The carriage left me at the edge of campus, near sunset. The semester would be in full swing—past midterms, I thought, and on into the second quarter before the midwinter holidays closed the university. But it was late enough that there were few people about, and I was far enough from the buildings that I did not fear discovery. If the driver thought me touched for asking to be let off so far from any landmark, he kept it to himself. I had observed Chester to have good service; having companioned him for most of three years, I could wager that his family had certainly earned it with fair compensation and good treatment. I was glad that thus far they had not seemed to blame me for the misunderstanding that had seen me run off his family’s carriage run to the port.

The world was beautiful. How had I never noticed? Or had I, and forgotten in the drama that had overtaken me in southern lands? I rolled the cool air over my tongue as if it had body and weight, and it did, to some part of me I could not yet name but that permeated me from spine to breastbone, from heel to crown. The moisture in the air clung to my skin, deepened the ambient scents: of molding leaves and wet pavement, of distant rain and more distant snow. I could wrap the world around me like a second cloak, and I did.

I found my way to the tree without error. The only question in my mind was whether she would come. God knew I had given her cause enough to spurn me. Here, beneath the boughs of this very tree, I had given her more than enough cause. I folded my arms beneath the cloak and composed myself to wait, eyes closed. The wire of my spectacles grew chilled against the bridge of my nose; my fingers ached. I wondered how the drake was faring.

I heard her before I saw her, for she approached me from behind. I had been expecting her to arrive down the path from the school.

Before I could turn, she said, “Dare I believe.”

A statement, and yet the tremor in her voice—I bit my lip.

“When you fell into the fit here,” she continued, very calm, too calm, “I ran. My only thought was to find someone, anyone, who could help you. A physician, if I could send for one; a strong man to hold you down, if not. Both, ideally. But by the time I returned, you had gone. I went to your apartment....” Her voice quavered. “It was raining.” She cleared her throat and continued, more composed, “It was raining, and I stood in the rain for nearly half an hour, knocking, wondering if you had made it home. You didn’t open the door. And I didn’t hear from you again. I thought you had died, and that no one had told me.”

A breath. “But then Chester began comporting himself in a most peculiar fashion, and Guy and Radburn also, though to a lesser extent. No one would give report of you, but they acted like people with secrets. I presume you told them you were leaving. But you didn’t tell me. Why?”

In that last question I heard all her pain, and my heart wrenched. I rested my hand over my chest, and then I shook the hood back and turned to face her.

Her hand darted to her mouth as she gasped, took a step back. She was just as I remembered her—no, more beautiful, somehow, because I had seen depravity wrapped in the burning brilliance of elven bodies, and the honesty of her beauty, the goodness and sweet intelligence I saw in the lines of her face, in her eyes, those were more precious than anything as superficial as fae perfection. One saw her brown curls and thought of tea, not gemstones, and it was as welcome as coming home.

“Morgan,” she breathed. “What happened to you?”

“I’m afraid it is a convoluted tale,” I said. “And I will tell it to you gladly but first... first I must apologize. Ivy, I cannot express how much I regret leaving without making explanation to you. It was...” I faltered, my hands fisting beneath the cloak. “It was pride, and fear. That if you knew that I was an invalid, you would no longer look at me the way you did.”

“An invalid,” she said, startled.

“The fit you witnessed. It was not a unique event.” I drew in a breath, careful of it, aware that I was trembling and that no interview I had undergone since returning to Evertrue, not even the one with my mother, carried the import that this one did for me. “I had suffered them since birth, and the older I became, the more frequent. And there were... delusions. Bouts of weakness. Physical unpleasantries.”

Stunned, she said, “And you hid this from all of us?”

“I did. The only reason the others knew was... accident. But what I could bear them to know, I could not with you.” Before I could lose the courage, I finished, “I knew... I knew I could give you nothing that a man could give you, but at very least I could keep your regard untainted by your pity.”

Her gaze dipped then, traveled my length before skittering back to my face. Her own was too pale; it brought the freckles over the bridge of her nose into sharp relief. “You are not sick now.”

“I was never sick,” I said, low. “I was ensorceled. From birth. Swaddled in a false seeming and hidden here among....”

“Humans,” she whispered.

The silence then was painful, as was the distance between us, and yet I could not cross it. I had done her so much wrong... to encroach on her, to addle her with my proximity when I knew very well what it was like to bear the brunt of elven beauty.... I could not do it, but oh, how I wanted to.

“A convoluted tale,” she said at last.

“I’m afraid so.”

She nodded. “Do you have the time to tell it?”

“I... yes. I do. If you would like?”

“I would.” She smiled, a faint twitch of her lips. “You will not have another fit on me this time, I imagine? I would hate to think this tree was cursed for us.”

“No,” I said. “No, that... would not be likely at all.” I backed toward the trunk and sat against it, drawing the cloak off so I could rest it on the ground and save her dress from the soil. When I looked up, I found her studying me.

“Some fairy, then,” she guessed.

“An entirely different species, I’m afraid,” I replied, rueful.

Another twitch of her lips. “Something in your own dissertation, sprung to life.”

“The irony is a glass dagger,” I said without thinking, and did not realize I’d dragged elven concept into human words until I looked up and found her still staring at me. I flushed. “Ivy—”

“How true are the stories?” she asked. “The magic? The immortality? The stealing of children?”

“Like everything in history and folklore,” I replied. “Some of it is true, some of it not, and all of it tangled.”

She nodded and sat on my cloak beside me, so close my breath stopped in my throat, and before I could move away she slipped her shoulders under my slack arm and rested her head on my shoulder.

“Ivy!” I whispered.

“Morgan....” She sighed. “Morgan. I have loved you since the day I met you. You know that, don’t you?”

Shocked, I froze. I could sense the frenzied beating of my heart, so quick I was dizzied. Perhaps I would have another fit beneath the tree. When I didn’t answer, she looked up at me, and then—oh, God, thank you—she laughed, and reached up to touch my face. Her fingers on my jaw burned, and all the skin around it felt numb in compare. “I take it my feelings were not unreciprocated.”

“Ivy,” I whispered. “Nothing has changed. What I could not give you before because I was dying I cannot give you now because I’m not human. I will outlive you. I will never age! We cannot have children...we cannot even be married, because God alone knows who would marry us, if even I can reveal that an entire nation of elves exist—”

Her fingers touched my mouth. “Sssh.”

I stilled, obedient, unable to do anything else.

“Hold me,” she said. “And tell me the story.”

I curled my arm around her shoulders, and did. I spoke until my throat hurt, until my nose went numb from the chill, until the only real and true thing was the weight of her against my side and the smell of violets threaded amid her carefully pinned hair. The warmth of her. The gasps and the murmurs of encouragement. Her silences, denoting her attention, and her thought.

I spared myself nothing, and told her everything.

When I had finished I let my head drop. How keenly did I feel my inadequacy then! To touch her...how had I earned it? She had not thrust me away, at least; for now she continued leaning on me. Thinking, perhaps, what she should say.

What she finally said was, “It’s cold.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “My cloak—” And then I choked on the words as she pulled herself into my lap and pressed her head under my chin, her arms slung around my neck. “Ivy,” I managed, strangled by the heat and scent of her. “Don’t—”

“Don’t?” she asked, peeking up at me past my jaw.

“Tempt me,” I finished helplessly.

She pursed her lips. “So you admit this is temptation.”

“Oh, God.” I covered one eye, skewing my spectacles. “Ivy, I... you... you have always been the only one—”

“Except for a shapechanging sorcerer—”

“In my heart!” I bleated. Was she?

She was laughing. She was teasing me. And she was still in my lap. Had I thought my nose cold? I need fear no longer. My cheeks were now radiating quite enough heat to warm it and the rest of my face besides. “I... the sorcerer...he’d given me a working body for the first time in my life, and I knew I shouldn’t but—”

“Sssh.” She touched my lips, branding them... and left her fingers there, tracing their contours. I started shaking. “I can’t imagine what you have been through, Morgan. I am not about to blame you for failing to resist the seduction of a fairy lord.”

“Resisting the seduction of a fairy lord will be child’s play in comparison to resisting you if you continue... touching... my mouth that way—Ivy—”

She kissed me, and vanquished all my thoughts: my world narrowed to the brush of her fingers on my chin, the tenderness of her lips, the pressure of her body leaning against mine.

Her sigh cooled my mouth as she leaned back, just enough to rest her brow against my jaw. “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that.” Her hand trailed down my neck to rest on my chest, and there she paused. “Morgan? You’re not breathing.”

“I... we... you....”

Her body began shaking against mine; she was muffling her titters against my neck. “Shall we try that again?”

“Yes—no!” I swallowed, found that I was still trembling. “You are greatly underestimating your effect on my moral fortitude.”

She sniffed. “Moral fortitude. Men have moral fortitude in regards to women because their indiscretions may get a woman with child. You yourself say there is no danger of that occurring between us... so what use is your rectitude, save to prevent us from what happiness we might grasp? You could lay me down on the earth right now and have me, and we would both be glad, and no one would be harmed by it.”

If she continued this way I would surely faint. “I would do no such thing! You deserve better!”

“Than to be plowed beneath the stars like an ancient fertility goddess?” she asked, her mirth permeating her voice. “I don’t know, I rather fancy the idea.”

“Ivy... Ivy, I love you,” I said. “But I don’t know that we can do this.” She glanced up at me, the moonlight gleaming off her eyes. I touched her cheekbone beneath one of them, just barely grazing her skin. “Giving your body to someone is supposed to be more than a pleasant activity two people engage in to gratify their bodies. It’s a promise. That you will be worthy of someone’s trust, that you will be there for them, so their hearts won’t break if they absent themselves without reason.” I kissed her brow, gently. “I have already done so to you once. I don’t know what the future holds. How could I make you any promise?”

She had grown still; I remembered the conversation we’d had here before, where she spoke of her prospects, and her inability to see any for herself after her schooling. “No one knows the future, Morgan. That’s what makes such promises meaningful. They’re given despite the uncertainty of what will have to be done to keep them.”

“I’m still not human,” I whispered. “I don’t even know what that means. How can you?”

She took my hand and curled it between both of hers, kissed my quivering fingers. Pressing my palm to my heart, she said, “I don’t need to know what you are, Morgan Locke. I know who you are, and that has always been enough for me.”

I flushed and set one of my hands over hers.

“Now, will you trust me?” she asked. “Will you trust me to know my own heart, and what I want?”

“You ask me to be complicit in destroying your reputation.”

“My reputation is meaningless to me if it involves your being removed from my life,” she replied. “So long as you remain nigh, then I need never fear. Is that not so?” She tilted her head. “Or are you planning on leaving again?”

“I fear more that you will leave me.” I touched the backs of my fingers to her cheek. “Look at me, Ivy. My own friends wince at the sight of me. How will you not grow exhausted of it? I exhaust myself!”

“You are rather prettier than most women would countenance,” she agreed, mouth quirking and eyes alight with laughter. “Most ladies would be distressed to be shown up by their beaux in that regard. Fortunately for you, I have never had any illusions as to my own looks—”

“You jest—”

“I speak the truth. I am the sort of woman who will be called pretty by those wishing to be kind and common by those wishing to be honest, and I am content with that. A woman cannot be both smart and beautiful. It’s not done.”

“Entire nonsense,” I said, kissing the back of her hand. “You are the most beautiful woman in the world.”

Even in the dark I could sense her skepticism. “Morgan. I am pretty like a handkerchief, and you have seen silk wedding veils, if the fae women look anything like you.”

“One uses a wedding veil once and puts it away, and rarely sees it again,” I said. “And when one does, it is not to admire its beauty, but to use it as a substitution, as a way to recall a memory. A handkerchief gives you comfort every day, and you are grateful for it.”

I expected her skepticism to redouble, or perhaps for her to take umbrage at having been compared to something used to wipe spills. But what she said was, “That’s why you think I’ll leave you, isn’t it. One disports oneself with a fairy lord of folktale, but one does not make a family with him.”

I had not forgotten her intellect; God knew the elven women had it in their measure. But suffering beneath Amoret had trained me to expect it to be employed to torture me.

She reached up and settled my glasses straight on my nose again. “I will have to prove to you that I am not so inconstant. And I shall begin with this trip to Vigil.”

“You’ll come?” I whispered.

“Of course I will.” She smiled. “There are too many mysteries there for me to resist the invitation. For instance... I would very much like to meet your mother.”

“My mother?” I said. My gut seemed to knot. It seemed a precipitous step, to go from confessing one’s love for someone to inviting her to meet one’s parents. Oh God, I had confessed my love for her. And she had not spurned me! “I could arrange a dinner, I suppose—”

“Not your adoptive mother,” Ivy said, laughing. “Though yes, I should like to make her acquaintance as well. The mother who gave birth to you. The elves are immortal unless killed, you said. And obviously she was here on the continent, as you were adopted from an orphanage... were you not?”

“Yes,” I said, bewildered. “From Saints’ Graces. As an infant.”

“So she came here and either enchanted you herself, or had you enchanted, and left her infant here. Where did she go, then? Why did she do it? Who is your father... you said you had a brother. Is he your half-brother, or full?”

“I don’t know!” I exclaimed. I should have thought of it, but I hadn’t. My mother was... my mother. The woman who’d raised me. But Ivy was right: unless something had killed her, I still had an elven mother, an enigma who had chosen to give me to humans to be raised. Knowing the culture in which I would have been reared had she stayed in the Archipelago, I had to imagine she’d done it for my health and wellbeing.

Could she still be here?

“I wonder if the nurses would remember her,” Ivy murmured. “Or if she left you at their doorstep before the morning bells.”

“I never thought to ask....”

“And now you certainly cannot! But I can.” She glanced up at me. “Shall I?”

It felt strange to realize I had more family, yet undiscovered. “Would you?”

“Of course,” she said, and kissed my cheek. “There, is that chaste enough?”

“Not hardly with you sitting on my lap!”

She laughed then. “Walk me to the edge of the park, elven prince.”

I shrouded myself in my cloak and tucked her arm in mine, and together we passed under the trees, and spoke very little...or when we did, it was brief, and we laughed a great deal. I remained achingly aware of how close she was to me, close enough that her body heat interrupted the chill of the autumn evening. The impress of her kiss on my mouth lingered.

She loved me, and had forgiven me for distressing her.

I could imagine no future that made sense for us. I still thought of myself as Morgan Locke; I still felt like the man I’d been all my life, not like a creature who would outlive her by centuries even were the magics enslaving the elven race undone. And yet, for the time we spent together there, beneath the black lace branches of the shadowed trees, and the clear dark blue sky they interrupted, laughing, walking together... I forgot all of that, and my heart knew a hope without future or past, but eternally fresh.

“I’ll call for a hansom here,” she said, pulling my hood up and arranging it over my face. “Here... don’t let anyone see your skin. I’m afraid you glow, my dear.”

My dear! And then her words penetrated. “Visibly? Despite the cloak?”

“In a fashion most endearing,” she promised, kissing my cheek—the other one, so that now both felt blessed. “But unfortunately noticeable to anyone paying strict attention. I would rather you not take the chance. Can you imagine the delays were you discovered? The world would be overrun with demons and dark sorcerers, and the Parliament would still be discussing whether to classify you as beast or man.”

“God save me.” I sighed and kissed her fingers. “I’ll have Chester send for you tomorrow. He and the others are making plans now... best you be a part of them.”

“Finally!” she exclaimed. “The circle will be unbroken again. You were missed, Morgan. And not just by me.”

“You’ll forgive me if I hope that I was more especially missed by you?”

“Than by the likes of Guy and Radburn?” She laughed. “Never fear.” She paused then, just... looking at me. The expression on her face was so soft. I would have carried it forever in a locket, had I had the power to capture it. “You really are home.”

“I am. Please, go carefully.” Remembering the flower, I checked the inside pocket of my vest and found it, still fragrant if somewhat bruised. I brought it forth and offered. “For your bedside, that you might think of me.”

Her cheek dimpled as she took it. “And you want me thinking of you while I am in my bed, is that it?” As I blushed and began to stammer, she laughed and kissed my fingers. “You are all that is sweet, my dearest. Thank you.” She brushed one of the petals against her nose, inhaled, smiled. “A flower in autumn. Now I know we are living in a fairy tale.”

“I’m glad you like it.”

“I do. Good night, Morgan.”

From the concealment of the forest’s edge I watched her call for a carriage, and I waited until she had departed to start making my own way back on foot. It would have been safer to be driven, but I’d neglected to make the request, and Chester’s man had long since departed. And yet, I found it easier than I expected to avoid people. The worldsense implied them, for where there were people, there were interruptions in my understanding of the soil, the sky, the grass. Even in the city proper, with stone pavers between my boots and the earth, I gathered that information, as if my skin had expanded outward to encompass the world.

I had to take my time, but I returned to Chester’s home without incident. I didn’t expect to find him waiting for me, and yet the servant conducted me to his study and I found it dimly lit, and a small tray waiting.

“I wasn’t sure if you’d eaten,” Chester said without preamble. “But I imagined you hadn’t, not before a meeting of such import.”

“To be honest, the thought of food hadn’t even occurred to me.”

He chuckled. “From your demeanor, it went well?”

“She forgives me,” I said. More humbly. “She loves me.”

“Finally!” Chester laughed. “God and Winifred and all His angels. It’s about time!”

“I beg your pardon.” I sat across from the tray and uncovered it. A cup of hot soup. Bread and cheese, and a toasting fork. All just what I needed; I hadn’t realized my own hunger. “Are you meaning to tell me you knew her feelings for me?”

“And yours for her?” He snorted and sat, folding his arms behind his head. “Locke, I’m afraid to say that you were the last to know.”

I applied the toast to the fork and set to burning it over the fire, which gave me a fine excuse for the color of my cheeks. “Did the planning go well?”

“I think. Everyone is determined to accompany you, and neither Du Roi nor Douglas have any pressing matter that might detain them. They’ve gone to make arrangements for their absence.”

I glanced over my shoulder at him. “And you? Have you spoken to Princess Minda?”

“I fear I haven’t found the courage.” Chester managed a weak smile. “It’s not her, you understand. I would gladly leave her at the altar, and no regrets. Disappointing our respective parents, however....”

“What’s the worst they can do?” I asked. “They can hardly disinherit you. You’re their only son. And if you can’t bring the shipping lanes into family control right now, there will be other opportunities to increase your wealth, if they are dead set on your doing so.”

Chester snorted. “Are there now? What have I missed?”

“You are talking to the prince of a foreign nation,” I said. “There may be an exclusive trade agreement in it for you, if we all survive the coming apocalypse. And, of course, if you remain interested in such things at all; not a given, as by the time we are done with our errand, I suspect everything about our lives will have changed beyond recognition.”

Utter silence. I looked past my shoulder again and found him staring at me agape. I grinned. “Didn’t think of that, did you.”

“N-not at all—Locke, your bread is on fire.”

I cursed and shook it, almost lost it to the fire entirely. Withdrawing it, I chipped off the blackened bits and wrinkled my nose. “Still serviceable.” At Chester’s laugh, I said, “What? It will do.” I laid the cheese on it and watched it start to soften. “Is it so strange that I might burn my toast?”

“Honestly? Yes. Folktale creatures don’t toast their own bread, much less char it.” He sighed. “I have been thinking that perhaps we should invite Eyre here, rather than send you off to see him. Keeping you hidden on a campus full of students... I can’t imagine how it might be done.”

I thought of Ivy’s comment. “You may be right. I’ll compose a note forthwith.”

“Good.”

“I do have one errand that must needs be done outside, however.” I sensed his attention and said, “I promised Almond I would take her to Church.”

“To Church!” He paused, then added, “Why don’t you put the cheese in the fire with the bread?”

“It’s messy,” I said.

He peered at me, then chuckled. “Truly you remain yourself within that unlikely sheath.”

I eyed him. “You doubted?”

“Unavoidably, perhaps. You have the look of an heirloom weapon now, you know.” He tapped his fingers on his knee. “As for your errand...perhaps you should go now.”

“In the middle of the night?” I asked, startled.

“It’s not even Last Bell.” He leaned forward and refilled his glass. “In fact, I would counsel you to wait until then. There will be fewer people abroad, and no one will be in the Cathedral proper. Those seeking its shelter will already have been escorted to the dormitories, or will know to go there immediately rather than to the church itself.”

“I’ll defer to your greater experience,” I said.

“Your family never took you?”

“My mother,” I replied, finishing the toast and trying the soup. “But only when I was younger. My father did not approve; he moved among the powerful, and as you know it’s not respectable among the upper class to be seen as too devout.”

“I know. Religion is for the masses.” Chester smiled lopsidedly. “We came into a great deal of condescension for our habits.”

“You were never tempted to give it up, were you?” I glanced at him. “Even when we went to school.”

“Should a man relinquish his principles to please his peers?”

“I should think not.”

“Well then.”

And yet he’d been very discreet. I had no doubt his family had suffered gossip for their piety, but they were also rich enough that none dared do more than that. In this enlightened age I was not the only one who’d considered it passé to bow to superstition. Though my instinct was that the push to marginalize the Church had less to do with enlightenment and more to do with the power it had wielded during the years of the Vow Empire, and previously, during the monarchy.

For whatever reason, the Church had become a waning influence, more popular among the working classes than among the intellectual and the elite. That popularity ensured that whatever First Minister ran for election would at very least give the appearance of devotion in order to secure the votes of the far more numerous poor and middle class, but among people of Chester’s status, religion had fallen away like the scab on a healed wound. I had always thought it proper, that the people should surrender their illusions about gods and angels and saints—my own interest in folklore had endowed me with what I’d thought in my arrogance was the wisdom to see that humanity was always inventing stories to make sense of the world, none of them true. I had found my sympathies far more aligned with those of Guy and Radburn, who like me had been wealthy enough to cast off religion, than with Chester, who was rich enough not to care what others thought of his habits, and Ivy, who had come out of the working class which still worshipped at the altar.

But I had seen things now that made me realize my own hubris. It had been a long time since I’d even thought about the stories I heard at my mother’s knee. How many of them, I wondered, were true?

“Late tonight, then,” I said.