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But I wasn’t. I was angry at myself for getting trapped in this bargain all those years ago. I was angry that everything might be taken away from me again, after I’d worked so hard to forge a new life for myself.
And I was scared. I was so scared that this would be it. I was scared for myself. I was scared for Nua and Gillie, and what this might mean for them.
I was scared for Lonan, and the thought of what it would do to him if I never went back.
I hadn’t even been able to tell him I was leaving. I’d tried to circumvent my promise to keep it a secret by writing him a letter, but I hadn’t been able to get the words down, my own hand disobeying me. No one had known I would be leaving, and no one knew where I’d gone.
Maybe, if this all went terribly wrong, Gadleg would at least be able to tell Sloga what my fate had been. At least then Lonan would know. He wouldn’t spend his life looking for me, wondering what had happened to me. Wondering if I’d left because I’d wanted to escape or I hadn’t been happy with our life together.
Pressure welled at the backs of my eyes, the distant stretch of forest growing blurry. It didn’t feel fair. I was happy with my life. I was so, so happy, and now it might all come to an abrupt, lonely end because of a bargain I’d struck seven years ago when I’d been angry and desperate and wondering why I always felt so hollow.
I didn’t feel hollow anymore. I felt full—full of joy, full of purpose, full of love.
I supposed there were worse ways to feel when your life was at risk of being cut short. At least I’d be ending it on a high note.
Closing my fist around the feather pendant at my throat, I finally turned and faced Hybra. The Tiraglas tower rose from its centre, a monolith of emerald winking in the sun. The jungle-like forest ringing its base was dark and shadowed, a fine haze of pinkish-blue mist swirling around its canopy.
Gemstones crunched under my boots as I finally started walking up the beach towards the trees. At least I was dry this time. I’d been more careful crossing the fingerstones, and I’d grown stronger and more agile over the years. Never as nimble and quick-footed as Lonan though, I thought with a tiny, grief-tinged smile.
I might never get to see him again.
I didn’t let myself listen to the voices that started whispering as soon as I entered the forest, promising they’d show me all the hidden wonders of the isle, urging me to follow them, saying they had secrets they wanted to tell me. I distracted myself by thinking about the last time I’d been with Lonan, just a week ago. He’d stayed with me on seelie for two weeks, and it had been as blissful as ever right up until the night before he left, when I’d started hearing a whispering voice in my head telling me that it was time.
I hadn’t slept that night, and I hadn’t let him sleep either. I’d gorged myself on him in case it was the last time I could, and it had helped to drown out the voice that had grown louder and louder until I could barely concentrate by the morning.
He’d known something was wrong, but I hadn’t been able to tell him, so I’d tried to hide it. I’d had forced down my breakfast even though I had no appetite. I had smiled brightly at him and tried to seem cheerful as he was getting ready to leave. I had given him a deep, desperate kiss at the top of the living steps outside the palace, and clung to him for far too long when he hugged me goodbye, and told him I loved him with the faintest tremor in my voice. I hadn’t been able to say I would see him soon, because I didn’t know whether it was true or not.
I’d been fighting it all morning, but the moment he was gone, I was compelled to leave too. My feet hadn’t let me walk any other way than towards the forest—towards the northern shore. I didn’t even have my bow, just the dagger that lived permanently on my hip. I had no food and water. I’d had to forage and drink from streams during the seven long days it had taken me to get here. A day for every year that had passed.
He’d know I was missing by now. It wouldn’t have taken Nua and Gillie long to realise I’d vanished. I never, ever left to stay with Lonan without telling them first, without saying goodbye and getting my affairs in order so things continued to run smoothly on seelie while I was gone.
They’d probably sent Sanya to unseelie to check that I wasn’t there, to see if I’d perhaps decided to just go back with Lonan and hadn’t told them. Maybe they all thought I’d gotten lost in the forest. Maybe they were all out there searching for me.
My stomach cramped with guilt as the Tiraglas tower got closer. I couldn’t bear the thought of them all worrying about me, and I was potentially going to fuck up everyone’s lives because of my foolish, impulsive actions seven years ago. Nua didn’t want to be king. He and Gillie had a child now—a sweet little girl called Leandra with Nua’s big, solid green eyes and Gillie’s black hair. She was gentle and soft-spoken like Nua, but with a mischievous streak like Gillie, and she clung to Lonan every time she saw him, gazing at him in awe and telling her fathers that she wanted to marry him one day.
He adored her as much as I did. Would he stay in her life if I never got to go back? Or would he close himself off and hide away in the unseelie palace, shoving all his emotions down like he used to as a form of self-preservation, becoming cold and distant to protect himself?
Please don’t, I begged, hoping he’d somehow hear it. Please keep living even if I never come back. Please keep letting yourself feel joy and happiness. You don’t deserve to experience any more pain. You’ve lived through so much of it already.
That was what I was truly scared of, I realised, as the trees thinned out and I finally stepped into the clearing that ringed Gadleg’s tower. I was scared for myself, yes, but I was terrified for the people I’d leave behind. I was angry that they might never find out what had happened to me and would always wonder. I was wracked with guilt that I might cause all of them—Lonan, Nua, Gillie, my precious niece, even Sloga and Idony and Jora—more pain. They didn’t deserve any of it. They didn’t deserve to be forced to deal with the aftermath. It wasn’t fair.
“Right on time, Seelie King.”
My jaw clenched as I looked up and saw the mighty green serpent melting out of Tiraglas’s gleaming walls. Enormous golden-green eyes blinked open and fixed on me as she slithered down until her flat head hovered just a few feet away. As I stared into them, their colour so similar to my own, it was almost like I was looking at a monstrous version of myself.
“It’s good to see you again.” Her mouth stretched into a grotesque smile.
I was too tense to smile back. “I’m afraid I can’t say the same.”
Her tongue flickered as she hissed with laughter. “No, I suppose not. Does it offend you, mighty king, that here you are just like everyone else? Your title, your power, your strength—they’re all meaningless to me. In this moment, they have all been stripped away. You are no one special.”
An incredulous snort left me before I could stop it. “You think I don’t want to be here because I’m not special to you?”
“You tell me,” she said slyly.
“I don’t give a shit about that.” I narrowed my eyes at her. “Is this it? Are you testing me?”
“I don’t need to test you.”
