Erick leads me across the room to a small chest in the corner. I marvel at his human quarters the entire way there. Everything is so heavy—the thick drapes by the windows, the smooth stone walls, the carved posts of his bed. Even stranger is the quiet, and the permeating stillness of it all. I'm used to the constant sway of branches overhead, the rustling of leaves, the buzzing of insects, the slow-moving clouds or the rushing river. I don't think I could live like this all the time, but for now, it sort of feels as if we're back in the cave, and I like it.

The plush rug tickles the soles of my feet, softer even than the mossy bed I'm used to, but not soft enough for humans. Erick throws two pillows on the floor before we sit, then lifts the lid of his wooden chest. I run my fingers over the grain, tracing the lifelines while he retrieves a smaller box from inside.

"I've told you about my curiosity room, but that's not my real collection. Sure, it's full of interesting things, most of which I've showed you, but this"—he puts the box on the ground and opens the lid—"this is my real collection, my prized possessions, though I'm sure most people would see them as sentimental drivel."

I'm not most people, I think, meeting his eyes.

The edge of his lip lifts. "No, you're not."

Erick removes a bundle of fabric and carefully unravels it to reveal a small wooden object, round at the top with a narrow handle, covered in faded paints depicting the shore. When he shakes it, something inside swishes, almost like the soothing sound of the waves.

"It was my baby rattle," he explains, holding it out for me to take. "My mother painted it to resemble the view out her window and she collected the shells hidden inside. My grandfather helped her carve it. And this was my blanket. It still smells like the sea."

I lift the soft fabric to my nose and breathe deeply, catching the hint of salt still stuck to the threads as though sewn in. While my eyes are closed, with the ocean air in my lungs, Erick takes my hand, flooding my mind with his memories. The darkness shifts to soft sunlight. The room is out of focus and fuzzy, but a warm voice reaches my ear, singing softly, a loving tune that mixes with the rolling waves outside. When I look up, dark hair spills like a curtain over obscured features, face silhouetted by the light streaming through the window. It's his mother, I'm sure. He can’t quite see her anymore, but I can tell her identity by the warmth blossoming across my chest, laced with a pang of hurt. This is how he remembers her. It's all he has left of her.

I want to give something back to him.

So I send my earliest memory down the connection, the first time I felt the sun. Like his, it's more a feeling than an image. I remember being surrounded in impenetrable darkness, warm and cocooned and safe, yet waiting, yearning for something I didn't yet understand—life. Then the leaves of my flowery womb unfurled to reveal light and I took my first breath, drawing the Mother in as her magic washed over me. For the briefest moment, I felt safe and loved, before a stranger's arms came and ripped me away. Then the world went fuzzy for a while as I was passed back and forth, no faces or names I remember, only a feeling of aimlessness, until I was brought to the sacred meadow to begin my training.

I blink, studying Erick as he studies me.

I guess in a way we're both still grasping for the mothers we remember in our dreams.

"This is my grandfather's pipe," he tells me, returning to the box and pulling out another item. With our hands still connected, an image flashes through my thoughts, of an older man sitting in a rocking chair by a warm fire, blowing smoke that hangs heavy in the air, obscuring his kind smile. His face is much clearer, laced with wrinkles. His nose hooks as though long ago broken, and bright blue eyes the color of the sea watch me, so familiar. Boisterous laughter rings in my ears, a deep and calming rumble.

"Tell me a story," a young Erick whispers through my thoughts.

"A story, dear boy? What kind of story?"

"Any story."

"One about pirates?"

"Yes!"

"And dragons?"

"Yes!"

"How about a fair maiden, too?"

"Eww. No."

"Why not?"

"I want to go on an adventure."

"Oh, Erick." The old man pauses to laugh, sending a new wave of billowing smoke across the room. His gaze drifts out the window to the dark night sky, then back toward me. "One day you'll learn that love is the greatest adventure there is. I only hope I'm still alive to see it."

The memory dissolves.

I return to this quiet room in this heavy castle, looking at the man who seems out of place within these stone walls now that I've seen pieces of his former home by the sea.

I like him, I tell Erick, whispering across his thoughts.

"He'd like you too."

I shift closer and Erick wraps his arms around me, pulling us both down to the floor. We spend the rest of the night curled against the pillows, speaking through our memories.

Some make us laugh, like when Erick first attached the wooden leg to Ru's tiny puppy body, and he got so excited he ran in circles for half an hour just because he could. Or the time Erick was out on a boat with his grandfather, trying to learn to fish, but the only thing he managed to hook from the bottom of the sea was the rusty anchor. Or when I first met Nymia. All the girls in my training group arrived to the sacred meadow within a few weeks of each other, only a few years old, with newly inherited magic brimming beneath our skin. We tested each other. We tested our power. There was a game I liked to play, where I grew a flower and dared the others to try to take it from me. No one could. I was faster. My magic was stronger. Maybe I was just the most iron-willed. I'm not sure, but I'd play it over and over, until one day, this little blonde girl, the quietest of the group who I'd hardly ever heard speak, walked over. She stopped a few feet before me and tilted her head to the side. I gathered my magic beneath my skin, not quite sure what she was going to do. When she opened her mouth, I thought she was planning to speak, but instead a tornado swooped through her lips to carry me away on the wind. I rolled, flipping head over heels. By the time I'd righted myself, she was standing with my flower in her hands and a wicked grin across her lips. Right then and there, I decided she was going to be my best friend, whether she wanted to be or not. But we became so much more—we became sisters.

Most of my memories are happy and carefree.

But the more Erick shows me of his past, the more I realize his happy moments were few and far between. When he first arrived at the castle, motherless and in a new home, his father didn't even come to greet him. He was ushered up the back stairs and into a room at the farthest end of the building, away from the royal quarters, a dirty secret. He didn’t see his father for days, and when the king finally came to his room, all he did was grip his chin, look into his eyes, and say, You look just like her. He left without another word and didn't come back for weeks. Erick had all the best tutors, like his half siblings, and all the finest things—more clothes, and weapons, and luxuries than he could've hoped for. But none of that mattered, because he was surrounded by people, yet somehow more alone than ever.

I can't change his past, and wouldn't, because it made him the person he is today. But as the night passes, and light begins to creep across the horizon, I know one thing—I want to give him a better future. I want to be that better future. I'm just not sure how.

Though that's never stopped me before.

It's time, I finally tell him when the sky turns peach and we can't ignore dawn any longer.

Erick gives me a cloak to cover my arms and face, then leads me through dark halls while the castle still sleeps, taking me to the private gardens in the back where a small fountain rests surrounded by a bed of ivy. It was the closest place he could think to find me a pool of water for the portal, but now that I'm here, I don't want to say goodbye.

Tell me a story, I say instead, clutching his fingers, never wanting to let go. Just one more to carry with me while I'm gone.

Erick sighs and lifts his hand to my cheek, holding me beneath my hood where the air is softly illuminated by my faerie glow. He drops his forehead against mine, so a thin piece of fabric is all that separates us, and runs his thumb along the edge of my jaw, then across my bottom lip.

"Once upon a time," he says slowly, using an opening I've heard him speak before. It's how all my favorite stories of his, how all the joyful ones, begin. "There was a boy who lived in a castle, but always yearned for the sea. People taught him skills. People gave him gifts. But no matter who he encountered, he always felt alone, for they never quite met his eyes when they spoke, as though he were more a shadow than a man. He tried to ease his lonely heart by fixing other broken things, by building a leg for a hound deemed as less than for only being born with three, by surrounding himself with trinkets to make the walls feel less barren. He always thought that was as good as his life would get, until he was saved by a beautiful faerie who looked at him the way no one ever had before, right in the eyes, as though he were worthy of being seen."

I lift my hand, hold his palm to my cheek, and press my lips against his skin. How does it end?

"The boy and the faerie girl run away together. They return to his home by the sea. During the day, she tends to a garden in the backyard that makes the whole house smell sweet. At night, he takes her out on the water so they can lie beneath the stars. They don't have much, but they have each other, which is the only thing they need."

And they have their loyal hound.

"Oh, yes, of course him. He digs up her flowers and tracks sand all over the floor, but they love him just the same."

And they all live happily ever after, I finish for him.

"Yes, they do."

That's a beautiful story.

"It doesn’t need to be a story."

I lean back to meet his eyes. The hood slips from my head, but I hardly notice. I'm too shocked to speak.

"Run away with me," he pleads. "We'll take to the sea. We'll go somewhere no one will ever find us. We'll be together."

Erick—

"Please, Aeri, think about it. The full moon is in a week. I'll wait for you, the same place I did before. I'll wait all night. I'll wait forever if I have to. I can't keep saying goodbye."

I can’t either.

But I don't know how to tell him there's no place we could go where the priestesses couldn't follow. One look in the scrying water, one simple portal spell, and we'd be found out. I'm not sure what would become of us then—if I could convince the priestesses to spare his life a second time, to spare my own.

So I just say, Okay.

Because I can't bear to crush his hope, not yet, not with his eyes shining as bright as the sun before me. And if I'm being honest, there's a burning ember inside my heart I'm not prepared to snuff out.

I step back and hold my palms above the water, thinking of Nymia, using her as the base for my portal spell. My sister is right where I left her. I'm not sure if she's been there all night, or if she came back as soon as dawn began to break, wondering where in the world I've been. But she's looking into a little pond of water, staring back at me, just as I suspected she would be. Together, we whisper the words for the portal spell and the door opens, crossing time and space, linking our waters like a tunnel between us.

Erick tugs on my hand and I spin around, melting into his arms one last time. In his kiss, I see all the dreams he holds for us. As his lips move against mine, pictures flash across my mind, but one comes through the sharpest—the two of us standing with our toes in the surf, holding hands beneath the sun, staring out at a horizon full of bright possibility.

I want it so badly.

Even as I let him go, I hold onto that image and carefully lock it away in the safest corner of my heart. Then I dip my hand into the portal and sail through.