happening. Until I saw you. Until I looked into your face.” She chokes back a sob, tears streaking her round cheeks. “You need the fae out of your life. And I need to help you. I am always trying to help you, because I love you. And it was like...as soon as I felt that...as soon as I looked at you, I knew I could do it.”
She’s handed me all the pieces, but my brain doesn’t want to connect them. I want to go back to yesterday, before any of this happened. I want a do-over.
Why can’t I have a do-over?
“What would you have done? If you’d been standing there alone, and the door had opened. Were you planning on just waltzing through?”
She frowns and wipes her face. The blood on her hand has dried by now, but it mingles with her tears to smudge her cheeks some more. “I guess. Just to see what was over there. If Emyr was right, if it was inhabitable.”
“And what if he was wrong?” I narrow my eyes at her. “Leonidas said his people, the fae, the people who came from that world, couldn’t even survive it. What if you died, Briar? What if you just fucking died over there and no one ever knew what happened?”
“You—sometimes you have to be willing to die for the things you believe in!”
“How is this worth dying for?!” I toss the book to the forest floor and raise my hands in defeat. “You would be gone. No goodbye. No explanation. Just me, left here wondering where you disappeared to and spending the rest of my life blaming myself for ever bringing you along. And all for what? The chance to send the fae back to Faery? Who says the fae even want to go back to Faery? Who says opening the door would make anyone’s life any easier? For crying out loud, did you think about this at all?”
Briar’s impulsivity, the way she jumps headfirst into things because of how passionate and loving she is, has never bothered me before. The fire in her belly that keeps her fighting, constantly, for other people has always been admirable to me.
Until now.
She doesn’t answer my questions, staring at me with her lips parted, her body trembling.
“You’re not going through that door. Neither of us is.” My nails make pinpricks on the top of my head when I drag my fingers over my skull. “We have to tell Emyr. The door is locked for a reason. We have to make sure it gets closed again.”
“You can’t tell Emyr.” Briar shakes her head frantically, curls bouncing. “The fae can’t know about my family. Emyr—I like him a lot, I want to trust him, but—”
“Seriously? You’re still protecting this secret?”
Briar sniffs. One shoulder rises and falls. “I’m sorry, Wyatt. I’m so sorry.”
I can only stare at her for a long, long moment, feeling as if I’m seeing a stranger. Finally, I say, “Then I hope that book can tell you how to fix this.”
I reach into my hoodie
pocket, pull out her phone, and toss it over to her. She barely manages to catch it in her bloodied hands.
“And clean yourself off before you go inside,” is all I say before I turn and storm away, unsure where I’m going, leaving Briar crying, quietly, at my back.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
THIS MOMENT IS ALL THERE IS
There have been days in my life that moved like hummingbirds, buzzing from one perch to the next, flying so quickly their movements aren’t discernible as individual motions. Others have rushed by like river water, rarely slowing down but still allowing me to climb in or out at the shore. Sometimes, the grass grows between each ticking of the clock.
Today is the second day since being back in Asalin that’s felt like an entire lifetime all in itself. How is it possible I woke up in Eirgard this morning, Emyr’s hands on me, mouth at my ear, warm blankets around us to block out the rest of the world? That couldn’t possibly have been today. I was another person then. That was a different universe.
But it was, and I wasn’t, and it wasn’t.
I don’t really realize I’m going to the cabin until I’m already there. Maybe I never intended to head this way. Maybe I was just following Boom, the big hellhound’s paws making a path a few feet in front of me, the two of us weaving like matching shades between the trees. Doesn’t matter, though, because I’m here, just standing here outside of Emyr’s cabin, staring straight ahead, unable to keep moving. There’s a little yellow light visible through the window. My heart wants so badly it hurts. Or maybe it just hurts.
Boom circles me and nudges the small of my back with his muzzle. I stumble forward, hands shooting out to steady my fall against the front door, but then it’s opening and instead of grabbing the door I’m grabbing onto Emyr’s arms as he reaches for me.
He asks, “Wyatt?” against the top of my head, and I want to cry again, want to lose my shit again, but I can’t. I don’t think I have enough energy to fall apart, and why did I never realize it took energy to fall apart, and—
Emyr’s hands settle on my hips, and my hands reach up to curl in the front of his shirt, and I say, “I don’t want to talk about it. Take me inside.”
And he does.
“Wyatt,” he whispers my name again, one hand slipping around my chest and the other settling on my lower back.
I like my name. I picked it. But I like it even better when it’s coming from his tongue, like the way his mouth forms each letter, like the way the sound slides over me like hot water. I want to make him say it again. I don’t want him to ever stop saying it.
That familiar golden glow spreads out from his palms, wraps around my rib cage, and circles my body like a serpent. I’m flooded with warmth, Emyr’s warmth, seeping right into the core of me. I didn’t realize how much pain I was in until I’m not anymore, the blows to my head, my arms, all of it fading away until there’s nothing but this cabin, and Emyr, and Emyr’s hands, and me trying to sink into it to forget everything else.
I think, If today was a lifetime all on its own, does that mean tonight could be a rebirth?
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I repeat, lifting my head to meet his dark eyes.
That wrinkle settles between his eyebrows. His worried fangs press against his bottom lips, the corners of his mouth tugged down into a frown. One perfect black curl reaches forward to touch the bridge of his nose. “Okay,” he says in that voice like honey.
He smells like mud and smoke and sugar and I want to taste him.
“Can I kiss you?”
I don’t know what will happen next. I don’t know if there will even be a next to happen. Briar and the door to Faery. Derek and his bid for the Throne. Either one of them could wipe us all off the planet tomorrow. Nothing is guaranteed, nothing is permanent, and all I know is that I have to kiss him now, here, while I still have the chance.
“What?” He pulls back, only slightly, only enough to really look into my face.
I want to go back to this morning. His hands. My body. The bedsheets. Before everything got turned upside down.
Why didn’t I kiss him this morning? Why am I such a coward?
“I really, really want to kiss you,” I repeat, and I close the gap between us again, hands sliding up his chest to touch the hollows of his collarbones.
“I thought you were angry at me.”
I am. I was. I don’t know what I am anymore. “I’m tired of being angry. Emyr, can I kiss you?”
There is nothing human about Emyr, there never has been. But the sound he makes, the growl that crawls up out of his chest, vibrating the tips of my fingers before it slides from his throat, is the furthest from human he’s ever been. My whole body clenches in response, even before he adds, “Please.”
My fingers tighten in the front of his shirt again, dragging him down to meet me. His lips are soft and yielding under mine, his mouth opening to let my tongue explore him. I give an experimental flick against one fang and he growls again, something in me blooming in response. I pull him tighter, wanting more, needing more. His hands find my waist and curl around me like he’s tethering himself here, to me, to this moment.
This moment is all there is. This night, this cabin. Emyr’s mouth.
I love him, and I want him, and I don’t care anymore. I need something to feel real, to feel good. Even if I know it can’t last.
When I tug our mouths apart, he gives the softest groan, gazing down at me with his eyes half-closed. But when I reach down to grip the end of my hoodie and tug it off my torso, tossing it away to reveal the white shirt and scars underneath, those eyes blow wide.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.” I curl my hand around the back of his neck and press our lips together again, because I am, I really, really am.
When my free hand slides beneath the silk of his shirt, exploring the finely honed ridges of his torso, a shock trails up my spine. When his hands dip under the fabric covering me, his talons making pinpricks on my hips as his grip urges me closer, that same shock echoes through every other inch of my body.
“Okay, okay,” I mumble, pulling back a second time. One of his fangs catches on my lower lip, tugging at it and leaving a flash of iron in my mouth. I shiver, turning away from him, albeit begrudgingly. “Boom, you gotta go outside, buddy.”
The hellhound gives me a head tilt, wide, wet eyes blinking up at me all pleadingly.
“No, absolutely not. Outside.” I open the front door for him, waving my arm demonstratively until he finally huffs, stomping out into the night like a petulant child.
Whatever. I slam the door closed behind his tail.
Where was I?
Right. Shock waves.
“C’mere.” I reach for Emyr again, my hands finding the slim muscles of his waist, dragging his body against mine. This time he bends down to meet me, our foreheads knocking together just before our lips touch, the base of his horns brushing the short bristles of my hair.
Emyr’s hands cover the entire expanse of my lower back when he pushes up my shirt to press them there. I can feel his palms, roughened from his years of swordplay and romping in the woods, the clawed tips of his fingers, the warm magic that burns right out of him. He strokes them higher, higher, until his hands are resting on the outside of my binder, my shirt rucked up underneath my arms, and only then does he break the kiss.
“Can I—”
“Yes.” I raise my arms, help him tug the shirt off me and toss it away.
For the beat that follows, Emyr and I simply stand facing one another. I watch his face as he takes me in, takes in this body that could not be more different from his own. My soft stomach, wide hips, hourglass waist. The black binder I’ve definitely been wearing too many hours by now judging by the way it’s starting to dig into my sides, flattening my chest as much as is reasonable. The twisted white and red scars running the lengths of
my arms, trailing from my wrists up above my elbows, wrapping down and around my rib cage on either side, nearly connecting in the space just above my naval.
He looks at me. I look at him looking at me. And then he steps in again.
Emyr’s ears twitch as he leans forward to brush his mouth against the crook of one elbow. When he nuzzles his mouth deeper and his fangs graze the vein there, goose bumps flutter their way across my shoulders.
But when he slides to his knees in front of me, my mouth goes dry. My breath hitches in my nostrils, and my legs suddenly feel as sturdy as a spider’s web, trembling like they might give out underneath me.
Emyr seems to recognize that, and he reaches up to curl his palms around the backs of my thighs, stilling my shaking, holding me steady. His mouth presses featherlight kisses down that same arm, trailing lower and lower, my wrist, my knuckles, the tips of each finger, the center of my palm. With every press of his mouth against me, my body gets looser and heavier all at once, and it seems impossible I should still be on my feet right now.
When he switches sides and starts kissing his way up my other arm, I groan, unable to take another second of it. Both of my hands shoot out and curl around the base of his horns.
My only goal was to get him to pause what he was doing long enough that I could catch my breath. I don’t anticipate the way the horns darken and curl in my hands. I don’t anticipate Emyr’s wrecked gasp, the way all the air in his body shoots free of his lungs at once. He thrusts his head back into my hands, staring up at me from his knees with the beautiful, elegant slope of his neck bared for me.
My sharpened fangs throb behind my lips. Every part of me throbs. My hands tighten, fingers giving an experimental stroke along the cool ridges of Emyr’s horns. A shudder ripples through his entire body, wings shooting out on either side of him. Even they appear to quiver.
“Wyatt.” This time when he says my name it is not only my name, it is a growl, and a plea, and a hollow ache at the center of him that a matching ache in me desperately wants to fill.