TEN
Amy
"Mom, we have enough food for two weeks. We're only going to be gone half a day," Drake insisted as Aya shoved more food pouches into his pockets.
"Just in case you get sidetracked. You should always be prepared," she insisted, frantically rubbing her hands down her thighs, over her belly, wringing her skirt between her fingers.
Nervous.
She was nervous.
Scared that her son that she had just gotten back was going to leave again.
She'd asked why we wouldn't bring someone else with us. Kieran had volunteered, but everyone knew he would never be allowed to leave now that he was an elder. Tsar had been another choice, young enough and reckless, and happy for an adventure.
But the elders had voted four-to-one that if we were going to risk ourselves, we were only going to risk ourselves. No one else would get caught up in our troubles.
It was a fair point, I guessed, even if I bristled a bit at the idea that wanting the freedom to come and go as you chose was somehow anyone's business but our own, that it was ridiculous that they could choose if others were allowed to leave if they wanted to.
Backward.
There was still a bit of backwardness in our clan.
I guess maybe that was the price you paid for complete and utter safety.
No one seemed to question if that was a fair trade. Giving up freedom for safety.
I guess it depended on how much you had to lose.
My hand brushed over my belly, flat, nothing blooming within it, as evidenced by the moonsickness that had greeted me that very morning.
I won't deny a small twinge of disappointment even if the more rational part of me understood that this fate was for the best. There was so much to do. There was so much work awaiting us. I didn't want to be tilling fields while fighting off waves of nausea.
I wanted a chance to experience the life of a member of the clan. I wanted to till, plant, harvest, preserve. I wanted to learn how to grow potatoes in the root cellar, how to dry tea leaves and chamomile flowers for tea to keep our insides warm in the cold months.
Then maybe the following fall I could consider something as life-changing as motherhood.
"Here, sis," Nesta said, shouldering in beside me, holding out a small glass vial to me full of a yellowish oil. "It won't taste all that great, but it will ease your ails," she told me, knowing about my ails because I had needed to go to her about supplies, not having packed any myself.
"Primrose oil?" I asked, pulling off the cap to sniff it.
"I swear by it. We will show you how to make a supply for yourself when the flowers are in bloom again.
All in good time. Have a nice trip," she told me, giving me a smile that pulled a bit, making me wonder if she was perhaps envious, if she had ever fostered hopes about seeing a world outside of the veil they were sheltered behind.
"Be safe," she added, giving me a one-arm hug since she was holding her sleeping child in the other.
"You ready?" Drake asked, exhaling hard. "We have to get out of here before there is another round of goodbyes," he added in a small voice near my ear.
So with that, his hand closed over mine, and we walked away from the people who had always been his, but were rapidly becoming my, family.
Eager as I was to see Smoky and Sal again, there was a swirling feeling in my stomach at the idea of leaving our new home.
But it was a quick trip.
And I could get word to my siblings that things were getting bad in The Green but that I was okay, that I was happy and safe.
I hoped the same could be said of them.
After all they had been through.
With all that stood before them.
"Oh this feels weird," I told Drake as we moved through the veil, feeling a yanking sensation at my back, like it was trying to pull me back in.
"It's because you're one of us now. The veil recognizes that."
We came through the same clearing we had stepped in from weeks before, finding the ground clear and soggy, our shoes sinking into the mud leftover from so much snow melting so quickly.
Above us, the sun filtered in through the trees where new buds were already forming, just waiting for the weather to stay constant enough to allow them to burst to life.
"You okay?" Drake asked, and I could feel his gaze on me.
"Just nervous, I guess," I admitted. "The last time we were here, we were - essentially - running for our lives."
"I get that," he agreed, giving my hip a squeeze as he kissed my temple.
"What are you taking?" he asked when I pulled out the vial, feeling my uterus squeeze painfully, knowing the cramps would only get worse as the day went on if I didn't get the oil in my system.
Taking the vial from me, he sniffed it. "Ah," he said, nodding.
"No little Draca running around the harvest this year, then? "
"Maybe next year," I told him with a small smile as he pocketed the empty vial, slipping it into his bag.
"I can wait," he agreed, kissing my temple as we started walking.
A part of me maybe expected danger at every turn.
In reality, there were simply birds chirping happily above us, glad for an end to the freezing weather, a chance to find plentiful food again, for mating season to begin.
We even passed the occasional fae who offered us smiles or general pleasantries as we moved past, looking very much like a couple who were on their way to the Light Court or possibly a day at the market.
Maybe even one of the many Ostara festivals that were bound to be going on.
It was a few long hours of walking before we finally closed in on some big nest of sorts, a place Drake claimed Sal had once called home, thought the only thing that it was home to now seemed to be a small mouse family who very much enjoyed the privacy of their new home.
"We never did settle on a time, "Drake reminded me, trying to ease the anxiety that was clearly overtaking my system at being left waiting.
"Right," I agreed, angling my head up to watch the trees, knowing how Smoky preferred to travel between them.
Partly because it was safer, sure, but I had a sneaking suspicion it was just as much because she could avoid all other fae by staying way above them, unseen, unheard, free to continue her solitary existence.
I wanted to know how she was. If she had maybe put some more weight on. If Sal had made any progress with her.
I think especially now that I had found my people, that I knew the warmth of connection, the sweet taste of love, I wanted it all the more for her.
This woman who had lived a harder life than I had, who deserved more happiness - if such a thing was possible - which I was starting to think didn't exist - than I had.
"Breathe, honey," Drake demanded, giving my hair a playful tug. "They will be here eventually."
"I miss home," I admitted, leaning into him.
"We've only been gone a few hours."
"A few hours too long. Your mom is probably scrubbing the shine off her floors right about now."
"She's a mom. She worries. It comes with the job title."
"Kieran looked like he was barely able to hold himself back from charging ahead with us."
"He understands his responsibilities now."
"You don't need to feel guilty about his choices, Drake," I told him, not having found the right opportunity to do so before even though I knew it was something that had plagued him since his return to find his friend stuck in a lifetime role he hated.
"I am the only reason he joined the council."
"His love is the reason he joined the council.
And that passion is exactly the reason he belongs there.
They need that. His youth. His open-mindedness.
If not for him, Foren and Borena would get their way all the time.
He is a challenge. He is balance. It will serve the greater good for him to be there.
He will see that eventually, even if right now all he can see is his own pride.
You can help show him how valuable his choice is.
What?" I asked when his smile went soft.
"Nothing, honey. I just..."
"Just what?"
"Love you," he declared, shaking his head at the declaration.
The first one.
We'd loved.
Shown love.
Given love.
But the words always stuttered and stuck on our tongues.
My heart seized and swelled in my chest, as close to bursting as possible.
My smile was immediate, big enough to make my chest hurt.
"I love you too, Drake," I told him, meaning it more than I ever meant anything.
"Sunflower," he murmured, making my brows draw together.
"I'm sorry?" I asked, sure I misheard him. there were no sunflowers around, wouldn't be more months still.
"Sunflower in a tower," he told me. "That was what I used to think of about you when I watched you up in your room. "Always bright. Always beautiful. Happy-looking. But you weren't happy. Now, now you look happy. Now you're my sunflower."
"But no more towers for me," I told him, snuggling closer. "I much prefer our little house with the lumpy bed and the drafty shutters.
"I'll fix the shutters," he told me. "I would have gotten to them last night but someone kept distracting me."
I had been waiting all day for him to get in from helping some of the others chop firewood.
The moment he came in the house, I had jumped him, clawing frantically at his clothes until I got his skin bared to me, taking him in my mouth, then letting him pin me to the wall, taking me from behind until I came four times, the last time loud enough to wake everyone all the way back in town.
He never got to the shutters.
And I was okay with being a little chilly in the morning if that was the reason for it.
"Well, when we get back, you have a few days to fix them up before I start... distracting you again."
A loud crack had us both stiffening, turning, trying to find the source.
"Maybe I should take a page out of Smoky's book," he suggested, nodding his head up to the tree above him.
"That might be a good idea. Get a better vantage point. Maybe you'll even run into her up there."