Chapter 5 #2
I shift, thighs keenly sore from hours of sitting cross-legged. I swallow and blurt out, “I don’t understand. This isn’t talking to animals. What am I supposed to do?”
“Sprout the rice the same as you did three thousand years ago.”
I nearly laugh with the impossibility of it, but Woudix’s stony expression makes the breath die on my lips.
I clear my throat. My eyes sink closed. The tiny, hard seed bites into my palm, dry and lifeless. The fey lines glow along my hand, urging to be set free.
I concentrate.
And…nothing stirs.
“I can’t,” I admit, shame pinching my throat.
“Solene didn’t try,” Woudix murmurs. Not unkindly—simply a fact. “She listened. To the seed. To the soil. To the breath of the earth beneath her. She made it respond.”
My fingers tremble. “I don’t know how to be her.”
“You don’t have to be her—that’s what you aren’t understanding.
Three thousand years ago, one version of Solene walked through primitive villages and temples.
Two thousand years ago, a different Solene woke.
A thousand years later, yet another, different Solene emerged.
And now? You are her, but you are also you. Sabine Darrow.”
He taps the book in my lap and continues, “These history books record events, but not what it means to be fae. We’re more connected to our mortal selves than Vale and the others like to admit.
Thus, we both are and are not the same in every Return.
In each iteration, our physical bodies are different.
Our temperaments, too. As are our relationships.
Sometimes, you and Vale are siblings. Sometimes father and daughter.
It changes, whether the ten fae gods are lovers, family, rivals, enemies.
We call ourselves brothers and sisters, but that is a moniker only.
You get to choose, do you feel that? Who you want to be this time. ”
I run a hand up my bare arm, over the icy-hot fey line hiding beneath my skin.
“You must remember who you are,” he continues. “Not with your mind, but with your body. It already knows what to do—you proved that on the night of the Gloaming, when you called the Ramvik River from its bed.”
He presses his hand against mine again, anchoring my palm—the seed trapped beneath—to the soil.
“Remember,” he urges.
I lick my lips, suddenly dry, bloodless.
A cold burn tingles in my palm, and for a second, I’m frightened.
I feel transported back to that awful day of the Gloaming, when I unleashed nature in all its ferocious chaos upon Drahallen Hall, destroying everything that threatened to keep Basten and me apart.
Woudix leans in, his voice so low it might as well be whispered in a dream. “Master this,” he murmurs, “and anything you desire is yours. The world.” His voice catches. “Maybe…the underworld, too.”
A shiver runs through me that isn’t altogether unpleasant. Something about this—being here with him, his hand over mine—feels deep and inevitable, like bedrock undisturbed by eons of tremors.
It sparks something.
A memory, maybe. Or a long-buried feeling.
“You and I,” I blurt out before I even realize what I’m saying. “Were we ever…” I stop short, suddenly doubting myself, feeling like a fool for even thinking it. I blush and look away. “Never mind.”
“What were you going to say?”
“Nothing. It was a foolish notion.”
In the awkward silence that stretches, my insides twist up so hard I regret eating so much greasy chicken for lunch.
His jaw parts. “You want to know if we’ve ever been lovers.”
“No,” I say in a rush, instantly mortified down to my toes. I glance through the branches, praying Basten—with his superior hearing—isn’t within miles. “No, that isn’t it at all.”
Woudix only smirks like he can see into my heart.
“The answer is no. It was always you and Artain. It’s always been you and Artain.
Some patterns in our fates repeat themselves.
Thracia always pairs with Samaur. Popelin and Meric are always at odds—sometimes to the point of blades. And of course, you and Artain.”
His words linger as if there’s more there, but I can’t even pretend to guess what it is. A cloud shifts overhead, plunging the hemlock grove into shadows.
I clear my throat and look down at my hands. Gods, the tension is thick as fog.
“I can’t see how I was ever with that ass,” I joke.
Woudix—always so stoic—almost smiles in return. “Let’s just say it was always a love-and-hate relationship between you two. And…” He reaches out to catch one of the loose curls cascading down my shoulder, working it softly between his fingers like corn silk. “You’re different this time.”
The pit of my stomach tightens, though I’m not sure why. He isn’t just talking about the color and texture of my hair.
I’m so damn hopeful that I am different this time.
“You and I,” he continues, “have always treated one another more as true siblings. As…equals.”
My chest sinks with relief. Yes. Yes, that’s it. The connection I feel. How I can tolerate him more than the other fae. He isn’t my brother, not by blood.
But it feels right.
Family.
The word hums in my chest, alive, like something I’d forgotten but never really lost. My pulse snaps—not with fear, but wonder.
My palm suddenly tingles with pins and needles.
As a faint tremor shakes the ground, a tendril of greenery thrusts out from beneath my hand. More tendrils weave between my fingers, growing up toward the light with astonishing speed, twisting and dancing with life.
A shriek slips out of my mouth. I clap a trembling hand—fey lines blazing silver—over my mouth, gazing in awe at the rice seedling that’s rising from the ground. Tiny threads of roots bury themselves deeper in the soil. Inch by inch, the seedling unfurls until it’s waist high.
Without meaning to, my human glamour melts away to reveal my fae self. All dazzling bright lines, pointed ears, and pin-sharp teeth.
“It grew,” I gasp. “I made it sprout.”
Woudix gives a nod that could almost be considered proud, as he lets my lock of hair slip from his fingers. “Of course you did.”
Before I know what I’m doing, I throw my arms around him with such vigor that he has to lean back, catching himself with one hand planted behind him.
I laugh and cry and sniffle against the hard leather of his doublet, shaped to look like a corpse’s ribs. For once, he doesn’t feel like a cold, distant god.
I feel his breath, feel his chest rise and fall.
Something is returning. Maybe not memories—not yet—but old impulses. Instincts. Habits. Something has shifted here, beneath the boughs, under Woudix’s deft hand. Just look at the rice seedling twisting toward the sun.
Deep in my bones, a quiet thrill thrums.
If this is what is awakening in me…maybe I don’t have to fear the stirring.