Page 125 of A Bargain with the Fae King

Another failure. More pain I’ve caused.

I sit on the couch next to May and pull her head into my lap. She looks for all the world as if she’s just fallen asleep and could wake any moment. Even her skin and clothes are clean as if preserved by whatever magic keeps her slumbering in stasis. I brush a lock of her soft, blond hair back from her face.

You’re safe now.

“Do you think he’ll come back?” She rubs her chest at about the spot where her necklace would rest.

The hope in Sylvie’s voice stills my hand on May’s brow.

“I don’t know.” He betrayed his king. Would he even be welcome? Yet, so did I…

But Riven lied to me too.

So many lies. So much deception. They weigh me down like an anchor, dragging me into the cushions.

“The better question is, will Sigurd have Galen shift him back?” Ambrose joins us in the room. Fatigue drags his steps as he stumbles into a chair across from Sylvie.

“Could he? Even with the wards?” I ask.

“He could. At least until Riven is well enough to adjust them.”

Sylvie flinches. Adjusting the wards would bar Galen from the territory…and anyone he planned to bring back with him.

I clutch May tightly to me. “Then we’re not safe, even here.”

“You’ll be safe in this room, as will May. Riven’s rooms are specially warded so that only he can shift straight here.”

My shoulders droop, but I keep my arms cocooned around my sister.

“How do I wake her?” I ask Ambrose, changing the topic away from Galen for Sylvie’s benefit, if nothing else.

“Iason will know how. We’ll ask him to do it first thing in the morning after he checks on Riven again.” Ambrose cocks his head side to side, staring at May.

His rapt attention stirs up the worries still knotted in my stomach. “What is it?”

He scratches his chin. “Her gift has developed greatly, almost to maturity, yet her body remains young.”

I clutch her tighter to me. “How? What does that mean?”

“Maybe some kind of Unseelie magic? I don’t know. But she should be able to see our world as you do, to be here without any ill effects.”

“Ill effects?” My skin prickles. Way to bring those up now…

“Headaches, confusion, disorientation,” Sylvie lists them as though reading from a textbook, her voice empty as the look in her eyes. “Our texts say that young humans have a hard time with our world if their gift is not developed. It would be even worse for the un-gifted, rendering them insane within hours or days.”

Her words send a shudder through my body. Gifted humans can improve their magic. My sister can help them. A chill settles in as the shudder subsides.

“She’s going home, back where she belongs.” I eye the two of them in challenge.

Ambrose raises his hands in the air. “Yes, she is, we promised. But she can visit from time to time if she wants to.”

My lips thin.

“And if she doesn’t, then that’s fine as well,” he adds.

Fine. But first, we have to get her home. “Any news from the door? Any sight of my father?”

Riven had used his power to appear to my father in a dream, just as he had me. Or so he said. But would Dad listen to such a thing? It’d taken many times before I truly believed Riven wasn’t just some recurring dream I’d concocted in my grief. Honestly, a part of me wasn’t totally convinced until I met him again at the circle of trees.

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