“Are you listening to me, Rose?” Papa waves a hand in front of my face. “First, we can grind the rose petal into the tonic from that tablet I dug up in Romania, or we can try the lullaby and dance from the children’s book. We’d need to choose a good tree. You’ve got excellent intuition. Which tree should we pick?”
I nearly laugh out loud. My intuition has been nothing but wrong.
“Papa,” I say, “I’m not skipping around a tree dancing and singing like I’m from some cursed musical.”
He narrows his bright blue eyes, then sighs. “Fine. We’ll try the tonic first.”
A pang of guilt simmers in my gut, and I hold on to his arm and lean my head on his shoulder. We walk in step. Gulls call from the harbor, and I inhale the rich smell of pine. “Let’s take the long way home past the willow tree.”
If there’s any silver lining to my gray world, it’s that for the first time in my life, I feel connected to my father. I’d spent my twenty-six years feeling nothing but resentment for him, for leaving me alone while he went on his wild quests to enter the fae realm. Now, I’m his accomplice.
After Keldarion sent me away from the Enchanted Vale and closed my only way through, I stumbled back to my first home. The home before Castletree.
I expected it to be empty. For Papa to have sold my belongings and be off on one of his adventures.
What I found instead was the physical manifestation of grief.
The cottage was a mess: a torn apart hovel littered with strange artifacts, unwashed cups of congealed coffee, and empty cans of beans. But George O’Connell was there, his usually full face gaunt, his tall form hunched over the kitchen table, hands shaking as he marked squares off a map of Briarwood Forest.
“Papa?” I whispered as I crept through the unlocked door.
His bloodshot eyes held mine. And he did something I’d never seen him do. He fell to the ground and cried.
I cried, too. For the father I left alone the same way he’d left me throughout my life. For the guilt of falling in love with a new world. For the sorrow of losing it.
The next day, all I’d wanted to do was stay huddled in bed, but Papa hadn’t let me. Now, he had proof. And he had me. “Covered in fae magic, that’s what you are,” Papa had said. “Plus, if the residents of Castletree are as good-hearted as you say, then that connection will lead us back.”
I’d been eager at first. So what if Keldarion had sent me away? He also claimed books were boring and made some sort of deal with the Prince of Thorns. He obviously wasn’t the sharpest icicle in the cavern. And once the other princes discovered I wasn’t at Castletree, they would come for me. Papa had said Keldarion sent him back to Orca Cove using the magical mirror inside Castletree. If the princes could use the mirror to connect to the human world, then it was only a matter of time before they found me.
But then the days turned to weeks, the weeks turned to months.
Keldarion didn’t change his mind. The snow melted from our little yard, the ice on the lake cracked. Winter gave way to spring, and he didn’t change his mind.
No one came for me.
I don’t cry when I think of them anymore. Not even when I think about the way Farron would raise his eyebrows, glasses too low down his nose. Or the rush of warmth through my body when Dayton trailed a hand up my back, the giddy delight in wanting so much. Or the rough-spun fabric of Ezryn’s cape that I clung to when the world seemed too big for me, or how in that moment I was grounded and sheltered and safe.
Or how I’d kissed Keldarion and known in every essence of me that I belonged to him. That he belonged to me.
“Hey, is that you, Rosalina?” A gruff voice tears me from my thoughts.
“Keep walking,” Papa says. “Don’t stop.”
We’re passing the Seagull’s Gullet Book Emporium, my old place of work. Richard, my former boss, is writing on a chalkboard sign in coarse, boxy letters. Not like the care I’d spend thinking of book puns and doodling literary characters.
“Rosalina!” Richard calls. “I left you a couple of voice messages. Thought you might want to pick up some shifts. You can even do a few of the orders. Rosalina?”
“Sorry, Richard. Too busy.”
He swears under his breath. “Chasing pixies with your father now, eh?”
“Faeries, actually,” I say without looking back at him. “You should try reading a book for once.”
Papa chuckles and ushers me down the road. I couldn’t go back to working for Richard after living at Castletree. Not after I spent months with Astrid, Marigold, and the other staff and experienced what it was like to work with people who respect you. Who care for you.
Or at least I thought they did.
Why wouldn’t Marigold and Astrid ask the princes to come for me? Don’t they miss me like I miss them?
