Chapter 26
Sylvia
Uncertainty choked the air as we all crowded to watch Father make his way along the flagstone path toward the front door. Half of us peered through the curtains of one large window, while the others did the same at the adjacent one.
“You said he’s your father, right?” Ben whispered as though there was any chance Father could hear us from this distance and through the reinforced glass. “So why is he…?” He trailed off, gesturing vaguely.
“Between the explosion and the wildfire, I didn’t get a chance to ask,” I muttered.
Just the sight of Father’s painfully familiar face again was enough to make my breathing go shallow, like my lungs forgot how to work. Even though every blink felt more like a dream, the sight of everyone else sharing my anticipation was enough to ground me back into the moment.
To my surprise, Delilah seemed the most rapt. She barely reacted when Lee notched himself behind her with his chin on her head. There was a furrow between her slender brows like she was listening to something no one else could hear.
As Father dusted snow off his boots on the doormat, I wondered if it was the house itself she was attuned to, deciding if these enchanted walls deemed him a threat or not.
After that harrowing encounter with the shapeshifter under Evercor’s employ, I could hardly fault her for scrutinizing him so harshly.
Something flickered in the soft light cast around him from the house—wings. Two small figures hovered behind Father’s shoulder, and the fiery hair was unmistakable. Fiery like mine.
I turned wildly toward Delilah. “Let them in! Please.”
She hastened toward the front door, tailed closely by Lee. Every wingbeat brought me closer, my heartbeat hammering in my ears—
And then the frosted glass door swung open, and the final barrier between me and my family was gone.
Time ground to a halt.
I locked eyes with Mother first, watching as all the anticipation simply drained from her face. She looked at me like I was a ghost, like she was afraid to believe what she was seeing.
”Sylvia?” Hazel squeaked out my name.
The sweet, achingly familiar sound of her voice severed the last thread tethering me back. With a cry, I dove forward. My flight was cut off abruptly as Mother slammed into me, crushing me into her embrace. The smell of her, of home, was overwhelming.
“Oh, my love, you’re safe,” she said, her voice wobbling. Wetness hit my shoulder; she was crying.
Hazel clamped onto my side, and we happily scooped her into the embrace. All the horrors I’d witnessed tonight, the crushing emotional hurricane still whirling inside me, all of it faded as I was clutched tightly between them.
Safe. They were safe.
“I heard so many horrible things…” I choked off, recalling what Rowan and Zia had said about Aelthorin. “I thought you might be dead.”
Mother pulled back to cup my face in her hands. Her eyes lingered only for a moment on my traitor mark, flickering with fresh remorse. “Far from it.”
She squeezed my shoulders as though to assure me this was real, that nothing would tear us apart again.
Through a broken smile, I wiped my tears on my sleeves and looked at Hazel more closely, drinking every inch of her in.
It had only been a few months, but my baby-faced little sister was suddenly showing hints of the woman she’d become.
Her rounded face had slimmed out slightly, and even mid-air, I could tell she’d grown.
Her long hair had been trimmed sometime while we’d been apart, and it now fell in wild curls just past her shoulders.
Surely all I’d put them through had forced her to grow up a little faster. A wretched thought, one that I stuffed away for the moment.
With a trembling smile, I tucked curls behind her ears. An animal affinity. I’d missed the discovery. I’d missed so much of her life already.
Peeking past Mother’s fluttering iridescent wings, I saw Father keeping his distance on the porch.
He had his hands stuffed deep into the pockets of his canvas jacket, doing his best to make himself all but invisible.
But the weight of his stare was crushing, lined with the desperate, tethered urge to join our embrace. To have his family back, too.
A part of me wanted him to. I wanted him to make me laugh and tell me stories and hug me like he had done countless times when I’d been a child.
I avoided Father’s stare with a lurch in my stomach, burying my face back into Mother’s shoulder so I didn’t have to look at him.
He had much explaining to do before he earned anything from me.
We gathered in the parlor with the fireplace. Where it had once been a calming sanctuary, it was now brimming with enough tension to set my nerves on end, like I might need to summon a spell at any moment to battle against a hidden threat.
I avoided looking at my father for as long as possible, but all eyes were on him, stares ranging from curiosity to bluntly unnerved.
I couldn’t be sure where I landed on that scale, but surely no one could claim to feel the same type of disquiet as I did.
I was a child again, preparing to listen to one of Father’s fireside tales—shivering with all the anticipation of it and none of the giddy enthusiasm.
Hazel was my anchor, burrowed into my side as we shared the arm of a sofa that was occupied by Jon and Cliff.
One of Jon’s hands rested on his lap, white-knuckled; he likely would have been resting his hand behind me protectively if not for the risk of frightening Hazel.
But perhaps her time around Father had made her less terrified of humans, given how pointedly she had asked Cliff if he had any more candy for her.
He had produced a small wrapped piece of chocolate that he must have pilfered from the kitchen, as though he had been prepared for her request.
Finally, I forced my eyes to the armchair across from us.
Father was rigid, locked onto me, and no one else.
I wished to be someplace else, anyplace where I wouldn’t have to be in his direct line of sight.
But this was necessary. The fact that Mother was seated on the back of his armchair didn’t settle my nerves.
There was a united front about the way they sat together, a suggestion that Father’s secrets belonged to Mother as well.
Ever the gracious hostess, Delilah was the one to shatter the silence. “So. Where to begin?”
She regarded Father with what had to be the least fear and hostility. She sat in an adjacent loveseat, curled comfortably against Lee’s side. Ben couldn’t seem to decide which of Lee’s shoulders to settle on—closer for a better look, or farther away for safety.
“How did you find us, for starters?” Jon asked. “And how did you end up in Eros’ guard?”
Cliff shifted uncomfortably. Eros. It was much easier than calling him by his real name. The distance was a weak balm, better than none at all.
The urgency of Jon’s questions paled in comparison to my own, but I understood.
To me, Father was a painfully familiar face.
To the others, their first impression was one of a fairy-trafficking menace, and that was difficult to shake.
I couldn’t blame Zia and Rowan for keeping the most distance.
There was a sense of compromise about their being in the room at all; Rowan stood protectively behind where she sat on the edge of the mantle.
“I’ve been tracking you for some months now,” Father admitted. “Melanie called upon me to escort her and Hazel to Aelthorin several weeks after Sylvia was banished from Elysia. The plan was to go straight to Aelthorin, but well… It became clear that you were not on a direct path there.”
He looked accusingly between Jon and Cliff.
“That was my doing as much as theirs,” I snapped with more venom than intended—shielding the boys, yes, but the sting of guilt made me pitifully defensive. Then again, my family could have been dead or captured if we had all reunited in Aelthorin as intended.
Father nodded as though this didn’t really come as a surprise to him.
“You were tracking us across the fucking country,” Cliff huffed bitterly. There were few things more shameful than a hunter becoming the hunted, especially without detection for months.
“You didn’t make it easy, if that’s any consolation,” my father said with the barest hint of a smile.
“But when I finally tracked you to this area, the hotel caught my attention, of course. From there, I didn’t know what to believe—were the hunters selling my daughter out to the highest bidders, or was there a nobler purpose for you being here?
All the same, I knew I needed to get inside.
With the right glamour and the right conversations, I was able to discern that amongst all the collectors in the event, fairies were specially reserved for Eros. ”
His attention lingered on Jon and Cliff.
“I caught glimpses of you both and still couldn’t be sure of your intentions.” He nodded at Jon, begrudgingly impressed. “You are a perceptive one. Nearly saw straight through my glamour.”
“That was you?” Jon said. “I couldn’t remember your face after.”
“My magic tends to have that effect—quite useful when I’m trying to avoid tails.
I couldn’t risk a confrontation without drawing unwanted attention.
I knew that sooner or later, this Eros would come into play.
So I took on the guise of one of his soldiers.
When Sylvia was captured, there were no easy decisions to be made.
The hope was to wait until we arrived at our destination, to free any captives from there before my identity could be detected.
But then that man—Rhett…” He spat the name like a curse.
Rhett’s sadistic urges were the last thing I wanted to think about, let alone to relive it in front of everyone. When I went rigid, Hazel nestled even more firmly against my side. I stroked her hair and steadied myself.
“You saved Sylv,” Cliff murmured.