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“You do realise you’re being outrageously unreasonable, you know,” he grumbled even as he obeyed her. “I’m not a trained pet.”

She watched him stalk back across the meadow, his tail lashing from side to side, red hair gleaming in the sunlight. Halfway across, she could tell he’d realised what was happening. He stopped and pivoted. They stared at each other across the distance, and Gisele grimly began to walk back to him.

“You can’t leave,” he said, unnecessarily, when she’d joined him. He sounded entirely sober.

“Neither of us can leave, unless we both do. We’re tied together.”

He blinked, as if this aspect hadn’t occurred to him.

“Did you know about this?” she demanded.

He reared back. “Of course not!”

She folded her arms, wanting to believe him yet unable to. “Tell me you want me to leave.”

His ears twitched, but she could see understanding dawning in his eyes. “You should go,” he said, his shoulders bunching as he prepared himself to resist his involuntary reaction.

Absolutely nothing happened. A giant butterfly flew past.

“Was it an act, then, before?” she asked.

“No!” His face fell. “I know you can’t leave now, so I am not prompted to prevent it. That’s not a good sign. It means the magic is reading me at a deep level.”

“Why is this happening now?” she asked. “Has it been like this the whole time without us realising?”

He frowned. “Probably it happened when you first arrived here, the first time we touched.” A faint flush coloured his cheeks.

“The accumulated energy from the bargain remaining unfulfilled for so long must have gone into the bond between us. No wonder I can’t get the wards to settle; I never accounted for that. ”

“Does that mean this effect might go away? After the energy has dispersed?”

“It might.” He sounded doubtful. “Or it might not. Think of how a spring coiled too far can shift permanently out of place even after it finally releases. I’m sorry,” he added. “I know you don’t want to be stuck here with me.”

It’s not your fault , she almost said out of reflexive reassurance, except that it was entirely her Malediction’s fault. That was why she called him that, after all.

They stood in the warm, tense silence, or rather in the warm, noisy background hum of cicadas.

Purple bees flew lazily between the wildflowers.

A bird sang out, the sound both pure and unfamiliar, and a dark shape flitted across the meadow and landed on a boulder beside them.

It was a bird of a sort that she had never seen before, with black-green metallic feathers that flashed in the sunlight with every movement.

A bit of white froth puffed at its neck, like a cravat.

It held out its leg meaningfully, to which there was a scroll attached.

Mal greeted the bird with relief at the forced change of subject and went to unhook the scroll. This method of delivery didn’t appear to surprise him.

“Hello,” Giselle said cautiously to the bird, in case it could talk too. It merely cocked its head at her this way and that, examining her with dark eyes. “What sort of bird are you?”

“It’s a tūī,” Mal said, unfurling the scroll. “King Tāwhiri uses them as messengers. He rules a kingdom not far from here.”

“You know him?”

“We’ve met a few times; he sometimes flies in these woods.” His thumb rubbed the edge of the parchment, his ring—silver, not gold—glinting. “It’s an invitation to the summer ball.”

Gisele stared at him, wondering if she’d completely misunderstood both his hermitude and position in fairy society. Assuming it wasn’t usual to casually run into kings in the wood. “Do you get invited to a lot of balls?”

He seemed too distracted by the invitation to notice her tone, brows drawing together. “Tāwhiri used to invite me, but I never attended; it wasn’t worth the risk. I’ve always sent back a polite refusal, and he stopped asking, after a while.”

Tāwhiri , she noted. So he addressed kings casually as well. “Why has he invited you again now?”

His frown deepened. “He writes that there’s a noted diviner amongst the honoured guests.”

The tūī burst into motion, just as Zingiber landed on the boulder where it had been. The bird found another perch further away on the edge of the meadow and squawked, ugly and jarring after its liquid song from earlier.

Mal finally looked up. “Zingiber! You mustn’t attack messengers!”

But it was a bird , Zingiber pointed out, prowling around the boulder in disappointment. I’m a cat. What do you expect?

“You’re lucky you didn’t catch her,” Mal told him. “Tāwhiri will have them under some sort of protection spell that would probably have harmed you instead.”

Tasty bird , Zingiber hummed unrepentantly, his eyes still fixed on the far tree where the tūī perched.

“Go back to the house, idiot cat,” Mal told him.

Zingiber promptly lay down on the boulder and began to wash.

“Cats,” Mal said in disgust, as Gisele smiled.

“A diviner,” she repeated. “Does King Tāwhiri know?—”

He made a shushing sound, glancing sideways at the tūī. “Let’s go back to the house.” He took her hand and then released it, mouth turning sheepish. “Ah. My apologies.”

The touch left a brief impression of emotions on her skin, worry chief amongst them. They were each careful to keep a set distance between them as they walked back to Skymallow. The front door swung open of its own accord, the cool breeze inside a welcome relief from the humidity.

She looked at Mal inquiringly as soon as the door shut.

He didn’t stop walking. “No, Tāwhiri doesn’t know I’ve lost my name. Or at least, I have never told him so. But?—”

“—that’s an awfully specific and coincidental detail to include otherwise.” She followed him up the stairs to the library. “What did you tell him your name was?”

He shrugged. “I simply never said. Fae are not so free with names as mortals. It would have been a breach of etiquette for him to ask me outright.”

“How many times have you met him? Are you friends? Have you been meeting other people in the woods this whole time? I thought you were committed to your hermit ways?”

A strange wariness came into his expression.

“I’m sure he doesn’t consider me a friend.

We’ve only met a dozen or so times over many years.

” He added, with a defensiveness she didn’t understand: “One does not actually need to use a person’s name when one is speaking to them directly.

It was hardly a risk. We didn’t speak of personal matters.

It’s not as if I invited him into the house, and I rarely walk in the woods outside the wards in any case. ”

Why was he acting as if he thought she’d disapprove? “Honestly, I’m relieved to hear you’ve spoken to someone besides the cat this entire time. But if you are friends, perhaps he guessed there was something more going on than what you’d told him and wants to help?”

Mal relaxed fractionally, as if he’d been expecting a quite different response. What had that been about?

He pulled out the invitation again, worrying at the corner of the parchment.

“Perhaps it’s merely coincidence. This information will have been given to every invitee.

Attracting a noted diviner as a guest would be a talking point for any event.

It says she will be taking supplicants.” He took a deep breath. “We should go.”

She stared at him. “Who are you and what have you done with the man who was dead set against talking to a diviner just this morning?”

“This morning I thought you could leave my house freely,” he said.

His demeanour was more serious than she’d ever seen it.

“Which isn’t the whole freedom I owe you but was at least a salve to my conscience.

I thought you could leave if you wanted.

Now that I know you can’t, it changes things.

Of course I’m not going to trap you here to keep myself safer. ”

He said it as if this was the most obvious statement in the world.

She eyed him with a mixture of irritation and something else she couldn’t quite identify, a painful joy that lodged like a needle in her heart.

He wanted her gone. He was offering to help her, despite his fear.

How dare it highlight the fact that no one else had ever offered anything like the same?

“What if it is a trap and not just coincidence?” she felt bound to point out.

“We will simply have to be careful. An invitation puts us under the rules of guestright; we cannot be harmed unless we break them first.” He leaned down, retrieving the goblet that had so recently been made of gold.

It made a dull wooden clonk as he set it down on the table.

A wilting leaf decorated the brim. “Which means no uncontrolled magic.”