Silva felt as though she might shake apart. Grief and fear were warring with her anger. She didn’t want to find out what the punishment might be for causing offense, but neither did this queen want to learn whatshemight do in her desperation.You are an elf. If they want to take her, they’ll have to kill you first.She forced herself to breathe, to calm herself.Keep the upper hand. That’s what he would do.
“If I stay here,” Silva began slowly, gesturing to the small form just out of her sight behind a tree. “Then this . . .”
“Thisbecomes reality. Your child will play and laugh in an endless morning. You will stay exactly as you are now. Young and beautiful forevermore.”
Silva nodded.Then it’s not reality yet. “And if I go back . . .”
The doll-like Queen’s mouth turned down in a sneer, her narrowed eyes fixing on Silva intently.Thorns beneath the petals. “Beloved, why would you want to?”
Knowledge or nurture. The cost of one will cancel out the other, and you cannot bear them both.She understood now. Understood everything. For the first time, Silva understood fully the true cost of the path she had followed. That locked away voice she heard screaming in her head was her own, hidden and supplanted by the false confidence she’d purchased alongside that key.
“I appreciate the offer,” she forced out, her voice stronger than she expected, her feet already finding the center of that painted spiral that was still there.The pathway back. “But I’m only browsing today.”
Her steps were quick, following the tight circle. She ignored the pressure, ignored the voice in her head wondering if she was giving up finding him by leaving. Already, the queen in her clearing seemed farther away.
“Such a waste,” she called out to Silva with a shimmering laugh. “You will not survive Autumn, sweetling. You could have been beautiful here.”
The flower market came swimming back into her view, as if she were emerging from underwater. The cooler door stood out against the wall, ugly, like a bruise, marring this perfect place. She beelined towards it, uncaring if she was sticking to the pathway any longer.
“Get out of my way,” she shouted at a cluster of those blurry shapes who tried to impede her once more, pushing her way through with force, a strength she didn’t normally possess, one hand protectively over her bump, the evidence of the only thing in the world that mattered. She felt more like herself since the day she’d started all this. Her little wing kicked and thrashed, as if she, too, were eager to leave the false promises of Spring behind.
Wrenching open the door, there was no hesitation this time when she crossed the threshold, lurching down the sickly green hallway, cramps twisting her insides. She was panting when she erupted through the second door, safe in her own world once more.
“You were in there far too long,” the florist snapped instantly. “What happened? I told you not to linger!”
“Andyoutoldmeit was just the market,” Silva snapped, shoving the girl aside as she limped to the front of the shop.
There was a heavy pressure sitting on her lower back, and she winced as another throb of pain moved through her. The wisp was following after her, but she didn’t slow down. She needed to get out of here, needed to put distance between herself and the other side of that hallway, needed to lie down, and let her body and her little wing rest.
Her hands were unsteady when she was at last behind the wheel of her car, glancing in the rearview mirror to see the florist standing on the sidewalk in front of her door, throwing up her hands as Silva pulled away. Her hands were still shaking as she gripped the steering wheel, navigating her way out of the city as quickly as she could.
The sun was already beginning to set. She had arrived at the flower shop shortly after it opened that morning. A whole day. She nearly sobbed in relief upon checking her phone, seeing that the date had not changed, that she hadn’t lost weeks of her lifeagain.Only hours. Her heart was still thumping as she pulled into the express lane, bypassing the Cambric Creek exit entirely. That wasn’t where she was going that night. She had one last stop to make before she went home for good.
* * *
That her key still worked was a revelation.
Silva eased her car into the alley behind the bar, parking in the space it had once occupied every weekend. The security light came on as she approached the Plundered Pixie’s back door, her hands shaking as she slid the key into the lock without issue.
She could hear the noise of the bar through the back hallway, laughter and loud voices wrapped in the din of music, and she could easily envision the mass of huge bodies crowded around the pool tables and leaning at the bar. Scurrying like a mouse, she hurried through the dark hallway, waiting for the moment the door would be thrown open, her discovery called out . . . but it never came.
Her heart twinged as she edged around a black shape in the darkness behind the staircase, realizing with a pang that it was his racing bike, tucked away and covered. She nearly tripped over a plastic tub of unopened mail, skirting around it to move up the staircase as swiftly and silently as she was able, wincing when another round of cramps moved through her.
When the key to the apartment door slid into the lock just as easily, she breathed a small sigh of relief . . . until the door swung open, and she was forced to confront the apartment without him in it.
It was exactly as they’d left it, the last time she’d been here with him.
The perfect little office set-up, the new sofa and chair, the watery color palette that had been chosen just for her. Everything in the room had been chosen forher, for her to have somewhere to go, somewhere to hide, somewhere to be safe. Allthese endless months of desperation, of not knowing where she could go or what she might do, when he had provided for her from the start, from that very first weekend.
Everything was covered in a layer of dust, the little pothos plant above her desk brown and brittle, dead from two years of neglect, but it was nothing that couldn’t be fixed with a small amount of cleaning.Ifshe were planning to stay.
This Silva-inspired room wasn’t what she wanted, not then.
Her vision was already blurred by tears as she staggered down the hallway, past the second bedroom, past the bathroom. When she burst into the bedroom they had shared, the sob that had been brewing in her throat erupted at last, nearly choking her in its force.
The room still held its furniture, but the closet stood empty, its doors open like a black maw in the shadows. The bedside tables were bare, as was the surface of the low chest of drawers on the far wall. The high antique bureau, however, had something at its center. There was an envelope with her name on it, she saw immediately upon her slow approach, several inches thick, written in his flowing, spiky handwriting.
The envelope sat atop the jewelry box he had kept at the back of the top drawer, where he had retrieved a beautifully jewelled hair comb for her once. A glance inside showed her the contents of the box intact. Pendants and rings of fine golden filigree, bees and flowers on signet rings, lockets made of twisting vines, gold-wrapped gems of every color. The second hair comb, half a dozen pocket watches he’d not had put on bands. A box of treasures, family heirlooms. Something for their little girl. Silva carefully slid the box into her bag.
