I turned wildly toward Delilah. “Let them in!Please.”
She hastened toward the front door, tailed closely by Lee. Every wingbeat brought me closer, my heartbeat hammering in my ears—
And then the frosted glass door swung open, and the final barrier between me and my family was gone.
Time ground to a halt.
I locked eyes with Mother first, watching as all the anticipation simply drained from her face. She looked at me like I was a ghost, like she was afraid to believe what she was seeing.
”Sylvia?” Hazel squeaked out my name.
The sweet, achingly familiar sound of her voice severed the last thread tethering me back. With a cry, I dove forward. My flight was cut off abruptly as Mother slammed into me, crushing me into her embrace. The smell of her, ofhome,was overwhelming.
“Oh, my love, you’re safe,” she said, her voice wobbling. Wetness hit my shoulder; she wascrying.
Hazel clamped onto my side, and we happily scooped her into the embrace. All the horrors I’d witnessed tonight, the crushing emotional hurricane still whirling inside me, all of it faded as I was clutched tightly between them.
Safe. They were safe.
“I heard so many horrible things…” I choked off, recalling what Rowan and Zia had said about Aelthorin. “I thought you might be dead.”
Mother pulled back to cup my face in her hands. Her eyes lingered only for a moment on my traitor mark, flickering with fresh remorse. “Far from it.”
She squeezed my shoulders as though to assure me this was real, thatnothingwould tear us apart again.
Through a broken smile, I wiped my tears on my sleeves and looked at Hazel more closely, drinking every inch of her in. It had only been a few months, but my baby-faced little sister was suddenly showing hints of the woman she’d become. Her rounded face had slimmed out slightly, and even mid-air, I could tell she’d grown. Her long hair had been trimmed sometime while we’d been apart, and it now fell in wild curls just past her shoulders.
Surely all I’d put them through had forced her to grow up a little faster. A wretched thought, one that I stuffed away for the moment.
With a trembling smile, I tucked curls behind her ears.An animal affinity.I’d missed the discovery. I’d missed so much of her life already.
Peeking past Mother’s fluttering iridescent wings, I saw Father keeping his distance on the porch. He had his hands stuffed deep into the pockets of his canvas jacket, doing his best to make himself all but invisible. But the weight of his stare was crushing, lined with the desperate, tethered urge to join our embrace. To havehisfamily back, too.
A part of me wanted him to. I wanted him to make me laugh and tell me stories and hug me like he had done countless times when I’d been a child.
I avoided Father’s stare with a lurch in my stomach, burying my face back into Mother’s shoulder so I didn’t have to look at him.
He had much explaining to do before he earned anything from me.
We gathered in the parlor with the fireplace. Where it had once been a calming sanctuary, it was now brimming with enough tension to set my nerves on end, like I might need to summon a spell at any moment to battle against a hidden threat.
I avoided looking at my father for as long as possible, but all eyes were on him, stares ranging from curiosity to bluntly unnerved. I couldn’t be sure where I landed on that scale, but surely no one could claim to feel the same type of disquiet as I did. I was a child again, preparing to listen to one of Father’s fireside tales—shivering with all the anticipation of it and none of the giddy enthusiasm.
Hazel was my anchor, burrowed into my side as we shared the arm of a sofa that was occupied by Jon and Cliff. One of Jon’s hands rested on his lap, white-knuckled; he likely would have been resting his hand behind me protectively if not for the risk of frightening Hazel. But perhaps her time around Father had made her less terrified of humans, given how pointedly she had asked Cliff if he had any more candy for her. He had produced a small wrapped piece of chocolate that he must have pilfered from the kitchen, as though he had been prepared for her request.
Finally, I forced my eyes to the armchair across from us. Father was rigid, locked onto me, and no one else. I wished to be someplace else, anyplace where I wouldn’t have to be in his direct line of sight. But this was necessary. The fact that Mother was seated on the back of his armchair didn’t settle my nerves. There was a united front about the way they sat together, a suggestion that Father’s secrets belonged to Mother as well.
Ever the gracious hostess, Delilah was the one to shatter the silence. “So. Where to begin?”
She regarded Father with what had to be the least fear and hostility. She sat in an adjacent loveseat, curled comfortably against Lee’s side. Ben couldn’t seem to decide which of Lee’s shoulders to settle on—closer for a better look, or farther away for safety.
“How did you find us, for starters?” Jon asked. “And how did you end up in Eros’ guard?”
Cliff shifted uncomfortably.Eros. It was much easier than calling him by his real name. The distance was a weak balm, better than none at all.
The urgency of Jon’s questions paled in comparison to my own, but I understood. To me, Father was a painfully familiar face. To the others, their first impression was one of a fairy-trafficking menace, and that was difficult to shake. I couldn’t blame Zia and Rowan for keeping the most distance. There was a sense of compromise about their being in the room at all; Rowan stood protectively behind where she sat on the edge of the mantle.
“I’ve been tracking you for some months now,” Father admitted. “Melanie called upon me to escort her and Hazel to Aelthorin several weeks after Sylvia was banished from Elysia. The plan was to go straight to Aelthorin, but well… It became clear thatyouwere not on a direct path there.”
