I was fighting to be calm and just-sweet-enough to get what my family needed, but I could not stand the image of him stooping his head to go through our front door and casting that intrusive, glittering gaze over the last fragments of my pathetic life. “Please spare me your presence. Saying goodbye to my family will be painful enough.”
He did not look particularly moved. Instead, he gave me an assessing look—much like he might’ve given a replacement horse he considered purchasing. “Do you promise me that you won’t try to run away?”
“Where would I run to, Fieran?” My voice came out frayed.
“I imagine you can find someplace.” His mouth curved. When he gave me that look—that smile that seemed knowing and even fond—my palm itched to slap that smirk a way. “You’re a clever little mortal. But all right. You can have your time alone with your family.”
Howgenerous.
“To say goodbye,” I spat at him, before pacing away angrily, leaving him behind me. The cool wind whipped through my hair.
“To say goodbye.” His voice was quiet, steady, but carried to me—as if even the wind obeyed him.
When I glanced back, he stood at the Wheelers’ door. Wheeler was ushering him inside, and he was a blur for me at this distance, but I could’ve sworn he wassmiling. It was for the best if Fieran charmed Wheeler, who might be more willing to help my family during thecoming winter if he weren’t sore from the loss of his horse, but I still felt a stab of betrayal. Was I the only one to see Fieran’s terrible side?
Fieran stopped in the doorway, one hand on the frame, and turned back. Our gazes collided as if he had known I was watching him, and a jolt ran through me. I turned my back to him and made my way down the road, but I still felt far too aware of him.
Even when he wasn’t at my side, I couldn’t escape the sharp, unsettling way he looked through me. His presence made it hard to calm down, to breathe, to think.
I truly didn’t see anywhere to run. Tay needed Fieran’s help, which meant that I—curse the gods—needed Fieran.
When I reached the fence around our little cottage, the cat wasn’t waiting for me, and the fields were empty; the animals were already in the barn and the coop.
I stopped with my hand on the gate, knowing when I came out tonight, it would be for the last time I touched it for a long time. Probably forever.
I studied the scene the way it would be without me. Our home, like the others on the outskirts of the village, had been untouched; if I hadn’t dragged Tay to the healer, the three of us could’ve been safe at home, out of the way of the monsters.
Smoke rose in a thin but steady stream from the chimney, and the lights shone out from the windows. A riot of flowers wrapped the fence posts and colorful blooms nodded their heads everywhere, but they were already beginning to wither. Maybe that was merely my imagination. Maybe not.
I had the sensation that I was already an outsider. I was looking at a home where I did not belong.
If I had left them long ago, if I’d gone to the Trials, then my mother would have already sacrificed Lidi’s magic to Tay’s cure. Would Lidi even miss her magic? Maybe I’d been trying to protect my family while I did nothing but cause them pain.
My fingers tensed on the gate, wishing I could just turn around and walk back to Fieran and let him take me where maybe I should always have gone. I’d only brought trouble to my family. Once I saw his smug face, my rage would probably re-kindle, but for now, I only felt shameand exhaustion and the sense that an inevitable, well-deserved doom was rising to meet me.
But it would be hard for Lidi and my mother if I disappeared without a goodbye, and at least they could explain my abrupt departure to Tay—who might still be asleep now anyway—so I lifted the latch and went in.
The cottage smelled like fresh blooms and crushed mint tea with lemon and a hint of woodsmoke. I breathed in deeply, trying to hold onto the scent of home.
Lidi leapt up when she saw me and rushed to hug me. “Everyone’s talking about what a hero you were.”
Tay was a motionless mound under the blankets, and my heart stopped for a beat. His jaw was slack, his face eerily pallid. He looked as if he were barely on this side of the veil.
She buried her face in my stomach as if she were trying to burrow inside me, and it was good she couldn’t see my face, because I couldn’t fake a smile. Not even close.
“Is that so?” I asked, a beat too late, my arms closing around her.
“Sit down and let me braid your hair,” she ordered. “You look like a mess.”
I didn’t want to, but I did want to give Lidi whatever would make her feel better, so I sat down before the fire. She brought me mint tea, and I sipped it without tasting it, though I praised it.
Her little fingers pulled at my hair, knotting flowers into the braid, but I could feel how different her touch was now, rough and graceless. I closed my eyes and wondered if she felt the loss.
Our mother came in then, weary from the barn, and washed up. I sat tensely waiting, listening to the sounds of water sloshing over her hands in the sink.
Finally, drying her hands off with a towel, she came and sat across from me.
In our small living room, our knees almost touched; so much of the room was taken up by Tay’s bed. I didn’t look at him and neither did she, but she was still wringing that towel in her hands, her knuckles white.
