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“So, you want me to promise that at some indeterminate time in the future when I manage to figure out how to balance an invisible force that I have no knowledge of at all, that I do it?”

The doubt and incredulity in my voice was apparent.

“Yes.”

“Oh, yeah, sure. That sounds like a plan that will go totally fine. Doesn’t sound that complicated at all. I’ll just pop onto Google and search up how to balance magic in the Fae realm. Yeah, I’m sure there are thousands of hits on that one.”

She frowned and moved me to look into my eyes again. “I dislike this sarcasm, Sóna Mac Raith. Tell me true. Will you do it, or no?”

“Sarcasm aside, I have no clue how to do that. I have no clue if I will ever know how to do that.”

“If magic does not tell you how, then you never will, and you cannot break your oath. It is a simple thing, Sóna. I am not seeking to trick you.”

I watched her. The discomfort with making promises or deals to Fae was plain on my face. I knew it was by the reflection in her eyes. I wanted to trust her, though. I needed to trust her. I had longed for a mother all my life, and I would be a good girl and not disappoint the one who was genuinely my mother. Especially with such a nebulous request.

I gave her a curt nod. “Yes. I’ll do it. I don’t know when or how, but if the opportunity presents itself, I swear I will do it.”

A sigh of profound relief exited her and dusted across the tips of my pointed ears as she squeezed me hard enough to break my bones.

“I have two more oaths I would take from you, Sóna. Will you hear me on them?”

I squirmed but nodded. Discomfort rolled through me, prickling my skin.

“You must free the Fae from Daróg and set the realm back to its proper order. He has taken what was never supposed to belong to him. By sitting his backside upon that throne, he has upended the natural order of this realm, and I can feel it writhing and bucking under his yoke. Setting magic to balance is only one piece of it. If you set magic to balance, he will have more power. You must remove him and avenge your house, your family. Swear it.”

“So, his true name is Daróg?” A sly grin pulled at the corners of my mouth. “That will be useful if I ever figure out how to wield magic like a Fae.”

Airgetlám chuckled. “Already thinking like a Fae.”

I smiled up at her. “This one is an easy answer. Yes. I swear it. He deserves it if nothing else but also because he’s a piece of shit.”

“Oh, sweet one, you have barely even scratched a nail along the film of his misdeeds. Look deeper and know him for what a vile, twisted creature he truly is.”

“And the one who put you here? Who did this to you? I’ll kill them, too.”

“I do not know, dear heart. I only know that the room went dark, and I smelled roses. I was already delirious from the birthing bed. It could have been roses or iris or jasmine. I smelled flowers, and when I woke again, I was here. This place had been built ages ago to hold a mad god. I thought it forgotten and rotted away, but here we are.”

I frowned and added that to my mental list of things to figure out. “I’ll find them, too, and they will pay for what they did.”

Her embrace tightened again, longer this time, as if she didn’t want to let go, and the air turned morose and still as the grave.

“The last thing I must ask of you, my dear daughter, is not so easy.” She was whispering, sadness the depths of which I had never heard before crept into the dulcet tones of her voice. “I must ask you to return me to magic.”

“Isn’t that what Fae call dying?” I snapped and turned in her embrace, my eyes frantically darting across her face, trying to figure out some alternative meaning.

“It is.” She pushed my hair from my face as she watched me. “I have languished in this cell for ages. I have mourned your father and been kept from him all this time, and every moment I am parted from him is a thousand daggers piercing me. You will understand when you claim rights to your own anam cara, but a life without them is a half-life. It is lived on borrowed breaths drawn into lungs full of shards of glass. I endured it because I knew, one day, you would find me, and I persevered so that I could once again hold you. But I must return to his arms.”

“You . . . you want me to kill you?”

Hysteria was scratching at the edges of my voice. Denial, hot and vicious, swam within me. No! I just found her. I just got her back. I just had it, what I had wanted my whole life. I had needed and wanted her, and now she wanted to leave me, too? Old wounds, sutured closed with kindness and care, ripped themselves wide open and bled their bitterness all over me.

“Yes. I cannot do it myself. If I tried to stab myself, magic would break my hands. If I tried to fling myself from the edge of the platform, magic would hold me aloft and set me back in my cage. I cannot escape. I cannot leave. Only by someone else’s hand can I flee this place.”

“So, I’ll pull up the iron runes and show you the way out.”

“If it were that simple, dear heart, I would have asked that of you.”

“I . . . I don’t understand.”