“Yes, but before Aednat was killed, she cast a spell on me to hide my Fey essence. That spell stayed with me through death, but by then, I had married a god named Odin.”
Arach's face twitched. “You're wed? To agod?”
“Yes and no. That marriage ended with my death.”
“And yet you sit here beside me, very much alive. You make no sense, woman.”
“Stop calling me woman. I just told you my name,” I snapped.
Arach snorted. “Very well,Vervain. Oh, excuse me, if you are indeed Lady Aednat's daughter, then you are Lady Vervain.”
I almost told him I was the Queen of Fire, but that would have been useless. As useless as a recount of my history. “All right, I'm going to sum this up for you.”
He shook his head at me.
“Condense my story.”
“Very well.”
“In a past life, I was Sabine, Aednat's daughter. To save me from the dragon slayers, Aednat cast a spell on me to suppress my feyness and make me human. She died without removing the spell. Then I married Odin. He was immortal, but with the human spell on me, I aged and died. When I died, Odin pleaded with an Angel to take me to the Viking Well of Souls, so he might later retrieve me. I was, and because I was taken to the Well, my Fey essence stayed with me. Then I was reborn into this life, bringing my Fey essence—a full Dragon-Sidhe essence—into a human body.”
Arach just stared at me.
“Just accept that I have a God soul, a human soul, and a Fey essence.”
“Fine. Proceed.”
“I wound up in Faerie accidentally, coming through the seal.”
“Not possible.”
“It is cause it happened. Or will happen.” I scrunched up my face. “I asked the Aether to take me home. I was too general in my direction, and it brought me to Faerie.”
“Trying to discern your meaning is getting tiresome.”
“Oh, poor you. You're tired? I just traveled through time because I accidentally asked my father's ring to send me into a real faerie tale!” I shot to my feet and started pacing.
“Your father's ring?” Arach shot up as well. “The ring of remembrance?”
“Yes!” I pointed at him. “You know of it?”
“Of course, I know of it.” He rolled his eyes. “I was greatly annoyed when Finnian gave it to the High King to hold for his daughter. So stupid. His daughter was . . . lost to . . .” He trailed off.
“Yeah, that's right. I'm Finnian's daughter. The High King gave the ring to me when I first visited Faerie. Ever since then, I've been using the ring to travel between realms.” I held up my hand when he started to question me. “I have family in the God Realm, family I didn't want to lose time with. But I discovered that if I used the ring to go back to a realm during a time I wasn't there, I could act freely, without the confines the ring normally puts on its bearer.”
“You use your ring of remembrance as a . . .”
“A time machine.” I nodded. “Basically, yes.”
“A time machine,” he tried out the words.
“We were reading a story to . . .”
“Yes?”
Shit. I had to be careful of what I said to him. It could make Arach behave differently, and if he did that, he could change the future.
“To someone,” I amended. “Well, I was reading. You were listening.”
