“Anyway. I was thirsty. While I was there, I heard some of Connla’s cronies gossiping—about a witch, achangeling, some dastardly plot afoot. I thought you might need saving.”
“I didn’t.”
“I know that now.” He grinned. “I’m pretty sure it’s that hog Connla who owes me his life.”
Silence settled between us.
“Amergin’s knees, Fia!” he finally said, whistling low. “You’ve changed. How long has it been?”
I knew exactly how long it had been, down to the hour, minute, and second, although I wasn’t going to tell him that. The memory of the day Rogan left haunted me. A cool blue morning at the end of summer. The courtyard of Rath na Mara ringing with the hooves of his soot-black stallion, a gift from Mother on his eighteenth birthday. Cairell Mòr’s fiann, come to escort their prince home. And Mother’s hand on the back of my neck, fingernails grazing my skin just enough to remind me she’d been right all along.
Princes were nothing but trouble. And no one—especially not Rogan—could ever love me more than she did.
“Four years, more or less,” I answered carelessly. “What are you doing back in Rath na Mara? Mother will be displeased when she hears you’ve returned without her permission.”
“Displeased? Don’t you mean she’ll have my skull as a paperweight?” He grinned. “I’m not so stupid, changeling. She’s the one who summoned me.”
Traitorous hope bloomed inside me. “Why?”
“Why else?” His eyes softened with dreams unfolding—dreamsI knew him well enough to recognize. Dreams that had never included me. “The queen and her druid have solved it at last. They’ve found a way to save the princess and bring her home.”
The unspoken end to the sentence hung in the air between us.
Bring her home… to marry me.
Rogan Mòr had been betrothed to Eala Ní Mainnín since the day she was born. And although I had been raised by Eala’s mother and wore Eala’s face, I was not Eala. Would never be Eala. Not in any of the ways that counted.
I was made of rocks and bones and stinging things. I was not destined to wed princes. Admire them. Lust after them. Maybe even bed them.
But never wed them.
“It’s late.” He yawned. “I’m to bed. Coming?”
I swallowed, trying not to think of him in his bed. “As tempting as that sounds, I think I’d rather snuggle up with the drunk in the corner.”
Rogan forced a chuckle. “I meantyourbed, you wanton woman. But don’t let me dissuade you from your choice of a vomitous bedfellow.”
I watched his back recede through the smoky feasting hall. Memories twisted in my head like a thicket of briars—Rogan Mòr’s hands on my hips, my legs around his waist, his lips on my throat. How he always called mechangeling, in a way that made me feel like I might be something precious, somethingwanted, instead of a fell creature of the forest, with a stolen face and a borrowed mother and an unrequited love.
Because precious or not,changelingwas what—andwho—I was.
Of the twelve daughters stolen by the Folk, only Eala had been replaced by a living changeling. The first girl had been replaced by a bundle of twigs held together by a baby’s swaddling cloth—a silent manikin who withered away to rotten wood. Another disappeared into a meadow of flowers, replaced by a swarm of angry bees. One mother put her child to her breast only to find a ravenous piglet suckling in its stead.
But in Eala’s place had been left a little girl. A girl who looked just like the princess, but with night-dark hair and strange, mismatched eyes.
Me.
I’d woken one morning in a plush feather bed with green magic at my fingertips, the dark forest in my heart, and no memory of where I’d come from. I’d been as confused as the princess’s nursemaid, who’d taken one look at me and screamed loud enough to wake the whole castle.
For months, Mother expected me to burst into a cloud of butterflies or rot into piles of mushrooms. But I stayed, although no one could say why.
I was not born of these human realms. I was not human.
But neither was I one ofthem. Iron did not scald me; rowanberries did not blind me. I aged and sickened like a human. I could not survive on moonbeams and flower pollen—I needed bread and meat to nourish me.
Too much of each, yet not enough of one to be accepted by either.
Whatever—whoever—I was, I belonged here now. If the Folk had ever had a claim to me, they had renounced it when they gave me up,abandonedme in exchange for Eala Ní Mainnín. They had stolen a princess and leftme. She was valuable—I was something they bartered away without care and without my consent. I hated them for it—hated them almost as much as I adored the queen who gave me a home, raised me with a purpose, loved me as she would her own daughter. Despite the mockery of my appearance, a constant reminder that the same vengeful Fair Folk who left me had killed her husband and stolen her only child.
