Six

The walk home with the boys was a long one, largely because they’d had to stay in the after-school program while I served out my detention sentence.

“Do you know what it’s like there?” Ash demanded. “I’m pretty sure Mrs. Horton thinks we’re all, like, six or something.”

“No, she treats you like you’re six because she knows you lied about getting your homework done in class.”

“Yeah, well, she’s not my math teacher. It’s none of her business!”

I checked my phone for the time as we crunched our way up the gravel path to the house. For all the griping and dramatizing from Ash, I was still going to be on time to meet Gwen. She didn’t like coming out if I showed up after dusk.

“Hey, did you pick up more soap?” Ash demanded.

I rolled my eyes and pocketed the phone. “Why, get bored of using shampoo?”

He shot a glare at Jake and kicked the iron gate hard. It swung so hard it clanged against the fence and bounced back, smacking him right in the foot.

Jake burst into loud peals of laughter while Ash fell back, spewing profanity. Dad would have had a cow if he’d heard.

I dropped to my knees and checked his ankle.

“You’re fine,” I announced, and rose, holding open the gate. “Okay, both of you inside. I’ve got to get to my study group.”

“Since when do you socialize with actual people, Miss Priss?” Ash climbed to his feet, not even bothering to dust himself off as he traipsed inside with Jake on his heels.

Once I made sure the boys were home and sufficiently occupied, I pulled the half-full bag of bread out of the pantry.

“Behave,” I called over my shoulder, both to the boys and the shadelings. The shadelings, thank goodness, stayed hidden. The boys, on the other hand, lounged in the living room. Ash doodled in the corner of his geometry book while Jake played some sort of game on his phone.

“Fine, but if you’re home too late it’s tuna fish casserole.”

I glowered at him. “Nobody likes tuna fish casserole.”

“Yeah, but nobody hates it more than you,” Ash pointed out. “That’s what you get for making us wait in the after-school program.”

Jerks. It might have sincerely irritated me more if it wasn’t so familiar. Familiar was good right now. I glanced at them one last time, just to make sure all was well before I headed out the door. There was still a nasty, dark stain on the ground just outside the gate. The sight filled my mouth with a sour taste. I looked away, focusing on the cool iron beneath my fingers, the creak of the gate as it opened and closed. This would be over soon. I’d take care of it.

Nine years in this town and countless trips through the trees, and the woods still sent shivers down my spine. The cloying scent of pine clogged my senses. My steel-toed boots crunched the underbrush so loudly I could barely think. Every creature in the woods knew I was there. The wild, courtless fairies tended to give me a wide berth, but every flicker of movement in the corner of my eye, every snap or rustle in the distance made my hand tighten around the bag of bread. I just had to count the number of steps between here and the safety of the pond.

When at last I broke free of the treeline, I sucked in a long, deep breath of freshwater air: all mud and wet plants and the faint odor of fish. Gwen’s pond stretched out in front of me, the water glimmering like diamonds in the evening sun. I let myself relax, first my head, then my shoulders, then the rest of me as I knelt at the edge of the water, the moist earth squishing under my knees as I knelt.

At first glance, it looked like any other pond. Then, among the brown river stones and the intermittent flicker of movement from minnows, tiny houses shimmered to life, swaying in the gently windblown current. Feminine laughter drifted in on the breeze, accompanied by a smell like honey. The village of the Gwragedd Annwn. The water wives. Probably the only fairies besides the shadelings whom I could honestly claim to like.

“Gwen,” I called, dangling the bag of bread over the water’s surface. “Brought your favorite.”

“Bryn, you know half a dozen of us are named Gwen,” a sweet voice said from behind me. “You’re only lucky they know it’s me you call for.”

For just a second, my heart skipped a beat, but only for the one second. At this point, it was just a physiological reaction my body seemed to have to her, one I doubted I’d ever really outgrow, no matter how long we stayed split up. There would always be the lingering sensation of fireworks inside of me where the smoke hadn’t quite cleared. My lips curled up in an automatic smile. The whole world could be burning around me, and somehow Gwen’s presence would always make it better. “That’s the second time someone managed to sneak up on me today,” I pointed out. “I must be losing my edge.”

Gwen looked like a figure in a classic painting who’d had all her color washed out. Milk-white hands poked out from the full, gauzy sleeves of her pale shift. Ash-blond curls tumbled down to her waist like a blank canvas. The only real specks of color on her were her lily pad–green eyes that sparkled with delight.

Of course, the fireworks were always chased with the throb of a little shard of glass that had embedded itself in my heart the day I downgraded us back to “just friends.” Once junior year had ended and the summer began, it had hit me. I’d be going off to college in a year. I’d be chasing that normal, human kind of life, but I couldn’t really accomplish that if I was still dating a water fairy. So, I’d ended it like one of those old, nostalgic rock songs. I’ll love you forever, babe, but I’ve got to be moving on. Maybe it had been cowardly. Maybe it had been the wrong choice and I was just impulsive. But, right or wrong, I was back here begging for her help. Like an asshole.

Maybe Jasika was on to something about my personality.

Gwen, at least, was too good to act smug about me being back here. Maybe it wasn’t even an emotion she was capable of feeling. She held out her dainty hands for the bread. As soon as I handed it over, she bit gleefully into a slice and sank down to the ground, her shift ballooning around her.

“Gwen,” I said. “Something’s happened.”

Gwen froze, those lily-pad eyes locking onto me. In one graceful motion, she set the bread down and moved to my side, her hands on my back, right on top of my bruises. I bit back a hiss of pain, but Gwen already knew. This wasn’t exactly the first time she’d had to patch me up. It was how the thing between us had started in the first place.

Warmth trickled across my shoulders and down my back, pooling in every scrape the Fae had left. I couldn’t help the little sigh of relief.

“Thanks.”

Gwen pulled back, her delicate features set in a frown. “It is no wild one who did this to you,” she murmured. “There was a touch of the court in them.”

Well, she cut right to the chase, huh? “Yeah, looks like a Fae wandered over here by accident.”

Gwen arched a brow. “We are all Fae, Bryn.”

Semantics. I shrugged. “It’s easier to think of courts as Fae and the rest of you as fairies.” Because deep down, the thought that Gwen and the shadelings were in any way related to that thing made my skin itch.

Gwen pursed her lips. “We are what we are, Bryn. The Unseelie are the dark. The winter. The Seelie are the warmth. The summer. Even we in the wild align with them or between them. It is a balance.”

“Wouldn’t mind throwing that balance off a little,” I muttered. But trying to argue about balance and nature with a water wife was like trying to convince a river to flow backward. “Anyway, it said its queen had a message, but I was a little busy trying to stay alive. Have you or your sisters heard anything?”

Gwen tilted her head and gazed out over the water. Her words came out slowly, like ice melting. “This is Unseelie doing. Mischief-makers and death lovers. Stirring things up in the woods. The Seelie would never resort to such violence. Not without a call for war.”

I figured as much. In all my short life, I’d never actually dealt with the Seelie court. Pity. Apparently that court was all midsummer dances and sunshine, about as far from the Unseelie as Gwen was from the Postoak changeling. I picked at a blade of grass and worried it between my fingers.

“Dad said … well, implied his hallucinations were getting worse.”

Gwen nodded. “It was an Unseelie courtier who cursed him,” she said. “His visions will be tied to them, if it is their will that he should suffer.”

A band tightened around my chest. “But the doctors will still be able to help, right? I mean, this curse acts like a real disease.”

“An amethyst and a quartz may resemble each other, but one shatters more easily than the other.”

“And which one does my dad have?”

Gwen ran her fingers through her pale hair, brows furrowed. “It is hard to say. But if the Unseelie retreat, I believe his condition will ease to something he can manage again.”

“So I just need to push them out of my territory.”

Gwen touched my cheek. Her fingers felt like still water. “You broke with me because you wished to leave this place. Now it seems you intend to root yourself here.”

Perfect. Now she was trying to feel sorry for me. Why couldn’t she just be pissed? That would be easier to deal with. I batted her fingers away, perhaps a bit more gently than I might have with anyone else.

“I’m still going to college,” I insisted. “I just need to take care of this first. Make sure Dad and the boys are safe.”

Gwen reached over, plucking another bit of bread to chew thoughtfully before she spoke. “Bryn … you have grown up with my kind. You know our ways, the wicked and the good.”

“I know the wild fairies,” I snorted. “The court Fae might as well be from another planet.”

“You know them better than you will admit,” Gwen pressed. “If the Unseelie will be this bold, then they seek some advantage. You were a child when first they approached you, but your brothers were newly born. Newly known to the world.”

“What are you—” But the realization crept into my chest, closing its icy claws around my heart. I caught my breath, ears ringing. “You think they’re after the boys.”

“What mother would not sacrifice herself for her children?”

The world began to swim. I buried my head between my knees, but it didn’t do anything for the frantic beat of my heart. Of course. Twins. Twins were said to have powerful magic, right? And Mum hadn’t exactly been ignorant about magic. What could she have gotten herself into? What had she gotten us into?

Why had the Fae prince even been in the woods that day?

My head spun. Before I realized what was happening, my back was on the grass. In seconds, half a dozen water wives swarmed above me, all frowning and tutting like a gaggle of hens. One clasped my wrist, checking my pulse, while another wrung water onto my forehead with the hem of her shift.

“Stop. Hey, quit it.” I waved my arms, batting them away as best I could. The water wives hesitated, but one by one, they disappeared back into the pond, leaving only Gwen crouching beside me. I pushed myself back up, wiping the pond water from my forehead. “You know, you and your sisters don’t have to coddle me every time I get a little dizzy. I’m … fine.”

“I apologize,” Gwen murmured. “Perhaps I was too bold.”

“No, no … It’s a good theory. I’ll look into it.” Just saying that made me feel like maybe I really would pass out. I took a shaking breath and bunched my hands into fists. Nope. I could do this. Nerves of steel, that was me. Steel nerves, steel boots, steel … whatever. “Thank you, Gwen. If, um … if you and your sisters could keep your eyes open for me. Let me know if you catch wind of anything else…”

“Bryn.” Gwen reached out to squeeze my hand. Her skin was cool on mine, like water on a hot day. I tried not to let it reassure me. Steel heart, too, apparently. Gwen’s eyes widened with concern. “What else is there?”

She could always see through me. That’s what I got for letting someone come too close. Or maybe it was a water fairy thing.

“There’s a boy at my school,” I admitted. “I think he might be a Fae spy. Probably Unseelie, if it really is them after us. I tried that detection spell you taught me, but I didn’t get a clear image.”

Gwen nodded and straightened. With the finesse of a Las Vegas magician, she plucked a smooth, brown stone out of the air, perfectly round, with a hole worn right in the middle.

I snorted. “A fairy stone? Gwen, I can look through glamours on my own. That thing’s for kids and beginners.”

“And difficult glamours,” Gwen said, holding it out to me. “Try it on the boy. If he is Unseelie, there will be darkness about him. If he is Seelie, there will be light.”

“Fat chance one of the Seelie will lift a finger to help us,” I muttered, but I took the stone, instantly rubbing my thumb over its sleek surface.

Gwen smiled. “You once said something similar of me,” she pointed out. “And who alive has since taught you more of my kind?”

“I let Gooding believe it’s him.” I pocketed the stone and pushed myself to my feet. Gwen rose beside me, her hands folded in front of her. Always so stinking elegant. Sometimes, I had to wonder if the water wives knew how awkward they made us humans look. I reached out to pat her shoulder, feeling a little clumsy doing so. “Thank you, Gwen. I get the feeling I’ll probably ask for your help when … if I find out that your theory about the Ash and Jake is true.”

Gwen gave a little curtsy. “Of course, Bryn. You know you need only ask.”

“Right,” I chuckled weakly. “And be sure to share that bread with your sisters.”

Gwen scooped the bag off the ground and held it close to her chest like a child who wouldn’t let go of her teddy bear. My lovely Gwen. She positively pouted as I made my way back into the woods and home.