Page 148 of Fallen Court

Ciara shot me a sympathetic smile. I could guess from the kind sadness written on her face that that’s what she suspected. “This is a lot to digest. You don’t have to know how you feel about this right now. Or tomorrow. Or even next year.”

And I was a fae, which meant I had time to figure things out. Somehow, the prospect of a very long life wasn’t a comfort. What if I never worked through this? What if I lived for hundreds of years and all I had at the end of them were more questions? What if I didn’t want to be immortal?

“How does it work?” I asked her, dread forcing the questions from my tongue now. I needed some answers, even if they weren’t the ones I wanted. “We don’t know for sure that Stacia was my mother.” Although it seemed more and more to be the case. “Or whether both my parents were fae. Is there a way to tell?”

“Not really.” She chewed on her lower lip a minute, looking so much like Roark toying with his lip ring that I almost wanted to smile…despite my crippling existential dread. “Obviously, you’re part fae. Anyone with more than half fae blood stops aging in the Otherworld. That’s why we spend most of our time there. Well, usually.”

I blinked. Why was now the first time I was hearing about this? “But what about here?”

She picked up her water goblet and frowned. “I really need to order some wine,” she muttered.

And now she was avoiding my questions, too. “Fae don’t age in the Otherworld,” I repeated. “What happens when you are here?”

“You know those old stories about changelings.” She traced patterns in the water’s condensation, refusing to look up at me.

“Yes.”

“There’s some truth to them. Not much,” she added hurriedly, her eyes flashing to mine. “Our kind doesn’t switch our babies with human ones. But when fae are born, most of us are nursed on Earth because we grow more quickly into adulthood here. It would take much longer for us to reach our prime and settle in our world. Most of us were cared for by fae nursemaids. At least, Lach, Fiona, and I were. Roark, too. Shaw—”

“Went to school,” I remembered. My brain felt like it was full of cobwebs, and I shook my head, trying to clear the thoughts and questions sticking inside it. “But once you reach your prime, once you settle,” I repeated her words, “you stop aging.”

“Not exactly.” She took a drink. “When we’re deemed old enough, we return to living in the Otherworld, and that’s that. As long as we return to the Otherworld every day, we age at fae rates.”

I couldn’t breathe. Not just because of what it meant for Lach but because of our original bargain. “So if you wanted to see if someone was fae, you might make them spend every night there?”

“Cate…” Her mouth remained open as she searched for words of comfort or an excuse or anything…

Lach had suspected what I was from the moment we met. I already knew, but now I finally understood the terms he’d chosen. Mercy for Channing in exchange for half of my life spent in his world. “He really did know,” I said softly. “That’s why he wanted me to stay in the Otherworld.”

“I think he was in love with you from the beginning.”

“He made me stay at the court or in the Avalon because I wouldn’t age and it would prove I was fae. It was another test.” But a twang in my heart reminded me that it could be both. Lach was complicated like that.

But Ciara shook her head. “We still age in the Avalon. The veil between our worlds is thinner there, but it’s not our world. We just like our phones too much to live down there, and like I said, we just have to pop down.”

I squinted at her, my eyes narrowing as my thoughts did. “But Lach can’t return to the Otherworld.”

She bit her lip. Silver lined her lashes, and she blinked away tears. “That’s why the bona fides spell is only a temporary solution.”

Roark had said as much that first day after I’d made it home, and Lach had silenced him.

“Why didn’t he tell me?”

“I don’t know, but I think maybe you do. Maybe it has something to do with all of this. The ring. Your own glamour.”

And he’d tried to convince me to visit the court, tried to talk me into leaving him behind and seeking shelter deep within his world. Not because being with him was dangerous but because staying here kept me from being protected by the Otherworld’s magic.

“He should have told me.” A pit churned in my stomach. “What if I had left him here?”

“My brother has an annoying tendency to make decisions for us, like proclaiming me his successor,” she reminded me. “I think he cares more about making sure we’re all safe than he does about saving himself.”

That was the other truth I didn’t want to face. Lach believed he couldn’t save himself—that absolution from the Wild Hunt was a lost cause. I prayed he wasn’t right about that, either.

But to keep this from me…

“Did you know?” I asked her, uncertain if I wanted an answer. “That Lach hadn’t told me about this?”

Ciara hesitated before bobbing her head. “But only because Roark knows.” She scowled at the signet ring by her plate. She hadn’t put it back on since the bridal shop, and I was grateful. I needed more time to sort through this before Lach found out, to get bearings in this strange new reality before he celebrated his victory. “He asked me not to tell you.”