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I felt like a fool. I had never even considered that some of the Folk would have known my father. I had never thought about how their lives might have intertwined with mine in some ways. My mother had made sure to keep us all isolated from the rest of the unseelie, and I had distanced myself even further to make the tasks she ordered of me easier to complete.
Had I killed other friends of his over the years? His family? My family?
“What was his name?” My voice was hoarse, quiet, but still too loud in the stillness of the forest as we skirted the edge of unseelie, heading for its darker parts.
“Shh.” She looked around quickly, then whispered, “Balor usually makes his way into the forest around this time. If you don’t want him to see you, you must be quiet.”
I forced myself not to beg. Just his name—that was all I wanted. One little piece of him.
As if she could sense my desperation, Idony glanced around again before muttering, “Faulis.”
My throat closed up. Faulis.
We walked in silence for a long time. When the trees around us grew thicker and older, the forest floor wild and largely untouched, Idony seemed to relax. She plucked an apricot from her basket and took a bite.
“He was wild. Reckless.” A fond smile tilted her lips. “We weren’t friends at first. But we softened to each other.”
I eyed her warily. “Were you…”
“What, lovers?” She snorted. “No. It was never like that. And his heart belonged to another anyway.”
I tensed, reluctantly asking, “My mother?”
“No.” Idony shook her head, eyes dimming with sadness again. “Not your mother. Not that that stopped her, when she decided she wanted him.”
She stopped abruptly and nodded at something ahead of us. “We’re here.”
I eyed the ancient sidhe, just visible through the towering trees in front of us. Bundles of twigs and bones and herbs had been hung from the branches. Saplings grew from the sidhe’s moss-covered mound. Strips of old cloth in complicated knots had been tied around their thin, delicate trunks. Huge stones ringed the edge of the sidhe, aside from a large gap in the centre for its doorway, which seemed to descend into the earth. More cloth knotted with bones and twigs hung over the entrance, obscuring the darkness within.
“Come on, wayward prince.” Idony was already heading towards it.
“Who lives here?” I asked sharply, settling a hand on the sword hilt at my side.
She didn’t answer, instead sweeping aside the door covering with a hollow jangle and descending into the sidhe.
“Sloga?” she called. “I’m here with someone you will want to meet. And I brought some fruit.”
“Sloga?” I hissed, stopping at the sidhe’s threshold. “The Higher Spirit?”
“Yes.” Idony glanced back, then tutted when she saw I wasn’t following. “Come on.”
I reluctantly stepped inside, one hand still on my sword. “Why are we here?”
“I told you.” Idony’s voice grew muffled as we descended deeper into the earth, the air thick and smelling of dirt. “So he can tell you about your father. He knew him best.”
The big deer-headed fae of unseelie had known my father best? How?
“A visitor?” The deep, rumbling voice from ahead made my fingers tighten around my sword hilt. “You are usually so fiercely protective of our time together, Idony.”
She huffed, sweeping aside another jangling curtain to reveal a large circular room glowing with firelight that flickered from white to blue to yellow. That told me that this place straddled unseelie land, part of both it and the forest. The domed ceiling was far taller than any other sidhe I’d seen, with thick, twisting tree roots acting as beams, and yet more trinkets strung from them.
The round stone firepit was in the centre, smoke streaming up to a small hole in the ceiling. And then something moved just beyond the flames—a thing of mass, its eyes shadowed in its long, deer-like face.
I had seen Sloga many times over the years from a distance, though he rarely mingled among the Folk, and as far as I knew, he had never been in the palace. Something about him made me fearful, especially here, in this ancient place he called his home.
Like Fioda, like Ogma, he was something other. Older.
But as he slowly rose and lumbered closer, his back hunched and long arms almost trailing on the ground, I found myself taking a hesitant step forward. Towards him.
