“The worst of us, I’m afraid,” Nan tuts. “I always agreed withQueen Mor’s decision to close the door between our worlds. She’s a mother, like me, and she knows if a child can’t be trusted with a toy, you must take the toy away.”
Again, I think of Queen Mor in that dark basement cell. So determined to stand by Bram that she’s willing to spend the rest of her immortal life behind bars. The love she has for her son will be her undoing.
“Speaking of motherhood,” I say, “I’ve never seen faerie children before.”
Fennick looks fondly at his wife. “A rare gift. We tried for centuries, and never dreamed we’d be blessed with two so close together.”
As if summoned, the children burst back from the backyard and scramble for purchase up on Emmett’s lap. He lets them eat the last of his pie.
Veda presses her sticky little hands to his face, and in the blink of an eye, she morphs into a perfect, miniature copy of Emmett. She’s got his dark wavy hair, his hazel eyes lined with thick lashes.
I let out a yelp of surprise.
Veda looks to me with a mischievous grin and changes into me. It’s like looking in a mirror, if that mirror shrank me down two feet.
“Be nice to our guest, Veda. It’s not polite to glamour yourself at the dining table.”
“Glamour?” I ask Nan.
She nods sagely. “Every faerie can do magic, but some are blessed with particular talents. Our Veda here is quite the mimic.”
Veda turns into Emmett again, but this time with a shiny, bald head.
Emmett springs up, arms outstretched. “You little devil!” hescreams as he chases her. She squeals and laughs, only morphing back into herself once he catches her and lifts her off her feet.
After, we join them in the garden, where Emmett and Fennick push them on wooden swings tied to a gnarled tree.
Nan appears beside me and hands me a steaming cup of something.
“He loves you so much,” she says.
“He did, once,” I reply, too honest with this near stranger.
“A love like that isn’t something you get over.” She sounds so sure. But what do immortals know about moving on?
“I didn’t even know him for very long,” I confess. “He’s lived with the memory of me much longer than the reality of me.” How could I possibly live up to the idea of me he mourned?
“There’s something I’ve learned about time in this very long life,” Nan says. “Sometimes a single minute matters more than one hundred years.”
It’s a nice thought. I’m just not so sure I believe it.
After Emmett is thoroughly winded from chasing Veda and Orin through the orchard behind the tavern, we give our farewells, with plenty of promises to return soon. We don’t speak of Bram’s new competition. It’s as if I can read Emmett’s mind; there’s no point in worrying them over something so far out of their control.
Emmett walks ahead of me on the path. “Where are we going?” I ask.
He turns to me and grins, his face so beautiful in the midday sun I could nearly cry. “You didn’t used to ask this many questions.”
“That’s a lie.”
Together we walk to a nearby glen, secluded beyond the outskirtsof town, where a waterfall pours over moss-covered stones into a babbling brook below. Flowers bloom for us as we walk along the winding path, and Emmett takes a blanket and lays it down once we reach the softest part of the grass.
“A picnic?” I ask.
“You were too busy pushing Veda on the swing to see her mother accost me and force me into taking all this food.”
“They really love you,” I say.
Emmett closes his eyes and tips his face up to the sun. It’s been up long enough that the crisp autumn morning is yielding to warmth. “I love them too. I’d never seen a family like that.”
