118. The Stranger
Chapter One Hundred Eighteen
The Stranger
Unknown
Are you okay?
I watch her look at her phone as she steps into the hallway, holding that ridiculous baby monitor in her hand, and I form in her bedroom to wait for her. When she opens the door, a look of relief slides across her face. She is happy to see me, excited that I am here without her asking.
“Hi,” she says simply, and I hold my hands out to her.
I didn’t think this crisis with Alice would bring her closer to me, but she’s turned to me more with everything that’s occurred.
Since she made that commitment to me, our relationship has grown to a place of not quite trust, but reliability.
She knows she can seek me out if she needs anything, and that I’ll be there.
“Did you miss me?” I ask, sliding her hands into mine. I pull her close and lift her hands to my lips, kissing them softly.
“You know I did,” she answers, wrapping her hands around the back of my neck and pressing close.
“Greatly?”
Before she can answer, the baby monitor crackles with static. She pulls away and looks at it. When it remains silent, she steps back into my arms.
“Did you have to bring that?” I ask, scowling at the receiver. I know I am being unreasonable, but I miss her and don’t want to share her during the little time we have .
“I need to know if she wakes up or needs me. I probably shouldn’t have left her,” she says with a soft sigh.
When she starts to pull away again, I wrap my arms around her and lift her off her feet.
She instinctively wraps her legs around my waist, already accustomed to me carrying her to even out our height difference.
She curls her fingers into the hair at the nape of my neck, and I mourn the fact that I can’t feel her touch while in my avatar.
“Sounds like she went back to sleep,” I say. “Do you want me to cast a security spell on her room for you?”
And for me, so I can track Summer. When she goes into Alice’s room, I force myself not to follow, even through the spells.
Yet since the death of -Alice’s father, Summer has spent the majority of her time in there.
It makes my skin itch not to be able to watch her, paranoia creeping up my neck and into my head when she is out of my sight for too long.
She frowns, her eyes flashing with something that looks dangerously close to jealousy, and I like it. A lot.
“Temporarily,” I soothe. “So you can check on her when you’re here.”
Her eyes still spark, and her lower lip pouts. “That’s an invasion of her privacy. I should go check on her.”
“I’ll be here.” I sigh, setting her on her feet and sitting on her bed to wait for her.
Summer darts out the door and heads down the hall. She’s only been gone a few minutes before she slides back into the room and closes the door behind her.
“She’s okay,” Summer says, smiling softly but sadly.
I brush her hair back behind her ear. “You’re worried about her.” She nods and leans into me. “Talk to me, princess. It’s clearly weighing down your shoulders.”
Again, the old phrase slips past my lips. My mother’s voice echoes in my head, her accent lilting the words.
“I’m not sure. Something just doesn’t feel right,” Summer says, shifting closer. I pull her onto my lap, and she presses her forehead into my neck.
“Feel right?” I ask, suspecting that her senses are growing more heightened and attuned. She is learning to listen to the instincts that she has suppressed for years. “About Alice?”
“I can’t explain it,” she says with a shrug, but her body radiates tension. It would be unwise for anyone to come close to her family .
“Whatever it is, we’ll figure it out,” I say, nipping the tip of her ear. She cuddles closer, some of the tension leaving her body.
“We?” She pulls back, and my eyes lock with hers.
“Yes, we. ” Her problems are mine now.
She stares at me, then gives me a small, shy smile and buries her face in my neck, wrapping her arms around me.
“Like that, hm?” I whisper, kissing her hair. “You’re not alone in this.”
She pulls back a little and looks up at me. “I want to show you something.”
“Show me something?” Hopefully, this is not where she suddenly tries to murder me. I know I am still on tenuous ground with her regarding that.
“Yes, close your eyes,” she says, slipping off my lap.
I hesitate a moment before I do. Usually I am asking her to close her eyes, not the other way around.
It definitely gives me a new respect for the kind of trust it takes to comply.
She is infinitely braver than I am. I hear her rummaging through her drawers, and she comes back to stand between my legs.
Carefully, she lifts one of my hands and puts what feels like a small box onto my palm. “Open your eyes.”
My eyes snap open, and I freeze, frowning down at the small green sprig encased in a glass box. It’s barely longer than my small finger, with tiny flowers blooming on it. It pulses softly, power radiating from it.
“You need to go!” a voice screams, and it’s not one I recognize. “This is the Fall!” The ground beneath me is coming apart at the seams, leaving nothing but an empty abyss.
“This is . . .” I whisper hoarsely.
“It is the only thing I had with me when I was found,” she says, taking the box from my hands, unknowingly releasing me from a memory that wrapped its way around my throat. I don’t really understand what I am remembering. Who was warning me during the Fall?
I stare at the box in her hands. “That must have been passed down to you by whoever survived the Fall. A piece of Faerie is?.?.?. powerful magic.”
Dangerous magic. Heady magic. If she wants to, she could use this single sprig of a lost realm to play with time, and that is something only one being has ever mastered. With good reason.
“I’ve never shown it to anyone,” she says, tracing her thumb along the edge of the box. She looks back at me, her eyes flashing with new vulnerability, and my heart thuds with a realization about this moment.
She is letting me in. Just a tiny bit more.
“Thank you, princess. I’m honored,” I say, taking her hand and kissing the palm.
“I need to get back to Alice,” she whispers.
I nod, and she brushes a kiss to my forehead before stepping back, taking one last look at me on her bed before leaving me alone in her room.
The sprig sits on her bedside table, and my eyes linger on it.
The Fall . . . the Fall.