Page 96

“Tesha, did you say there was trouble?” I prompt, trying to get us back on track.

“Seelie High Fae,” Tesha says. “By the gate. Not like them.” She points to the Sunshards. “Like them.” She points to Ruskin and Destan.

“They’re waiting for us?” I ask.

“They talked about her,” she says, looking at me. “About Eleanor Thorn. They don’t like her.”

“Evanthe’s followers,” Ruskin says. “They must be hoping we’d go back that way.”

“Thank you, Tesha. You’ve helped us a lot,” I say, before turning to the others.

“Do you know where there’s another gate in Styrland?” I ask Ruskin.

Before he can answer, Tesha speaks again.

“She will help Tesha now.”

I bite my lip, the memory of our first meeting coming back to me. “You mean our deal.”

“Yes. She must help Tesha. Tesha and her agreed.”

I glance at the others. We don’t have time for this now. Whatever demand Tesha wants to make of me, bigger things are at stake. And yet she’s right. We agreed.

“I will honor my debt, Tesha, but I may not be able to fulfill it right now. Will you tell me what you want?”

Tesha looks at the others, then steps closer to me. So close, in fact, that our hairlines touch as she tilts her head forward to speak. I stare into her black pupils.

“Tesha wants to be a member of the Seelie Court.”

It takes me a beat to absorb it.

“You do? Why?” I ask. I don’t think Tesha is even technically a subject of Ruskin’s, given she’s never lived in the Seelie Kingdom. But despite her strange features, I can read the look of yearning in Tesha’s face.

“Tesha’s mother is dead. But Tesha wants to go home, to her mother’s home.”

“Your mother was High Fae? A member of the court? But I thought?—”

I glance at the Sunshards, Tesha’s intense interest in them clicking. Tesha’s appearance isn’t High Fae in nature. The texture of her hair and skin made me think that her fae parent—her mother—had to be Low Fae. But if her mother was High Fae, then it means that, like the Sunshards, Tesha’s appearance is the result of more distant Low Fae ancestry.

“Is that why you’re here? Because your mother was High Fae?” I guess.

The changeling picks at her fingers, looking away from me. “Tesha’s mother was not like Tesha. She was beautiful. She did not mind Tesha’s father, but she did mind Tesha.” The changeling tugs at her hair for emphasis, which rustles like the dry leaves it resembles.

So her mother dumped her in the human realm not because she was half-human, but because she looked Low Fae. It’s difficult to believe how prejudiced the fae can be about their own kind. But then, Albrecht is proof that you can hate your own child even if they look like you.

“Tesha, why do you think I can grant you this?” I ask, needing to know the answer, even though we’re pressed for time.

“Tesha knows her true name is special,” she says, looking at Ruskin.

Somehow—perhaps because she performed the true name ritual—she knows Ruskin and I are naminai. I have no idea if being the king’s soulmate means I have the right to add members to the Seelie Court, but I won’t have the power to do anything unless we stop Evanthe.

“I will try my best to make it happen,” I say to Tesha. “But right now, we have to go. I’m sorry, but otherwise there probably won’t be a Seelie Court to make you a member of.”

“Tesha knows,” she says, nodding in understanding, and I sigh in relief.

“Thank you, again,” I say. She backs up, gives the Sunshards one last stare, and then slips back between the trees.

“We’ll go by the gate on the Unseelie border,” Ruskin says almost immediately. “Evanthe won’t have guards posted on the Faerie side, and I doubt she even knows where it comes out in Styrland.”