Chapter 1
Ash
One month later
“Do you think mud pie, means mud pie? Or like mud pie?”
What kind of question even is that?
I stare at the little girl before me.
She’s been around my entire life, but this is the first moment I’m seeing her as a real person. One that breathes.
And it’s because she just asked me the most ridiculous question in the history of ridiculous questions, and she’s looking at me with big blue-grey eyes that don’t blink. Owlish and expressive and I swear they see into my soul, and she wants to know about mud pies.
“What?” Because how does one even respond to such an absurd question.
She rolls her eyes and just like all the girls in those shows she is obsessed with, she flicks her long blond hair over her shoulder. One little hand rests across her hips and she taps a foot impatiently.
“Mud pie,” she says slowly. “Mama said we were making mud pie today but let’s be real, that woman could mean mud or chocolate pudding.” She’s absolutely annoyed she even has to explain this to me.
Valid.
It also sparks a warmth in my chest I don’t have time to name.
She storms past me with more arrogance than her little body should hold. But she does it, long hair swinging as she stomps inside.
I know this moment.
I lived it.
Maybe I was twelve. Thirteen.
Frowning, I look down at my hands. Small, like an older kid on the edge of puberty.
But I don’t feel like a preteen.
No, I remember staring at a man and swearing at him.
What was I swearing?
“Ash?” the child yells.
What was her name? Sabina?
Oh. Oh. Sabina.
I’m dreaming. Awake inside of a dream. A dream that’s a memory.
What fresh Fae hell is this?
“Seriously, Ash.” Her head pokes out the back door. We are at our grandma’s. “It’s chocolate mousse. And it’s Grandma making it. Not Mom.”
She’s gone in the next breath, not waiting for me. Just as she didn’t when this moment actually existed. Long ago.
This is the first memory I ever had of Sabina. The first one I remember that is. And knowing that while living the memory again and standing here in my child’s body…
I don’t like it very much.
Turning around, I look at Grandma’s yard as it was.
Tomato plants along the back wall. A swing set. A pool far too big for the yard it’s in.
And that damn cherry tree that dropped all the cherries into said pool.
It’s all as it was. And for a moment…
I can’t breathe.
It’s an odd visceral reaction living in this memory. This moment. Knowing what I do now of my life.
That I’m not human. I’m a changeling.
I don’t even have a woman I can call mom. Not really.
That woman died. Bled into the earth alongside her partner.
And I know when I walk through that door into that house I won’t be looking at my grandma. My grandma wasn’t human, either. She was a goddess. Is a goddess. Artemis.
Sabina once again pokes her head out the door, her cheeks rosy and flushed. “Grandma won’t let us start until you get your ass in the house.”
“Did she give you permission to curse, too?” I ask, just as I did then, snapping right back at Sabina whose cheeks flush red and she stomps away.
Shame flushes through me. I wasn’t ashamed then. But I am now. That’s hindsight, right? Looking back through moments in your life and feeling that shame, when then it was learning.
The mud room isn’t much but it leads to the kitchen and for a moment I breathe in the nostalgia.
Not just for the walk back through the decades and not the scents. But for the peace that settles over me. I may not have been kind to Sabina just now, but it’s all still there.
Love so fucking deep that for a moment I’m ashamed all over again, because I took that love and unceremoniously dumped it in a box and hid it inside of me, somewhere deep, somewhere no one can ever access it.
Even me.
Until now.
And that’s when I get it.
They never shut me out, I shut them out.
“Well, there you are.” Grandma walks up from the basement.
Only it’s not Grandma. It’s Artemis.
But Sabina is looking at her like she’s the same damn woman she’s always been.
I guess in a way she is.
Dreams are weird.
I’m not sure how to react. How to breathe. So I fall into my body, let myself exist on autopilot and roll through the motions.
Sabina clacks a bowl down and they start.
But all through it, I can’t stop staring at her.
Artemis.
Her face is both beautiful and handsome. Blended so perfectly that on her it looks like traditional beauty. And the little upturned nose. One I don’t have.
Steel-blue eyes we all inherited. Well, not me. Mine was glamour. They’re green now.
And her long hair. It shimmers red but looks almost blonde or brunette. A natural ginger.
And she’s strong. The way I always wanted to be. Even though I see her for who she is now. I always saw her that way and not a frail old woman.
“Are you going to keep staring at me?” she asks.
But that wasn’t in the conversation then.
“Walk with me?”
That wasn’t in this conversation, either.
A tearing vibration pulls through me. In one moment I’m staring at her and the next watching the scene as though someone else is observing. And it’s the correct memory.
Sabina, Grandma and I making mud pie.
I turn around to see Artemis staring at me.
“What the hell is this?” I run my nails down my face to wake myself up. No dice.
“A dream.” Artemis shrugs. “Come.”
She doesn’t walk off. She reaches out and grabs my hand, linking our fingers as we head through my childhood home and to the front porch where many, many conversations once occurred.
It’s like closing a loop. A full circle moment.
“Why?” I shake my head as I sink onto the rocking chair. So absolutely confused that I can’t make heads or tails of a single thing.
“Why what?” Artemis sits in the opposing chair, her eyes steady on me in that unnatural way of hers. “Why are you dreaming about this moment. This particular one?”
“Yeah, that is exactly what I’m wondering.” I pinch myself again. “And why can’t I wake up?”
“Because I don’t want you to wake up.”
“Artemis.” I groan. “Not now. Now is not the time for your shenanigans. I’m in Faerie.” Trapped in a court that wants to bury me for millennia and I can’t even wake up.
“I know.”
I snap my head at her. “Wait,” I pause. “Morrigan and Artemis.”
Why is everything so fuzzy?
“A debt.”
“You are getting close.” Artemis begins to rock in the chair, still wearing grandma’s house dress.
“Artemis.” I rub my temples. “I don’t have the time or the energy for one of your games.”
“I owed Morrigan a life debt.” She sighs, her voice weary as though she finally lets go of every bullshit game she’s been playing up until this point. And believe me when I say, she plays her games.
“Is that why you took me?” Anger begins to bubble inside of me. Starting in my toes, giving them the sensation of burning. It creeps up my legs inch by inch. “You gave me to Graves.”
I grind my teeth.
“That’s what this stupid fucking dream sequence is about. You giving me over to a man…”
“Stop.” She pauses her rocking as her voice cuts through the air. “Nothing went to plan.” She doesn’t shout the words. She doesn’t have to. “Nothing went to plan.”
I snap my mouth shut. There is something about your grandma’s voice breaking. Even if she is a goddess, she’s still my grandma, biological or not. And a small part of me remembers that. Remembers the version of me in the kitchen making mud pie with this woman.
“Morrigan called the life debt and we had no time.” She turns to look at me and there it is. What I’ve never seen in all our years.
Unshed tears.
“Nimah,” she can’t even get my biological mom’s name out. No, this strong goddess’s voice breaks. “She knew someone was hunting her.”
I can’t move. And the only reason I’m gulping in air is because I’ve forgotten how to breathe and my lungs pushed past my fawn response.
“She could feel eyes on her all the time. She hid Whispen first.” Artemis looks at the street where no cars drive past. No neighbors interrupt us. Not even the birds sing.
The whole dream focuses on her and the words she recites as Artemis relives something haunting.
“Morrigan was trying to get to the borderlands. She heard Nimah’s call.” Artemis blows out a breath, her hands locked on the armchair. “I didn’t get her summons until she was close enough to the border.”
Whatever she’s reliving, it’s painful. I’ve never seen her frown as she is now.
“Time distorted, and when I entered the woods three years passed and Graves was walking out with you. Your little hand in his.” She sniffles. “The bastard was two steps ahead, as though he knew that was where the Morrigan would cross. I had to negotiate for you.”
Weight drops through my chest. Settles in my stomach and stays there.
I knew eventually I’d have to talk to her about what happened that day. If everything I was told really happened. If the story deviated in some way.
Turns out it did.
“Where was I for three years, assuming I was a baby when I grew out of the earth?” I honestly hadn’t even thought about that until this very moment.
Artemis laughs a little. “Morrigan.” She smirks a little, as though there is still a secret there hidden inside the truth she just exposed.
“Morrigan.”
“She barely survived when Graves finally found her.” She looses a bitter laugh. “She won’t tell you that, but she barely survived. She had to rest for twenty-seven years before waking again.”
That’s my whole life. Whatever battle occurred.
“What happened?”
“Not my story to tell,” Artemis says. “My story is this. I fought for your life every day. You were always meant to be placed with me. And I’m sorry for failing you. For not arriving in time before Graves got you.”
“Me, too.” I choke on the words.
“My mom?” I swipe at the tears burning my cheeks.
“Holds her own nightmares. But what I will say is her ex is the reason Graves chose you.” She gives me a bloodthirsty smile. “I wouldn’t worry about Officer Hayes.” My father’s name. Or the man who married my mother.
I pause my rocking.
“Artie,” I say carefully.
“Ashlynne,” she singsongs.
“Her ex is the man I believed to be my father.” I lick my dry lips, even in a dream. “What do you mean I wouldn’t worry about him? He died when I was—”
Oh no.
“You didn’t.” I gasp. “My dad?”
“Don’t be foolish, that man was never your father.” She scoffs. “Oh, look at that. Looks like Sabina is ready for the worms.”
In the next breath I’m back in my little body handing Sabina gummy worms.
I swear if she—
“Ash,” Sabina calls to me, but her voice has gone haunted.
“Bean?”
“Why did you do it?”
I look up at her, handing over another gummy worm. “Do what?”
“Why’d you torture Kade?”