“We still have a lot to talk about,” Father said, offering Hazel a reassuring smile. “But the important thing is, our family is whole again. All four of us.”
“And you’re not leaving again?” Hazel asked, even quieter. “Mother, you won’t make him leave, will you?”
For a moment, all that could be heard was the crackling of the fire. Mother let out a long sigh, shaking her head. “We must see where our new home will be, dewdrop. What that future will look like. But no, right now, no one is leaving.”
This seemed to sate Hazel for now, and she lay her head on my arm as though to make sureIwouldn’t vanish into thin air, either.
“My, you’ve kept busy,” Delilah finally remarked. She’d been studying Father with keen intensity, and I got the sense she was somehow impressed with him. Perhaps there was some kind of mutual understanding, the way she had understood intrinsically when I’d confessed my own passionate pursuit of a gemstone’s magic.
Father offered a cautious, though charmingly lopsided smile—the one that used to get him out of the worst reprimands when he’d been stationed in the Entry Watch. “I appreciate your sensitivity to all this.” He frowned at the hunters. “You two are taking this pretty well, even given your line of… I suppose you’d call itwork.”
Jon pulled a face at the faint note of derision. It wasn’t dissimilar to how any fairy spoke of hunters, tainted by years of horrible legends.
“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but this isn’t the most insane thing to happen to us,” Jon said. “Especially giventonight’sbullshit alone.”
“Not very reassuring, considering you’ve been transporting my daughter for the last several months.”
“And keeping me safe,” I cut in firmly.
Though I could see Father still bristling at the concept of me alone with two human men, he conceded to me and backed down.
After exchanging a look with Mother, Father rifled in the interior pocket of his coat, something rustling against his fingertips. He withdrew a bundle of envelopes and folded papers that were bound together by a rough knot of twine. He stood from his seat and crossed the room to kneel in front of me and Hazel.
But he wasn’t focused on Hazel, and somehow, she seemed to know this too. She didn’t tremble at his approach, and I was reminded she had been traveling with him for months herself. I found myself so curious, perhaps even a bit jealous, at the moments I had missed between them.
Father’s proximity stole my breath—here, real. He held up the bundle meaningfully. My name was scribbled across the first few envelopes, each a different size and color.
“I wrote you letters,” he said. This close, I could see the tears building in his eyes when he looked at me. It made my throat close with emotion, too. “One for every year we were apart. I didn’t have a way to get them to you, but I’d write them anyway, hoping for a chance. I did have gifts too, but I uh…” He rubbed his neck, cringing slightly. “I left most of it behind in the citywhen your mother called for me. But I can go back and get them. Someday.”
“Thank you,” I murmured. It was a magnificent feat of strength just to get those two syllables out, with how a sob was building in my chest. Grief, happiness, confusion, anger—they all warred as one hurricane within me.
Father matched my flickering, broken smile, and then a tear slipped down his cheek. He hastily wiped it away, sniffing hard, not wanting to upset us.
“Sorry,” he said through a broken flash of a smile. “I just… I dreamt for years that I’d get to see you even once more. I begged the stars for that one mercy, and even still, I wasn’t ready.” The tenderness in his gaze made me feel molten and raw. “Stars, you’re so beautiful, Sylvia. You’ve grown up so much. You look just like your mother.”
Tears slipped down my cheeks, hot and fast. My lip trembled as I shakily got to my feet. I stopped holding myself back, stopped thinking rationally. When he gingerly offered his hand, I flew to embrace his neck instead, burying myself against him.
“I missed you so much,” I sobbed against him.
Father clasped me back, the grounding feel of him—even as our soft cries intertwined—melting away a decade of hollowness in my soul that he’d left behind.
27
Sylvia
Despite a bone-deep exhaustion I worried I would never fully recover from, I slept restlessly and woke before the rest of the house. At least—mostof the house.
I thought I had been stealthy when I slipped out of Jon’s room to watch the sunrise the next morning, but Hazel was on my heels almost at once. My heart melted a little bit at the idea that she had been waiting for me to wake up, eager to spend every moment by my side that she could.
I felt the same—happy to make up for every agonizing moment I worried that I’d never get to see her again at all.
I tucked my legs close, seated next to my sister at the edge of a table that gave a dazzling floor-to-ceiling view of the altered environment outside. The warm colors of sunrise had brightened into full morning. Snow fell in the distance. How strange to see the precise line where the gemstone’s influence had no power.
I wondered what would happen once its offerings flowed into me. It had taken mere hours for its presence to rewrite theterrain outside Delilah’s home. Within a couple of days, the weather and vegetation would be as they should be.
And I would be…
Human. I would behuman.
