Page 113 of Curse the Fae

Hearing the slant in my tone, they swing their heads toward me.

“Elixir, eh?” Lark inquires. “First-name terms with the asshole?”

I twiddle my thumbs. “First-name terms are inconsequential in Faerie, as you’re well aware. It’s their real names that are sacred, and anyway, I have to call my captor something. He goes by Lord of the Water Fae and River Ruler, too, but that’s hardly practical. It’s a mouthful, really. The point is, it’s just a title. I can’t simply call him, ‘Hey, you.’ That would be impolite, not to mention tedious.”

My sisters stare at me. Indeed, my cheeks are roasting, my lisp had thickened, and I’m babbling. Three, two, one—

“Uh-ohhh,” Lark chirps.

“What doesuh-ohhh, mean?” Juniper interrogates, her words sharp enough to hack through a redwood.

When I delay answering, my astute sister scans the chamber with renewed vigor, her eyes skidding from the furnishings, to the snake coiled between us, to the parchment and quill on the side table. Juniper draws out her words the way she does when quizzing our family on anything bookish. “How do you know the snake’s name is Lotus? And how do you know so much about The Deep’s geography? When did you have time to anthologize it?”

Snakes don’t talk to humans, but they do communicate with Faeries. And educated in the Fables or not, mortals don’t traverse this landscape as if it’s their home while also assembling enough details for a map. That’s what she means.

“I…that is to say…” My sisters watch as I stammer and wiggle in place. “Lotus revealed his name to Elixir. And the river ruler gave me the materials to draw the map, once he provided me an outlet to explore.”

Which aren’t the actions of an enemy or captor. To say nothing of the heat detonating across my face.

Silence. Steam rises from the bath. The lanterns sketch the room in amber.

“Why would he do any of that?” Juniper grills.

“Son of a bitch,” Lark breathes, her features slackening. “For fuck’s sake, Juniper. Do you really need to catch up? Look at her.”

Juniper glares in bafflement, loathing to be the last one to draw a conclusion.

Amazement kindles Lark’s gaze. “You’re smitten, hon.”

“She’swhat?” If Juniper were wearing her reading spectacles, they would have fallen lopsided from how violently her head whips toward me. “No.”

“Hell yes,” Lark insists. “Seems our sister did what none of us thought possible. She brought the irredeemable to his knees.” Just like that, without an explanation, my sister links her arm through mine and gives me an encouraging shake. “What’s he like? Leave nothing out, including the spicy stuff for grown-ups.”

Juniper’s mouth opens and closes like a blowfish as she observes my expression anew. “You and him?”

I take a deep, deep, deep breath. “You’re not the only one who has a confession to make.”

The floodgates open, and the story cascades out of me, and I let it flow like water. Every hateful and beautiful word, every harsh and passionate look, every vicious and penetrating touch. I start with the night I met Elixir and continue to the present, including each gruesome and painful and forbidden thing that has happened since I arrived here.

I tell them about Elixir—his darkness and ruthless, along with the facets no others see, the quiet crevices where empathy, bereavement, and dedication hide within him.

With his curse being common knowledge—apart from the bewitcher’s identity—there’s no reason to omit it. I admit my role in the spell, lament what I did to Elixir, and admit how I’ve never been able to forgive myself for trying to drown him. It doesn’t matter that he’d been able to breathe underwater, that I hadn’t known whether suffocating him was even possible. Intentionally, I had tried to harm another living being, someone young like me.

My sisters hold me while I push the words out, and they whisper it’s all right, it wasn’t my fault. I was defending my people, and I was a child.

I beg Juniper’s pardon for wanting the very Fae who had attacked her, and she hushes me with a pragmatic sense of diplomacy. She harbors no fondness for the ruler, but she reasons that he didn’t know who she was.

I tell them how the mutual hatred between me and Elixir had thawed into friendship, then ignited into something more in the lily pond, and how we’ve begged one another’s forgiveness, and how we found a miraculous type of serendipity in one another’s arms.

I allude to the caresses, kisses, and sensualities. Yet I leave out the finer specifics, such as the heat of his tongue sliding between my lips and the hard sensation of his length filling me to the brim. I share only enough for them to empathize, because it’s personal, and it’s special, and it’s mine. They would understand that, too.

I cite the curse—how it’s the only magical bond we’ll ever share—and our extreme differences in lifespan as reasons it will never work between Elixir and me. I explain that it’s over, that the experience was worth it while it lasted.

Besides the particulars of my intimacy with Elixir, I withhold the object of my game, that breaking the curse is my actual quest. I hadn’t revealed it in my note to them, nor am I allowed to do so now. From the beginning, the rule had stated in our welcome letters that we can’t impart our games to each other. Not until they’re complete.

We fall quiet, stunned by the similarities and differences of our stories. That we snuck out at night as children to meet forbidden Faeries.

I thread our digits. “Whatever happens to one of us, happens to each of us.”

---