Page 54 of A Courage of the Chosen

The life we lived in Brooklyn seems more like a fever dream, as does the old man who hobbled around on a stick, and needed help up the stairs when ice coated his stoop.

It’s too much, and the final crack in the dam.

My feet carry me forward until I’m wrapped in Grandpa’s embrace.

The metal of his breastplate presses harshly into my cheek but I don’t care. He’s the last tie to the person I once was. The last tie to the Granny I knew. In his arms, I’m not a queen. Not a Seelie. Not someone with the fate of worlds on her shoulders.

I’m just Elsie.

“Hi, sweetheart,” he says around a smile. The last time he stood in this palace, he was fighting for his life as the Dorche attacked.

I choke back my sob.

“Hey, what’s going on?” He leans to study the moisture on my face, concern radiating from his pale-blue eyes.

“I’m just glad you’re here. Welcome home,” I sniff.

He looks around the room, and his attention snags on the portrait on the far wall of Granny and her parents. The words he doesn’t say are written in the pain behind the soft curl of his lips.

He will forever be incomplete. He and Granny were Anamara, connected beyond love, and a piece of his soul will always be with her. Just as the place where her soul existed within him will remain vacant until they’re reunited again.

Home is wherever she is.

Grandpa clears his throat and bundles me into another hug as Reyne ducks out with a whispered goodbye. She’s tried to corner me on a few instances to probe into what’s going on, but we always seem to get interrupted when I think I’m finally going to share with her. Not that I’ve decided either way, but if she corners me again, I’m not sure I can keep my lips sealed.

“Tell me what’s going on, sweetheart. I’m here,” Grandpa says.

We move over to the sofas near the fire, and Callahan adds more logs so that heat spreads further through the room.

I sit in the middle of the largest sofa, tucking my feet beneath me and angling myself in Grandpa’s direction. He removes his breastplate, and my gaze catches on the muscle beneath. He could pass for a man in his forties, not a centuries-old Seelie who’s survived everything he has.

Callahan sits immediately next to me, and takes the hand fiddling with the hem of my T-shirt in his. Grandpa’s mouth twitches as he watches the way Callahan laces our fingers together and begins rubbing his thumb over my knuckles.

They both wait, each of them steadfast when I feel as though I’m adrift. One side represents my past, the other my future.

With a heaved sigh, I start at the battle, telling Grandpa what happened with Tavish. How he nearly killed Callahan, and how he took the Craobh.

I can’t bear to look at him as the words tumble from me.

“Elsie,” Grandpa says, taking my other hand. “There was nothing you could’ve done to stop that. You fought, and fought damn well, from the sounds of it.”

“She did,” Callahan butts in. “I’d be dead if it wasn’t for her.”

I don’t deserve their praise. Or the pride that sits in Grandpa’s face.

“I failed her.” Those three little words come out with a tremble of my lips, mangled around the cement block in the base of my throat.

Callahan’s grip flexes, and Grandpa turns on the sofa so he’s fully facing me.

“Now you listen to me, Elspeth.” His tone is stern, one he never uses with me except when I’m in trouble. “You failed no one. Least of all your grandmother. You did the best you could, and that’s all anyone can ask of you.”

Callahan huffs his agreement behind me.

“You didn’t even know this world existed a year ago. And you stood your own against someone many would be scared to face. That’s not failure. That’s a warrior.”

Grandpa pulls me to him, but Callahan keeps hold of one hand so I’m awkwardly bent between them.

I take a few moments to settle my breathing while Grandpa holds me steady, and then share what happened when we arrived in the palace. The way the council run circles around what needs to be done. The missing supply wagons. My suspicions of Hume.