“I did.” Cashira’s smile is soft but tinged with old pain. “I brought him back to the small cottage I had just begun to make my own. It was foolish. Dangerous beyond measure. If the high priestess had known I was harboring a strange man, had discovered I was violating every law of our sisterhood. . .”
Her voice trails off, but the implication hangs heavy in the air. Esme has told me enough about her coven for me to understand the severity of what Cashira risked. The Blue Mountain witches view men as necessary for breeding but they are otherwise unwelcome. Even the males born to the coven are eventually encouraged to venture down the mountain once they come of age. Relationships are strictly sanctioned affairs, clinical and controlled. The entire practice seems archaic to me, a relic of some ancient trauma that’s calcified into doctrine.
“But you nursed him back to health,” Esme prompts gently, though I can hear the tremor in her voice.
Cashira nods, lost in memory. “I did. For weeks I tended his wounds and fed him broths made from mountain herbs. He was. . .different than what I’d been taught to expect from men. Kind where I’d been told they were cruel. Curious about my magic instead of threatened by it. Strong, yes, but soft with me in a way I’d never known a man could be.” Her voice grows wistful.“He had this laugh, rare but beautiful when it came. And his eyes. . .they held depths I wanted to spend forever exploring.”
She stops, color rising in her cheeks as if she’s said too much. “Over time, we. . . we fell in love. Real love, not the arranged partnerships the coven orchestrated. Something wild and free and completely forbidden.”
My jaw tenses as I watch the pain flicker across her features. I keep my mouth shut, but I can already see where this story is heading, and I know it’s not going to end well for anyone involved.
“I became pregnant,” she continues, her voice barely above a whisper. “And shortly after, his memories began returning in pieces. Like fragments of a shattered mirror slowly reflecting images back to him.” She touches her temple absently. “He told me he remembered fighting, something brutal and desperate. He spoke of betrayal, of his own brother’s attempt to steal what was rightfully his. That he had fallen through a fracture between worlds, a crack in the veil that we didn’t even know existed. One that had spilled him from his realm into ours.”
Vanir. The Realm of the Fae.
“That’s when it all came flooding back,” Cashira whispers, and now there are tears tracking down her cheeks. “Everything he’d lost, everything he’d left behind. He remembered who he was, what he was, and what was waiting for him.” Her voice breaks. “Rhys Ayla. Crown Prince of the Night Court. Not just fae, but royalty. The heir to an ancient throne with responsibilities that stretched across realms.”
Esme’s hand goes slack in mine, and I watch the color drain from her face. “So, he left you. He left us.”
The accusation hangs in the air like smoke, bitter and choking.
Cashira nods slowly, each movement weighted with old grief. “He had no choice. Not really. He feared what would happen ifthe high priestess discovered him, not just to himself, but to me. To us. He couldn’t bring me back to Vanir with him. Couldn’t claim me as anything more than a pleasant memory. Not with the politics of his realm, not when the Night Court expected him to marry Lucelle to secure vital alliances.”
I exhale slowly, the full weight of what I’m hearing finally settling in my chest like lead. It’s not just that Esme is part fae, I’ve had weeks to come to terms with that revelation. It’s that she’s royalty. Actual, honest-to-goodness royalty. A king’s daughter.
Holy shit.
“I helped him leave in secret,” Cashira says, her voice growing steadier as she pushes through the painful memories. “Used my magic to mask his presence, to hide his scent from the coven’s tracking spells. We said goodbye at the same stones where I’d found him, and I watched him step through a portal that tore my heart in half.” She swipes at her eyes with the back of her hand. “When the high priestess discovered I was pregnant weeks later, an unsanctioned pregnancy with an unknown father, I kept who he was a secret. It was the one thing I managed to hide from her, even under the worst of her interrogations. She tried everything to make me tell her who you belonged to, Esme. Magic, physical punishment, threats. . .”
Her voice grows fierce, protective. “She tried to take you from me before you were even born, wanted to perform some ritual that would have bound your magic to the coven from the womb. But your grandmother fought for my right to keep you. She was the only one with enough standing to challenge Isadora directly.” Cashira’s expression softens. “I hid in the high caves until you arrived, spending those final months in isolation with only the mountain spirits for company. For five years, I raised you in secret on the outskirts of our village.”
Her voice breaks again, fresh tears streaming down her cheeks. “I will never forget the day they came. You were playing in our garden, watering the blooms with your water magic, and suddenly our cottage was surrounded. When Isadora had you, when she saw what you could do, she didn’t hesitate to exile me. Called me a corrupting influence, said I’d tainted sacred bloodlines.”
She pauses, struggling to compose herself. “They led me down the mountain. I didn’t even get to say goodbye to our family. They left me with nothing. Everything I’d ever known, every connection I’d forged, snatched away in a single afternoon. They abandoned me at the base of the mountains with just a rough-spun dress and a heart that refused to stop hoping I’d see you again.”
I feel Esme’s breath hitch beside me, and her hand trembles in mine. I squeeze back gently, anchoring her to the present, reminding her that she’s not alone anymore.
“I wandered for days,” Cashira continues, her voice growing distant again. “Through forests and valleys I’d never seen, surviving on berries and stream water, sleeping under stars that felt foreign after a lifetime among the peaks. I was ready to die, honestly. Ready to just lie down and let the elements take me. But then I stumbled upon something impossible, another fracture in the air itself. A tear in the veil between worlds, just like the one Rhys must have fallen through years before.”
She looks directly at Esme now, her eyes sad, but intense. “I stepped through because I had nothing else to lose. No home to return to, no daughter to protect, no future worth living. What did it matter if I fell into another realm or died in the crossing?”
“And he was there?” Esme asks quietly, though her voice carried an edge of something darker than curiosity.
Cashira nods, but her expression grows complicated, layered with emotions I can’t untangle. “He was. But the crossing. . .timemoves differently in Vanir. It flows slower, like honey over stone, compared to the Mortal Realm. What felt like years for me passed in only months for him. Months to fret, to plan, to mourn what he lost, to ultimately let me go.”
Her voice grows thin, brittle. “It wasn’t until the forest patrol found me wandering Kasamere in a daze that I realized how much had changed. They dragged me before the Night Court, filthy, starving, with nothing but grief and defiance burning in my eyes. I looked like exactly what I was, a broken woman from another realm with no place in their world.”
She stops, her hands clenching in her lap. “That’s when I truly understood what I’d lost. When I was shoved to my knees before the Obsidian Throne and looked up to see Rhys, my Rhys, staring down at me with a crown on his head and ice in his eyes.”
Esme’s brows crease, confusion and hurt warring in her expression. “He didn’t recognize you?”
“Oh, he recognized me.” Cashira’s voice turns sharp, bitter. “I saw it in his eyes, the flash of memory, of longing, quickly buried under layers of royal training. But he didn’t acknowledge it. Couldn’t. Not with the entire court watching, not with Queen Lucelle sitting on her throne beside him, not with the weight of a crown that demanded he choose duty over his heart.” Her laugh is hollow. “That moment, watching him look right through me like I was nothing more than another supplicant seeking royal favor, was when I truly understood what kind of world he belonged to.”
I glance between them, the pit in my stomach growing larger with each revelation. This isn’t just complicated, it’s a complete clusterfuck of political intrigue and personal betrayal.
“But he didn’t turn me away entirely,” Cashira continues, and now there’s something else in her voice, grudging respect, maybe, or the ghost of old love. “He couldn’t acknowledge me publicly, but he offered me sanctuary. A mercy, I suppose,though it felt like charity at the time. He arranged it quietly, discretely, through intermediaries who never knew the full story.”
She gestures toward the cottage around us, toward the wild beauty of Kasamere Forest visible through the windows. “He had me escorted here, to the edge of civilization. Banished from court, yes, but safe. Hidden. Far enough from political intrigue to avoid attention, close enough to remain under his protection.” Her voice drops. “It’s been nineteen years and not once has he visited. Not once has he asked after you or acknowledged what we once meant to each other.”
