Page 105 of By the Fae

“They’re . . . nasty.”

I shrugged. “Women love them. Especially human women. They can’t keep their eyes, or their hands, off you. They’re like flashing beacons to them.”

“Human women are weird. I can’t wait to meet one.”

Hay Bale took the cot with enthusiasm, as though he were embarking on an epic adventure. “This looks like so much fun!” he said, bouncing the flimsy hammock style base under his palm. “It’s so thin! How long are you staying again?”

“Two decades.” I stripped the sheets from the four-poster and replaced them with identically embroidered ones.

“Neat-oh, a roomie for two decades!” He climbed into the cot, and I switched off the lamp. “Oh, it’s cold too. Fun.”

I tossed him the extra duvet from my bed.

“Hey, Blankets?” Hay Bale said, his eyes closed, his face lit from the glow of the stars above us.

“It’s Goldie now.”

“Goldie. Have you ever fucked a centaur?”

“Yes, I have. Good night, Hay Bale.”

“What about a mermaid?”

“Of course. Night.”

“Kraken?”

“Yes. Look, you’ll be hard pushed to find a creature that I haven’t taken to the timber yard.”

“Minotaur?”

“Ah. No, actually. But everyone at work thinks I have, so . . .”

The conversation followed this path for almost every waking minute. Part of me wanted to take my sweatpants off and shove them down his throat just to halt the incessant word vomiting, but another was thankful for it. It left little room to think. Because when my brother fell asleep, I did everything in my power not to think of Holly.

I didn’t sleep. Couldn’t. I simply led on my back and watched the galaxies rotating above me, my tears silently tracking into my hair.

I loved her.

No use denying it. I loved her and my heart had already splintered inside my chest at the thought of not spending forever with her.

“I love Holly Briar,” I whispered, just to make sure, feeling it shatter further.

I’d found the treasure. Where it wasn’t supposed to be. Right where she said it would be. And I ran away from it.

“I’m doing the—”

Right thing.Those were the words that I’d tried to say. The words that would not reach my fae mouth.

Itwasthe right thing, though. Even if I couldn’t admit it out loud. Over the next few nights, I tried to picture her old, broken, nearing the end. Her body small, and frail, and bent. Her skin papery, her pupils opaque. Her senses abandoning her one by one, until she could no longer hear or see or touch me, or even know I was beside her.

Beside her.

When all those things happened could I be at her side? Holding her tiny, dying hand. Could I endure those moments of utter anguish? It would only get worse. The more time I spent with her, the more I realised I never wanted to be apart from her. How would I feel after fifty, sixty years? How could I give her up then?

No, it was the right thing.

I didn’t bathe, or shave, or change out of my stained and smelly sweatpants. Hay Bale brought me breakfast and supper from the banqueting hall. Which I nibbled, then fed to the side of the mountain out the window when he left the room. And he never relented on his indefatigable conversation skills.

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