Page 109 of Curse the Fae

We’re closer than you know. We have faith in you. We love you.

The letter ends with the mantra we’d spoken on our last night in the caravan.

Whatever happens to one of us, happens to each of us.

Together. All or nothing.

“All or nothing,” I repeat, the paper crumbling in my grip. I rock forward and backward, in gratitude and grief, while Lotus keeps me anchored. I want my sisters back, and I want Elixir back, but I can’t have them both. No matter what, I’ll never be able to have them both.

Make your choice.

I take those choices to bed, unable to weather them for a moment longer. At some point, I awaken to darkness etched in lantern lights and a tall form in the doorway. I lunge from the mattress while swaddling myself in the blanket, not because I don’t want Elixir to see me naked, but because I need something else to hold, otherwise I’ll grab him.

He lingers on the threshold and grips the frame, his expression wrung out like a towel. “I should have let you sleep.”

“No,” I blurt out. “Please, don’t go.”

Don’t go. I can’t let you walk away because I need, and I want, and I’ll miss, and I can’t, but I must, and I hate, yet I care, and I see, and I feel, and I feel, and Ifeel.

He stalks forward, stopping within arm’s reach. His loose shirt and leggings are dry, which means he manifested here, but an unlikely fragrance wafts off him. It’s the aroma of pine and bark, mixed with the river, though no trees grow down here.

He clears his throat and levels his gaze off to the side. “You have missed this,” he murmurs, then extends his upturned palm.

Sitting in his hand is a necklace, its pendant glistening like a tear. “How did you…” I accept the dainty chain and drape it over my head, letting it fall down my back. “Where…”

“In The Solitary Forest,” Elixir confides. “I met your sister.”

“Juniper?” I move forward, but he jolts backward. “I don’t understand.”

Brevity is Elixir’s first language. In short bursts, he confesses that he’d meant to swim in isolation after our quarrel. His journey took him to the woodland streams, where he sensed the presence of a human. Still festering from the words we’d spoken, he didn’t rationalize it could be one of my sisters.

“I attacked her,” Elixir says.

“You what?!” I shout, ready to bury my fist in his face.

“She is unharmed. I’m sorry, I did not know it was her. I heard your necklace resting in the grass beside a creek—it must have washed up there, but a small portion of the chain was still touching the water. I detected someone nearby, just as they grabbed the necklace. I was livid and could not…I’m sorry.” He expels a guilty breath. “I dragged the figure under with me. But then I felt a leaf bracelet strung around her arm, as you described it once, and realized it was your sister.”

I gather the blanket tighter around me as he explains the rest, that he released her just as Puck arrived and threatened him, that Juniper and Puck are lovers, that Juniper won her game, and now she’s reunited with Lark, who’s mated to Cerulean.

Lark and Cerulean are mates. Juniper and Puck have bonded with each other.

My sisters and their enemies have fallen in love.

While I struggle to wrap my mind around the shock of this, Elixir collects the clothing he’d left behind earlier. Then he makes for the door. With his hands clenching the knob, Elixir’s head slants, and his profile speaks to the ground. “Sleep well, Cove.”

“Good night, Elixir,” I whisper.

And then he’s gone once more. And I’m still here.

I could have asked him to stay, and he would have. I could have told him to fall asleep with me as we’d planned before, and he would have. Yet there’s a difference between what my sisters have and what I have.

By whatever twist of fate, Lark and Cerulean are magically united and able to share an extended life together.

In a miraculous change of heart, Juniper and Puck have pledged themselves to one another, a union made possible because she took half of his immortality. Because the satyr had willingly confided his true name to Juniper, she was granted this power, according to Elixir.

Both pairs will endure. Elixir and I won’t.

We have a dark history, and Elixir doesn’t believe my affection overrides how I ultimately see him, and we have a curse wedged between us.

---