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But she would think about that boy.

“I never want to go back to the other place. But I don’t want to be here either,” she admitted. “Isn’t there somewhere else I could go?” She folded her arms and squeezed them to herself. The rain had finally stopped, but she still shivered as beads of moisture rolled down her bare arms.

“I was not paid to deliver you beyond this forest,” the being said, scratching behind his pointed ear. “But if you dislike your life here, I can perhaps help with that. I can give you a new start.” He fiddled with a large, flat pendant at his throat. “I am a pauper, after all. I assist when I can, and I will be taking your memories of your time in the Ever Corners anyhow. Perhaps if I takeallyour memories, you won’t dislike the human realm so much when you wake.”

Haley stole a look toward the city where sounds of car horns and emergency sirens trickled through the trees. The city she’d been hiding in for too long. The city that didn’t want her. The city whose streets had become her home and had kicked her out again and again.

What would losing her memories accomplish?

Her fingers pressed against her slow-beating, sad heart as the blurry faces of her parents filled her mind. Two people she hardly remembered yet remembered all too well. Maybe a fresh start would be nice.

“Do it,” she said. “I don’t want to remember how hard everything is.”

The being tilted his head. “You won’t remember who you are,” he warned. “You won’t remember who you belong to.”

Haley cracked a weak smile. “It’s all right. I don’t belong to anyone.”

For a moment, the being chewed on his lip in thought. “If that’s your wish, Human. Hold still.”

When the being placed his fingers along Haley’s temples, she felt the strangest rush of hot liquid into her mind. It drew back out just as quickly as it had flooded in, and with its exit went everything she knew. As her identity washed away with the rain, Haley heard someone say, “You might faint, Human. But when you wake, you’ll be better.”

31

Mor Trisencor and the Thing that Made Him Destroy Everything

Ten Faeborn Years Ago

The evening was firelit with barrels and magic lanterns, casting rippling light along the underside of the cave. Mor sat several seats down from Luc. It didn’t stop him from hearing Luc’s argument with Sireling. But Mor’s sharp ears had gone deaf to the bickering fairies down the table the moment the human girl had arrived.

He had not taken his eyes off her when she was brought in. A human. A real, breathing, living human.

The Shadow Army had done a thing so forbidden; it would certainly bring the wrath of the sky deities down upon the Dark Corner of Ever. The fools. Mor wished he didn’t have to be here when this dreadful army was punished.

A youthful fairy took the last empty seat beside him. Mor believed his name was Zarus, but Mor had never cared to learn the names of Prince Reval’s division. He called them all “Fairy” on the rare occasions he did open his mouth to address them at all.

“I found the human myself,” Zarus bragged to Mor like they were allies as he brushed a lock of his cream-coloured hair aside. Mor was certain he’d never shared a conversation with this fairy before this moment. “I think the Prince will give me a reward for it.”

At the front, the human girl was offered fairy food, and Mor stood from his seat, startling Zarus.

The girl reached for the food as Mor watched. She brought a sugar blossom to her lips, nibbling on the end to taste it.

Mor moved. He rushed around the table until he stood before her, far taller and stronger than her delicate, thin frame. “Don’t eat it,” he commanded in a low voice. The fairies at her sides glared at Mor, raising brows, setting their jaws, one even barring his teeth.

“What do you think you’re doing, Fairy?” the barred-teeth one asked.

“It will make you ill and then it will make you want to dance,” Mor warned the human again, ignoring the Shadow Fairy’s question.

The girl looked up at him from large green eyes, surrounded by a scatter of freckles. Her brown, messy hair was damp. The purple dress she wore appeared soggy, and her toes were covered in dirt. She didn’t look clean, or well fed, or decorated beyond her strange, purple garment.

“Eat it,” the Shadow Fairy at her side demanded, flexing his fists. When the girl still didn’t obey, he asked, “What’s your name, Human?”

“Don’t answer that,” Mor said. Still, he had not taken his eyes off the human. And since he’d arrived before her, she had not taken her eyes off him, either.

Both Shadow Fairies shoved Mor back at once. His feet shuffled a step off balance, but he kept his gaze locked on her, his expression saying,“Don’t do it.”

At first, the human appeared too afraid to heed his advice. But there was a look in her eye—a resilience Mor had not seen in a single war fairy he’d spent the last faeborn years fighting alongside.

The human dropped the sugar blossom to the floor. She stomped on it with the wrath of the sky deities, crushing the petals beneath her shell-covered feet. Mor breathed a sigh of relief until her green gaze sliced up and locked back onto his. She uttered two words. Two pleading words that sailed through the wickedness of the air and landed inside Mor’s ears: