But someone had changed things.
It had to be Kol’s handwriting because it could be no one else’s.
Favorite movie: A Charlie Brown Christmas, for obvious reasons.
Favorite smell: Vanilla, like that shampoo you use.
Favorite color: Blue is fine, but now it’s brown, just like your eyes.
“Grams, I have to go,” she said, already out of breath.
“I know you do, honey, and you better hurry up.”
Piper jumped to her feet and raised her voice so that the whole house could hear. “Presley! Wake up and get down here!”
Doc started howling, Grams broke into more laughter, and there were multiple thunks throughout the house. Piper ignored it all, running to the front hall and gathering as many layers as she could find.
“I’m here,” her brother finally shouted back as he tripped halfway down the stairs, totally bewildered. “What’s wrong? Who died?”
Piper snorted. “You have to take Grams and everyone to the airport.”
“I do? I thought you were—”
“They need to be there in two hours and twenty-three minutes, Terminal B, just put it in your GPS until you get to the off-ramp and then follow the signs.”
“My truck doesn’t have enough seats.”
She threw her keys at him. “You can take my hatchback.”
“Why can’t—”
“Just do it,” she spat, and ran out the door to blindly rush into the woods.
Piper had never been lost before, which is to say, she had never not known, physically, where she was. On a scale of found to lost, Piper had actually been wandering aimlessly for many years, a thing she knew but could only admit when standing out in a field and being goaded on by a half-elf.
Finding her way back home was always easy, though, because there was a safe place where she left her things and could go to be alone. But that wasn’t really home, she had come to learn, because home should have been more than that. Now, home was a person’s arms, and maybe he didn’t want to be that, but she had to know for sure, she just had to find him first.
28
How Lovely Are Your Branches
Iknow, and yes, Iamupset, but if there’s anything elves and human men have in common, it’s that theydon’t cry.” Kol wiped at his face with his shoulder anyway. There were no tears, only that endlessly empty feeling that went right to the base of him, that void that would probably be sticking around forever now.
The fehszar snorted, offense if he ever heard it.
“Don’t you think I already considered that?” he grumbled and dug his hands harder into the earth around the base of the spruce. He’d been at it for hours, he’d seen the sun rise and felt the temperature drop, but the tree was finally beginning to look hopeful. “I’m…I’m still considering it, all right?”
The fehszar had settled behind him, propping up his back as he sat in the snow. The edge of the Everroot Grove was just the worst place for the tree to have been chopped down, his innards an absolute mess as the liminal space tried to push him away and suck him back in all at the same time, but at least his magic was working to heal the trunk.
On the ground beside him lay his thaumatix. He’d finished following all the steps hours ago and had scrolled past the spell to that human profile he’d made nearly a fortnight prior. Piper’s name peeked at him from the bottom of the screen. He couldn’t pull his hands away from the ground, but he imagined what it might say now, that she wasn’t as grumpy, that she still worked hard but she knew when to take a break, that she was ready to let someone treat her the way that she deserved.
A shadow flew overhead, and Kol’s stomach flipped as massive, white wings came swooping down on the tree’s other side. He didn’t pull his hands away from the earth and run even though he wanted to, gaze slowly ascending the figure of the cailleach. “Hey, heartwood guardian,” he said carefully. “Thisiswhat you wanted, right?”
The massive bird settled between two trees and watched him, its head twisting in a very particular way.
“Oh, you too?” Kol rolled his eyes and gestured with his elbow to the healing tree. “I kind of figured this would be more important to you.”
The cailleach clicked its beak and stared.
