Chapter Fifteen #2
My stomach lets out an embarrassing grumble. Faeries aren’t really ones for breakfast, but Nan jabs her husband. “What are
we doing? Get the poor children some food!”
Fennick disappears through the swinging door to the kitchen and reappears with four steaming meat pies.
“No pastries today?” Emmett says.
Fennick drops the pie in front of him. “You’ll like this more.”
While we eat, I hear more of Nan and Fennick’s life and how Emmett came to be a part of their orbit. After long days of ruling
Bram’s faerie court, Emmett began a habit of coming here to have a moment of peace.
“I realized they were different,” he explains. “That not all faeries in the Otherworld were like Bram’s courtiers.”
“He saved us from those very courtiers,” Fennick says gravely.
“Saved is too generous a term,” Emmett replies.
Nan pats his hand. “You’re always too modest. You absolutely saved us.”
“We’re a small family establishment. We want to be a place for the community to gather, but the nobles up in that castle had
taken to coming here after their revels, so drunk they couldn’t see straight, and destroying the place. One night it got so
bad, they lit the roof on fire, right above where Veda and Orin sleep,” Fennick says.
“And you know what Emmett did?” Nan asks. “He used his power as regent to declare any members of Bram’s court were no longer
allowed to visit the village on revel nights, and then he climbed up on our roof and fixed the thatch himself.”
Fennick laughs. “We kept telling him we could just fix it with magic, but there he was, with his shirtsleeves rolled up, repairing
it himself.”
“Magic isn’t always good at repairs like that,” Emmett replies in a low voice. “I didn’t want the straw to dissolve into mist
during the next rainstorm and leave Veda and Orin all wet. It was easy enough to fix it myself.”
“It wasn’t easy at all! Nan exclaims. “He was up there all day, sweating buckets.”
“But the courtiers have stayed away, and we love Emmett like another son,” Fennick adds.
“Most of the faeries I’ve met here are like them,” Emmett says. “Not like Bram and the rest of them at the castle.”
“The worst of us, I’m afraid,” Nan tuts. “I always agreed with Queen Mor’s decision to close the door between our worlds. She’s a mother, like me, and she knows if a child can’t be trusted with a toy, you must take the toy away.”
Again, I think of Queen Mor in that dark basement cell. So determined to stand by Bram that she’s willing to spend the rest
of her immortal life behind bars. The love she has for her son will be her undoing.
“Speaking of motherhood,” I say, “I’ve never seen faerie children before.”
Fennick looks fondly at his wife. “A rare gift. We tried for centuries, and never dreamed we’d be blessed with two so close
together.”
As if summoned, the children burst back from the backyard and scramble for purchase up on Emmett’s lap. He lets them eat the
last of his pie.
Veda presses her sticky little hands to his face, and in the blink of an eye, she morphs into a perfect, miniature copy of
Emmett. She’s got his dark wavy hair, his hazel eyes lined with thick lashes.
I let out a yelp of surprise.
Veda looks to me with a mischievous grin and changes into me. It’s like looking in a mirror, if that mirror shrank me down
two feet.
“Be nice to our guest, Veda. It’s not polite to glamour yourself at the dining table.”
“Glamour?” I ask Nan.
She nods sagely. “Every faerie can do magic, but some are blessed with particular talents. Our Veda here is quite the mimic.”
Veda turns into Emmett again, but this time with a shiny, bald head.
Emmett springs up, arms outstretched. “You little devil!” he screams as he chases her. She squeals and laughs, only morphing back into herself once he catches her and lifts her off her feet.
After, we join them in the garden, where Emmett and Fennick push them on wooden swings tied to a gnarled tree.
Nan appears beside me and hands me a steaming cup of something.
“He loves you so much,” she says.
“He did, once,” I reply, too honest with this near stranger.
“A love like that isn’t something you get over.” She sounds so sure. But what do immortals know about moving on?
“I didn’t even know him for very long,” I confess. “He’s lived with the memory of me much longer than the reality of me.”
How could I possibly live up to the idea of me he mourned?
“There’s something I’ve learned about time in this very long life,” Nan says. “Sometimes a single minute matters more than
one hundred years.”
It’s a nice thought. I’m just not so sure I believe it.
After Emmett is thoroughly winded from chasing Veda and Orin through the orchard behind the tavern, we give our farewells,
with plenty of promises to return soon. We don’t speak of Bram’s new competition. It’s as if I can read Emmett’s mind; there’s
no point in worrying them over something so far out of their control.
Emmett walks ahead of me on the path. “Where are we going?” I ask.
He turns to me and grins, his face so beautiful in the midday sun I could nearly cry. “You didn’t used to ask this many questions.”
“That’s a lie.”
Together we walk to a nearby glen, secluded beyond the outskirts of town, where a waterfall pours over moss-covered stones into a babbling brook below. Flowers bloom for us as we walk along the winding path, and Emmett takes a blanket and lays it down once we reach the softest part of the grass.
“A picnic?” I ask.
“You were too busy pushing Veda on the swing to see her mother accost me and force me into taking all this food.”
“They really love you,” I say.
Emmett closes his eyes and tips his face up to the sun. It’s been up long enough that the crisp autumn morning is yielding
to warmth. “I love them too. I’d never seen a family like that.”
“Like what?”
“That loved each other.”
I feel a pang of homesickness for the kind of family I had before all of this. I hadn’t appreciated the rarity of it until
it was gone.
Emmett spreads the feast out over the blanket. Food that looks close enough to the sandwiches back home, but the tea cakes
smell of raspberries and rain and are covered with candied flowers. Emmett peels one off and pops it into his mouth.
“Will you tell me about the last two years?” I ask. Will you tell me if it’s too large a gap to close, if I’ll ever find my way back to you?
He leans back on his elbows and brushes his hair behind his ears. It would be so easy to pretend we were in Hyde Park now,
under a familiar sun.
“I think I’m quite good at it, actually.”
“At what?”
“Being regent.”
I smile. “I have my own confession.”
He raises his brows.
“I’m not a bad queen.” It’s the first time I’ve said it aloud, the first time I’ve admitted it to myself, actually.
He grins, showing off his perfect teeth. I’m particularly fond of his canines, which are just slightly too sharp.
“I never doubted you.”
I take a sip of something fizzy from a bottle and Emmett takes the moment to just look at me.
“How is Pig?” he asks. “I should have asked that the first moment I saw you.”
“You were too busy accusing me of being a selkie.”
Emmett plucks a blade of grass and picks at the white root. “Sorry about that.”
“Pig is well,” I say. “Misses you, though.”
“I miss him, too. No one here keeps pets. They think it’s undignified.”
“Nonsense,” I say. “Pig is so much more dignified than you.”
We exchange stories of dealing with disgruntled nobles and sleight-of-hand diplomacy. He listens, rapt, while I tell him of
our plans for a national railway, and I’m equally fascinated by the way he describes the court politics of the Otherworld.
He explains that in the spring of last year he and Lydia threw a revel so grand, it sated an ambitious lord who sought to
replace Emmett as regent.
Emmett hasn’t just helped Fennick and Nan; he’s ingratiated himself with all of the Little Londinium businesses, and done
a lot of dealmaking to establish him and Lydia as respected rulers.
Emmett reaches into the pocket of his coat and pulls out a package, wrapped in waxy paper, about the size of an apple.
“I wanted to show you this place isn’t all bad.” His voice goes a shade softer.
I peel back the edges and find a globe of whisper-thin glass. Inside is a pink flower, with six stamens pointing up from the
center.
The stamens glow orange and I gasp in surprise.
“A preserved lux flower,” Emmett says. “The center glows according to your emotions.”
“What does orange mean?” I ask.
“I don’t know. It’s different for each person. What is it you’re feeling now?”
Love. Fear. Bone-deep sorrow. Ache. Longing. “Awe.”
Emmett’s eyes flit from my eyes to my lips, then back again. No one is going to want to kiss you if you can’t look at them. That’s what he said to me before the first time he kissed me in a rain-soaked coaching inn.
He’s looking at me now. Those sharp hazel eyes are the same, no matter what else has changed, and there is fire behind them.
“Please keep looking at me like that,” I breathe.
Emmett’s eyes shine with want, and his broad hands flex over the blanket. I have a sudden awareness of my own heartbeat, and
the flush creeping up my neck.
This isn’t anything like the frantic kiss in the hallway. I feel each nerve under my skin firing, the way the muscles in my
arms go warm and lax.
I know just how his lips will feel, how they’ll move against mine and how he’ll take a breath before deepening the kiss. I
know just how he loves to trail his mouth against the column of my neck, how he’ll arch against me when I take a fist of his
hair. He’ll tip me back against the blanket and in the mist of the waterfall, I’ll have him and it’ll feel like coming home.
Each day we spent apart stretches between us now, and all I want is to close the distance.
I lean in, my eyes fluttering shut.
The grass rustles and I open my eyes to see Emmett pushing himself up off the ground and brushing dirt from his pants. “It’s
getting late.”
My heart stutters, then cracks. I gesture to the bright blue sky. “If you’re going to reject me, you need to come up with
a better excuse than that.” I can barely get the words out; they hurt too badly.
Emmett won’t even look at me.
“You don’t understand.”
“Then help me! Let me in!” This feels like an awful repeat of our fight last night. “Do the girls you kiss at revels mean
more to you than me?”
His hands clench into fists and then unfurl. “I beg of you, do not judge me for the way I’ve survived.”
Emmett gathers our supplies from the ground in a hurry. I’ve never seen anyone fold a picnic blanket with so much ire. There’s
tension in every line of his body, like he’s holding something back. “I have work to do.” Emmett turns back toward the castle.
“With Lydia?” I spit.
“Yes, with Lydia. I will not allow you to throw that relationship in my face.”
“She’s my sister!”
Emmett whips his head back around to me. “And she’s my best friend.”
“Then go, go to her.” Every crack in my heart that had begun to heal splits open once more.
Emmett waits and extends a hand to help me off the ground.
When I put my hand in his, he glances from side to side and then up to the cliffs of the waterfall, like he suddenly fears
we’re being watched.
Just as quickly, he turns back to me and his face softens into agony.
“I won’t trouble you with my presence any longer. I can walk alone,” I say, my voice brittle.
Emmett shakes his head. “I’m not going to dignify that with a response.”
“Leave me alone.” I’m on the edge of crying and I don’t want him to see me break.
I start walking and he’s silent for long enough that I don’t think he’s going to respond, but his answer comes in a voice
so low, I don’t think he means for me to hear. “I’ve never been capable of that.”
I walk faster, but he stays just a few paces behind me, like a watchful shadow, all the way back to the castle.