My stomach growled with hunger, but I hesitated before digging into the food. The platters were piled high, tempting, but the others’ silent watchfulness made me pause.
They were waiting. Waiting for me to crack. To reach for the food.
To slip.
My fingers hovered. I didn’t know what they were measuring. But their judgement weighed on me all the same.
Darian snorted from across the table, breaking the silence with a grin. “If the food was poisoned, I’d be long dead by now,” he said, as if that somehow made it all fine.
With a shaky breath, I caved in to the hunger that gnawed at me.
I stacked food onto my plate, every bite another small surrender. I ate with a hunger that startled even me. My body’s instinct overriding a mind that screamedno. I probably didn’t look much better than Darian, still eating enthusiastically, but at least Shaelith’s disgust remained focused on him rather than me.
The conversation drifted around me for a while, the fae speaking of border tensions, trade negotiations, minor disputes that sounded as though they held greater importance than they let on.
Varyth turned back to me, his expression unreadable. “Tell me, Isara. Now that you’ve crossed the Veil, what do you plan to do?”
My mind flicked back to my children. To Mireth’s laugh. To Eryx’s sleepy weight against my chest. I had fought so hard to get here. To get them here. And now, for the first time, I was being asked what came next. I didn’t know.
And somehow, that felt like failure.
“I just want my children safe,” I admitted, my words tempered by honesty. “That’s all I’ve thought about.”
“Your childrenaresafe here.” Varyth’s impatience coloured his tone. “I’m asking aboutyou.” His gaze was cutting. “Do you understand what you’ve begun by crossing that border?”
I hesitated and glanced briefly at the others, then back at Varyth. “I know I’ve crossed a line that can’t easily be uncrossed.”
Varyth leaned back in his chair, his fingers drumming not out of restlessness, but calculation.
I dragged a breath past the pressure in my chest, the tightening in my gut. But there was no escaping it.
“I need time.”
Varyth gave a slow, measured nod. “You can have time. But surely you know there is a price to returning, should you choose to do so.”
“I’ve heard the stories,”I said quickly. “I understand what it means to cross back.”
“Then you also know it is not only your cost to bear,”he said, his voice a shade softer. “Your children crossed with you. The price is theirs as well.”
My grip on the edge of the table tightened, nails pressing into wood.
A scream rose in my chest, but I buried it, shoved it down beneath my ribs where it could rot quietly beside the guilt.
I knew.Gods, I knew.
Varyth exhaled through his nose. “Few humans survive the crossing.” He shot me a knowing look. “You could count yourself lucky.”
The laugh came out wrong—bitter, more truth than I meant to show. “Lucky? I had a choice between death or the land of trickster fae.”
Across from me,Darian let out a bark of laughter and slapped a hand on the table.
“She’s got a point.”He grinned as he nudged his goblet toward me in a silent toast. “Though not all of us are tricksters. Some of us are too dumb to pull it off.”
“That much is obvious,”Shaelith said dryly.
Darian sighed and threw an arm over the back of his chair. “And yet,” he said, lifting his goblet in mock solemnity, “I persevere.” He clinked his cup against mine before I could stop him, sealing some absurd, unspoken agreement between us.
I couldn’t help it, a glimmer of amusement broke through the tension, a fleeting smile pulling at my lips. Varyth’s gaze flicked downward, catching on my mouth for the briefest second before rising again.
