Page 18 of A City of Emeralds and Envy
“There’s a jail here, to hold travelers and any villagers for whom the East Witch’s compulsion isn’t fully effective. I know of one whom she was never able to compel at all. So yes, guards are needed, because the prisoners try to escape occasionally. Sometimes monsters find their way into the village, or the wards become thin and a few crows slip through. And the East Witch’s brother likes to show up and cause trouble. I also serve as an escort when anyone needs to go beyond the wall.” He clears his throat. “Sometimes I help place the scarecrows in the fields.”
Alice frowns, her lips opening to question him, but he hurries on, “And there’s an advantage to being just here, not far from the woods. These are the woods where he… where we…”
Alice leaps up and finishes his sentence. “Where Caer is! Oh god, Riordan—that’s why you’re really here—because he’s nearby. I want to see him.”
“He’d rip you apart, kitten. He wouldn’t recognize you.”
“You can’t know that for sure.”
They bicker a little more, while I use the privy closet. When I come out, Alice has her back to the silver suit of armor, and he’s got his arms crossed again.
How do theycareso much? It makes me exhausted just watching them.
I fling myself onto one of the beds, and Fiero rears on his hind legs, poking his snuffly black nose over the edge of the mattress and staring at me mournfully until I lift him up and set him beside me.
It’s easier for me to care about the little dog, or to care about children like Alice’s siblings—maybe because they tend to look up to me, depend on me, and idolize me, which feels right—feels like my natural state. Adults stare appraisingly, judging me, gauging my actions, wondering why I’m not already married at age twenty.
I had someone I wanted, once—Archer, the son of a carpenter in the village. I wanted him fiercely—gave myself to him a few times, when we could manage to be alone. But he was killed while he and his father were constructing the third floor of a shop in the village. An act of the gods, people called it. A fall that shouldn’t have been lethal, except for his head striking the ground at an odd angle. One quick snap, and the brightest-burning thing in my life was gone.
Archer is how I know that I can love—or I could. I think maybe his death killed that feeling within me. I’d never felt so passionate about anything before him, and I haven’t felt anything that intensely since—until today, in the barn, when I touched the book—and afterward, when I met the Witch of the West.
I can perceive emotions in others, and I feel them powerfully sometimes—but most often my emotions are muted, muffled, like Riordan’s voice inside the helmet as he bids Alice goodnight.
When he leaves the cottage, she stands in the center of the room, her hands clenched tight at her sides.
For a handful of seconds she stands there. And then she rushes to the door and flings it open.
He’s still there, on the other side. Hasn’t moved a step.
“I just wanted you to know,” Alice says, breathless. “That I hate you for sending me back, after everything.”
“I understand,” he replies.
“And I didn’t miss you,” she goes on in a rush. “Not at all.”
He inclines his helmet, a slight nod. “I assumed you’d miss me a good deal less than I missed you.”
Again they stare. I’m not sure what Alice is staring at—the slits in his helmet?
“Promise you’ll be here when I wake up.” Her voice quakes on the edge of tears. “Promise.”
“I wouldn’t dream of being anywhere else.”
When the door closes again, Alice walks stiffly to her bed and lies down.
I lift my fingers, making a squeezing motion at one of the orbs overhead, and it winks out. The gesture was instinctive, natural. Dispelling the orb took no energy at all.
I pinch out the second orb, leaving the third to provide a faint nighttime light for the cottage.
“Did you know?” Alice says into the dark. “Did you suspect that you were Fae?”
“No.”
But when she finally turns over and her breathing settles into a slow rhythm, I reach beneath the loose part of my hair above my braids, and I feel the shape of my ear, as I’ve done over and over throughout my life. I usually keep my ears covered because they’re shaped differently—lines of cartilage positioned in odd places, a subtle peak at the top.
Half-Fae.
It all adds up. The way the food tastes here—the vibrancy of the colors, the foliage—the music, the movement—the sense in my blood and bones that I’ve returned to a place where I belong. My magic. The reaction of the book to my touch. The way I knew Riordan was still on the other side of the door, even before Alice threw it open—because he and I are family, in a visceral way I’ve never known.
