They had reached the black cemetery gate. As Silva watched, mouth gaping, the girl lifted her tail. It was tipped in a sleek tuft of black hair, curled around a small lantern, holding it aloft. She held the lantern to the lock, the gate’s door swinging open silently. “I’d get rid of that key as quick as I could, if I was you. Don’t give someone the opportunity to make you bleed for it.”
“How could she tell?” Silva demanded, desperate for something about this to make sense. “How did she know it was Tate I’m looking for?”
Another too-wide grin. “We can smell him, smell him all over you. Smell your little one. They smell like the Bonfire Queen’s court, but . . . the other side, too. Take care. Winter . . . the rest of our kind owes us a debt they can’t ever repay, you know. It was Winterkin who stayed behind when the veil fell. They saved the rest of us. The other courts don’t like to remember that. Easier to forget we’re here, and that’s the way our Lady likes it. If your little girl ever has need of assistance, find me. I hope she doesn’t, but like I said . . . Tate is a friend. This is where I leave you, Silva of Starlight. Good luck. I hope he makes it back to you.”
* * *
The house was lit up like a candle when she arrived home.
Her car had been gone. The sky had still held the white-grey dreariness that enveloped the world in winter, but it was tinged in a darker indigo, and she knew night would be closing in.You managed to escape the Otherworld in one piece, and now you’re going to freeze to death in a cemetery ten miles from home. Sounds about right.
Fortunately, it hadn't come to that. She had begun walking down the curving road that wound through the cemetery, being stopped by a maintenance vehicle after only five or ten minutes. Thank goodness it did, for she was stumbling by then. Her head felt impossibly heavy, her eyes barely able to stay open, and all she wanted to do was sleep. Silva hadn't known how to explain where her car was, how she'd gotten there, why she was wandering around in the near dark. The man had driven her back to the main office, begrudgingly handing his phone over to allow her to order a rideshare, once she logged into the app on her own account.
"Miss. Miss, we're here. You need to get out."
She started at the voice of the goblin driver, stumbling out of the car, staring up at the house. It was hard to believe she was back. Harder still to comprehend how she was meant to go back to her life now.
She finally understood then what the sphynx had told her at the auction. The cost of the key was something she would not get back. She could not go back to the days of not knowing. She could not go back to the elf she had been before.A kiss of fate.
Silva staggered up the driveway, relieved that the side door was unlocked. She barely made it to the living room before Tannar appeared at the top of the hall, his mouth agape.
"Silva?" All at once he was rushing to her, arms around her, hands at her face, tilting her this way and that, as if he were trying to ascertain what injuries she might've had.
A thick fog was settling over her. Tannar was talking, asking her rapid-fire questions, still patting her down. She didn't know how long she could stay upright at this rate.
“I-I just want to go to bed, Tannar. I'm really tired.”
Her husband was still staring at her open-mouthed, and now he flapped his arms like a goose. “Silva,what the fuck? Are you even okay? What happened?! Where have you been?”
“Tannar,” she began, irritation bubbling up to the surface.
“Silva, I have to call the police and let them know you're home! We have to call your parents. That's really all you're going to say? You're tired? Where thefuckhave you been? Whathappenedto you?”
She stumbled. Whathadhappened to her? Silva felt as though she’d held a picture in her mind only a heartbeat before, and now it was fading rapidly. She had gone for a drive. Out in the cold, in the snow. She was dressed for it. But where had she been?
“They found your car in a cemetery. There were no signs of a break-in; your phone and purse were there. Silva, we thought you were dead!”
Cemetery. She'd been in the cemetery. She remembered that much. Headstones and snow, and sharp blue eyes.Silva of starlight. Your little girl. A twinge of pain, deep within her, made her breath catch. “How – how long? How long have I been gone?” She couldn't make heads or tails of anything he was saying, and all she wanted to do was sleep.
“You've been gone for three weeks, Silva. We need answers.”
Another twist of pain, sharp and lancing, making her hunch. Her eyes squeezed shut and she tipped forward, Tannar catching her by the shoulders just before she hit the ground.A perfect little doll of a daughter to fixate on, and you can pour all of your insecurities into her. Blue eyes, a throne of ice. The clear-eyed queen. She'd been in the Court of Winter long enough to eat a bowl of soup. And apparently, she’d lost nearly a month of her life in doing so.And you’re going to have a little girl.
She could hear Tannar's voice somewhere over her, but the world went black.
Part 2
The Weight Of Change
Tate
He had quickly learned, from too young an age, that beingfavoredat court was not the same as beingsafe.
Being favored meant he had been spared certain humiliations, exempt from some of the harsher collections of Autumn. Being favored meant he was a treasured guest of the Bonfire Queen, seated beside her on the dais, far away from Autumn’s lowliest rabble. Seated beside the Queen, which meant no one could touch him, which meant he was free from punishment or retribution from those in the court who resented his presence. Favored, which meant others were punished in his stead, which meant he was free to come and go through the forest as he pleased, as long as it pleased her.
But favored did not mean safe.
It had not kept him from being put in the hunt. It did not mean that he was free from punishment, free from harm . . . it meant that when pain and retribution found him, they could only be meted out by the man sitting on theotherside of Autumn’s Lady, the same fae who pressed a hand to his back as they entered the hall together.
