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1
Welp. I’m a coward.
With Rys, Jim, and Saxon all watching me closely, waiting for my answer, I freeze. Just go absolutely still. My jaw is hanging slightly open, but I sure as hell can’t get my mouth to work.
I can’t believe this. I made my peace with not being able to see Jim ever again. And while I haven’t quite accepted that me and Rys… aren’t me and Rys anymore, my relationship with my human boyfriend was where I had to leave it when I escaped Siúcra: in the Iron, the human world where Jim was and where I can never, ever go again.
But… Jim’s not home. He’s here, in Faerie, standing in the middle of Rys’s elaborate manor home, his strong, callused hands holding tightly to my shoulders as his gruff voice echoes in my spinning mind.
Hey. Are you okay?
No. I’m not. I’m so freaking not okay that, before I can really think about what I’m about to do, I babble out something that might’ve been, “I… I gotta go,” duck out from under his hold, and sprint toward the spiral stairs branching off of the nearest hall.
I take those shits two at a time, my bare feet slapping against each sturdy crystal step. I’m wearing one of the Faerie outfits that Rys had made for me by an imp tailor that traveled all the way to his house to fit me. Since he’s a Seelie, all of my clothes reflect his type of fae: the top and bottom are loose, flowy, made of a silky white material that’s decorated with golden thread. It’s nothing like the jeans and tank I spent the last two months just about living in, and while it took me a bit to get used to how different my new clothes are, I’m grateful for them now. They make it easy to bolt up the stairs.
On the second floor, there are two doors. The one on the left leads to Rys’s master bedroom. The one on the right brings me to mine. I throw myself at it, slamming the door closed behind me.
My heart is lodged in my throat. I can’t quite catch my breath, and I’d like to pretend that’s because I went from zero to sixty in like three seconds, but I think it has more to do with my shock at coming face to face with Jim.
James Fuentes. Jim. Jimmy. My high school sweetheart, my first—and only, before I fell for Rys—lover, and the man I’ve called my boyfriend for the last ten years, ever since we were sixteen. I know all of his secrets, he knows most of mine, and, before I accidentally found myself in Faerie, he was the man I thought I’d spend the rest of my life with… even if our relationship has been on life support for longer than I want to think about.
These last few years, though we still shared a bed in our apartment, we’ve been roommates more than anything else. I busied myself with my art while Jim spent more hours than he needed to down at his father’s garage where he worked as a mechanic. We stayed together because, well, why not? It was comfortable, and if Jim was against marriage, that was fine. Right?
At least, that’s what I told myself. And then I put teal streaks in my blonde hair, hoping he’d care for once, hoping I’d get some kind of reaction out of him, and it took two freaking weeks before he even noticed. When he did? He asked me why I ruined my hair as if I only just did it, or that I haven’t been doing crazy things to my hair since we first met.
It was the catalyst to the fight that led to my fateful walk in our local park the day I stumbled upon the fairy circle. Disappointed with Jim—disappointed in myself for expecting more from him—I took a walk to cool off and, whether it was fate or I was just being an idiot, I walked through the ring of mushrooms and crossed the veil into Faerie.
Of course, a lot of stuff has happened since then. I poisoned myself by eating a pretty, pink apple, I fell in with a pair of sneaky dwarves, I was sold at auction—twice—and nearly ended up the pet of an arrogant Seelie noble. I earned myself a one-way ticket to Siúcra, the infamous Faerie prison, and I caught the attention of a pervy Unseelie guard who I eventually set on fire when he wouldn’t take my “no” for an answer.
I met Rys while I was imprisoned. My scarred Seelie shared the same wing inside of the prison with me, then later became my cellmate. At first, I thought I could use him to escape the fairy jail; a former guard who used to work under the deposed Fae Queen, he was my best hope. Somewhere along the way, though, my plan to seduce him backfired. Instead, I fell in love with him, and when I compared my feelings for Rys to what I had for Jim, I realized that I’ve been holding onto something that was over for too long now.
And then I found out that I’m fated to be Rys’s ffrindau, his soul mate, and it all made sense… until he sacrificed any chance to claim me as his during our escape from Siúcra.
This is Faerie, though. Everything is held to the letter of the law which means that, if there’s a loophole or another way to interpret something, there’s always a chance. Even though we were separated for a few weeks before Rys rescued me from my second time on the Faerie Market auction block, we ended up together again.
I thought he was trying to find a way around his sacrifice.
Instead, he was working on going around mine.
Jim… I— whoa.
My knees are weak. I take a deep breath, trying to knock that lump in my throat loose, then stumble away from the door. No point in locking it. I have no doubt in my mind that someone is coming after me. The fact that there’s one guy I’m expecting to, another who I really, really wish would, and they’re not the same… oh, man. I’m in so much trouble right now.
I move across my room, knocking into the corner of my four-post bed. I can’t believe I just did that, running away, leaving them all behind. I guess, when it came to fight or flight, my instinct kicked in and I was gone.
I’m such an asshole. Even if Jim only thought I was missing from the human world for twenty-four hours—instead of the more than two months that I’ve been trapped in Faerie—it was obvious that he was super relieved to be reunited. Me? I… I don’t know what I’m feeling, only that it’s definitely not what I should be feeling.
Ugh.
What makes matters worse is, now that Jim’s here—he’s freaking here—I have to finally confront the very real truth that I’ve been cheating on him. No matter how I twist it otherwise, we were still together when I disappeared. Regardless of how much time passed for either of us, there’s no reason why he would expect anything else.
I never thought I’d see him again. Even when I did, that wasn’t enough to stop me from falling in love with Rys; it just meant that, after I got out of Siúcra, I still planned on crossing back into the Iron if only
to be honest with Jim. Then there was our escape and my sacrifice and I figured that I’d never get the closure or the chance to come clean.
