Page 99 of The Wicked Lies of Habren Faire
“It is done.” Emrys waves a lazy hand.
Ceridwen staggers back like she’s been hit and clasps her chest. She draws a long breath and glances at me.
“Do you feel different?” I ask.
“I… don’t know,” she admits.
“It comes on slow, then crashes in like a storm,” Delyth says. “You’ll feel terrible tomorrow.”
Emrys’s eyes flick to her, then to me and my sister. “Is it not unfair that you assisted them, wife?”
Delyth moves past me and stops at the foot of the dais. “I only walked my niece to her potential grave. I neither pushed her in, nor lifted her out.”
She speaks like the teg. Of course she does. My great-aunt has spent more of her life among them than with her own people. Emrys’s lip curls in amusement.
“And what would you have done if my brother used this girl to take the throne?” he asks.
“The same thing that I did anyway,” Delyth replies. “I would’ve walked out the front door. Perhaps you would’ve come with me, perhaps not.”
He considers that, then tilts his head. “The door was never locked.” Then he turns to me. “What do you want, then, Habren Faire?”
I feel Neirin and Ceridwen watching me, certain that they know what I will ask for—an eternity with them, a life spent as eternally sixteen, roaming this forest at Neirin’s side and returning to Ceridwen’s lakeside cottage for dinner when I can.
But Delyth looks on me too, and Delyth knows the truth.
“Freedom,” I say, and a lull falls over the assembly. “No more, no less.”
Emrys scoffs. “Something I can give you. What trick is this?”
“No trick,” I insist. “I want what everyone else here has. I want to be free to come and go between Eu gwlad and my world safely no matter where—orwhen—I exit and enter. Maybe some gold, if you can spare it.”
Neirin speaks low in my ear. “Habren—”
I step away from him. “I don’t want to be immortal. I don’t want to be like this forever. I want to know who I’ll be at thirty and meet people who never knew me at sixteen. For that to happen, I need to be free.”
Neirin grabs my hand and turns me toward him. “What does that world have to offer you that I cannot?”
“I don’t know.” I hold his gaze, imploring. “But I want to find out.”
“This is absurd,” Emrys remarks.
“I wholeheartedly agree,” Neirin replies.
“Why are you surprised?” I lay my hand on his cheek. He leans into my touch on instinct. “I told you I wouldn’t be caged.”
“Am I a cage now?” he says bitterly.
“No! No, but…” I glance at the limits of the court, and the small, long lives of those who live there. “But I deserve to know what the world has to offer me. It might be terrible and lonely, but it’s mine to discover. Just as the person I will become is mine to make.”
“Well, I expected you to take immortality.” The king slumps low in his chair.
I give him an absurd look. “What if I’d asked for wings? Or to be invisible?”
“That would be stupid,” he says plainly. “You can have some damned gold, and I can give you freedom of movement between our worlds, but without immortality, it won’t be as seamless for you as it will for us.”
“How so?” I lift my chin.
“You will continue to age both in your world and ours. As time moves differently here, and as you will be bound to both our time and mortal time, it might be… sporadic. It could stop and start at will, slow and speed up. You will have true sight—going beyond even what my brother has given you—so when you return to your world you will notice things that slipped by you before. And these things will notice you, too.” He pauses. “It will not feel like the place you left. There will be no true home for you, here or there.”
