Page 107 of By the Fae

Help her endure it.

She was worth it.

Worth everything.

The eventual heartbreak, the pain, the grief.

Mal watched me through narrowed eyes.

“Holly Briar is my mate!” I said again, this time loud enough for the entire palace to hear. Faces belonging to my siblings emerged at the doorway and in windows.

Holly was where I belonged. And whatever the price was to be with her I was willing to pay it. A thousand times over.

Mal smiled. A smile filled with sorrow and pain and love. “I’m so sorry, Goldie,” he said. “It wasn’t . . . it wasn’t fair for me to have projected my fears onto you. You’re not me. I mean, I know you. We’ve lived together for four hundred years. But we’re not the same. It wasn’t fair of me to impose limits on who you love. You’re an adult. You’ll get your heart broken. That’s guaranteed now, and fuck, it’ll be the worst thing you’ve ever experienced. But those were your decisions to make.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but he held up a flattened palm.

“But who was I to try to stop you from the few decades, possibly more, of pure happiness? Sure, the centuries following Nova’s death were terrible. The worst. The absolute fucking worst. But the time I had with her . . . it totally eclipsed that. And why shouldn’t you get that? Those few perfect decades.”

He scrubbed his hands down his face and grabbed me by the shoulders like he was either trying to brace me or shake some sense into me. “It will be awful when she . . . leaves this realm. But when she does, when that happens, know I will be here for you.” His hand moved to cradle my nape. “Mate, what I’m trying to say is you shouldn’t let the fear of loss stop you from finding love. And I’m sorry I bailed.”

“I should have listened to you,” I said. “I’ve been so selfish. And stupid. I thought I could take what my body wanted from her and return to how things were before she turned up. You were right, of course.”

“Nobody ever listens to the seven-hundred-year-old incubus,” Mal said with a resigned laugh.

“We’re fated. On some level, I think I knew from the very beginning,” I said. I’d buried the thoughts deep inside my mind, where even Dima would struggle to access them. I didn’t think I could have done anything to stop us falling in love. “We’re meant to be together. Even if I’d have legged it six months ago when I first saw her, we’d find each other again. I know it.”

Hay Bale’s eyes bounced between me and Mal like he was watching a pixie fight.

Mal sighed, “I knew it too. And I’m sorry I tried to stop it.”

“We all did, mate,” I said. I pushed all thoughts of the distant future out of my mind. The same way humans did. There was only Holly, and me, and the next fifty years. And I would be damned if I let anyone, myself included, stand in the way.

“So, you gonna drive me home? My wings are bloody killing me. I’ve been flying for three days straight.”

I laughed, rubbing my hand across my face, and only then realising how long my stubble had grown in the past week or so. “Wait, what day is it?” The expo was on the Saturday.

“Monday. Why?” Mal asked.

“Monday, plenty of time.” Plenty of time to get home, get cleaned up, figure out what I would say to Holly. And make sure I’d never lose her through my own dickishness ever again.

“I’m coming too,” Hay Bale said, suddenly jumping to his feet. “I want to come back to Borderlands with you.”

“What?! You are not,” I said. I glanced over to the palace doorway to find it crowded with my family members that had come out to watch the show, and to Mum, giving me a double thumbs up, almost as though she had planned the whole thing. “You can’t. There’s nowhere for you to stay. You’ll need to get a job, find a way to earn a few silvers.”

“Mal, the incubus, can help me. Can’t you, Mal?”

Mal sighed and looked to me. “I can’t not help him, he’s you four centuries ago.”

“I was never that chipper,” I said, indignant at the thought. “Fine, okay. But there are some things you need to learn before we get there. Like, no touching people unless they say it’s okay. Okay?”

Hay Bale nodded in earnest. His eyes wide, as though he couldn’t believe his luck, but was affecting all the cool of an action-movie secret agent.

“And you’ll have to wear clothes. At the bare minimum, trousers. There are laws. You can’t let it all hang free. In public, at least.”

“I’ll get some of those magic sweatpants.”

Mal pinched his smile between his teeth.

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