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They both looked at me.

“You think I’m fae.”

El nodded. “I’ve suspected it from the moment we met.”

I leaned forward, resting my elbows on the counter, and ran both hands over my face. “Why would that interest Zisorah so much?” I said to El. “I mean, she saw you, and you’reclearlyfae. But she doesn’t seem concerned about you.”

“Exactly,” Crow said, his voice low. “So there must be something more about you.”

The front door creaked open and Byrgir’s footsteps sounded, muffled by the rugs in the sitting room. He stopped at the kitchen door, and at the sight of our faces.

“What is it?” he asked. “Did someone die?”

“Not yet,” Crow replied.

“Oh, don’t be so dramatic.” El waved a hand at him, then addressed Byrgir. “Crow was informed that our friend Zisorah has taken an interest in Halja. And we don’t know why.”

Byrgir crossed the kitchen to the island where we stood. As Crow filled him in on the orders the High Priestess had disseminated throughout her followers, his face darkened. I was beginning to grasp how seriously the three of them were taking this, even if El played it off.

Crow poured Byrgir a glass of wine and passed it to him as he finished his story. A sudden question sparked my mind.

“Byrgir, does Eilith know?”

“Know what? Who your father is? Or about your mother?”

“Either. Both,” I said.

“Maybe. She told me… She knew there was something special about you. She knows how strong you are, or suspected it, even then,” Byrgir said thoughtfully.

“She told you what?” I pressed, my anxiety and annoyance increasing. They had spoken about me, talked about my potential, without Eilith telling me. Not until it was too late.

Byrgir sighed. “She told me that you were important, that you might be the key to it all, although she never said what ‘it all’ was. She said you were destined for something, and told me to protect you. Keep you safe. It’s why I rode away from her cottage with you that day. Why I didn’t go back for her. She told me if anything ever happened, I was to get you to safety above all else. So I did.”

“So she must know something.”

“Or suspect something, like I did,” El added. “Do you think Zisorah got something out of her?”

“Maybe,” Crow mused. “I wouldn’t put it past her. The more political influence she gains, the more forceful her methods will get.”

My stomach lurched with nausea at the thought. “We have to get Eilith out of there,” I said.

“We have to figure out what she knows about you.” Crow looked pointedly at me. “You need to go talk to your mother.”

I sighed and leaned back against the counter next to El, sipping my wine. It tasted expensive.

“There’s no way around it?” I asked. I had been enjoying my anonymity, the separation from those painful family memories. I was not eager to reopen old wounds.

Crow and El shook their heads.

“Fine. I’ll go tomorrow.”

∞∞∞

I climbed the spiraling staircase to my room. Rain battered at the round leaded windows set into the stairwell and hallway, pale light leaking through. The sun was still up, but I was exhausted.

I ran the bath, grateful for the instant stream of hot water heated by the enchantments of the house. I would never take for granted how lovely it was to be able to slip into a hot bath without heating it over the hearth and hauling it by bucketfuls into the tub.

I pulled open the heavy black curtains, and then the gauzy, sheer white ones that covered the two glass doors to the balcony. The rain was relenting, slowly, and swirls of mist and cloud hung in the evergreens all around me. The neighboring treetops faded away into fog. To the northwest, I could see distant whitecaps of ocean waves fading into an invisible horizon, mist blending sea and sky.