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“No, thank you, I’m not hungry,” I lie.
The Fae Queen only smiles, but it’s a knowing smile. As if she knows the lie, seeing it fall from my lips. I can’t let her distract me like this. I have to get back and when I do, I need to get back with power. Power like I felt facing down Caill. With that power I can save the MacGregor clan. I can save Duncan.
“As you wish,” she says, taking a glass of wine and swirling it in her hand. She watches me over the gold rim of the glass.
“How do I get back?”
“To?”
“The MacGregors, of course.”
“Not your own time?”
That stops the flood of words in my head. My own time. My friends, school, and my Dad. Leaving the MacGregors to their fate, a fate that everyone I’ve met here says can’t be changed.
My lips tingle with the memory of Duncan’s kiss. His arms around me, the feel of my breasts crushing against his strong chest. The scent of him fills my nostrils, overwhelming even the succulent scents of the offered food.
“No,” I say, making a decision I didn’t know I was going to have to make. “I don’t know how. I don’t know why, but I know Duncan. I’ve known him. We’re connected, and I must save him.”
“And?”
“Huh? And? And what?”
“Exactly.”
“He doesn’t deserve to die.”
“He’s a thief. He’s killed men. By what judgment does he not deserve his fate?”
“He’s not a thief. Or a killer. He’s doing what he has to do to survive.”
“And that end justifies the means? What places his survival above those of the men he’s killed? Those whose survival he’s endangered by stealing their own livelihood. Is it because he’s stronger?”
“No. I don’t know.” I shake my head, not caring about her disagreements. “You’re muddying the point. He’s a good man.”
The Queen watches me, waiting with an unreadable look on her face. I put my hands on my hips and meet her gaze.
“He doesn’t deserve to die. None of them do, not like what is coming.”
“And what is it that is coming?”
“Their very name will be outlawed. They’ll be hunted, like animals. Forced to fight in pits. They’ll kill them. Man, woman, child, they’ll kill them all.”
“Not so different,” she says.
“What do you mean?”
She shakes her head. “Now is not the time. You cannot change the past. What is, is what will be.”
“Then what is the point?” I ask, frustration rising. “Why bother bringing me to that place? Why did I meet him? Why did I meet any of them?”
“The past is but that doesn’t mean you are not.”
“That makes no sense.”
“If the past is as it was, then your presence there is what was.”
My mouth drops open as the implications of what she’s saying hits me.
