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“I’m not fae, though,” she pointed out. “It sounds at least worth trying. I can always take them off if it doesn’t work. Or perhaps I can just wear them in high-risk areas. Could we get some of these dismae? Are they hard to acquire?”

His expression went even more unreadable, except for his eyes. His pupils narrowed to thin slivers, and ghosts walked in them.

She frowned. Why was he reacting like this? “You’re starting to worry me. Are you going to explain why dismae shouldn’t be considered in this situation?”

“I have some,” he said, his voice clipped. “Give me a moment, and I’ll fetch them.”

The dread radiating from him was so strong that it didn’t fade even when he disappeared back into the house, making her own chest ache with it.

She was clearly missing a critical part of this picture.

He returned with a small box, which opened to reveal two narrow gold bracelets and a key.

The bracelets were pretty but not flashy, with subtle engravings—a piece of jewellery suited to everyday wear at court.

The key’s rougher design didn’t match the bracelets.

Mal was acting as if he were handing her a poisonous spider rather than jewellery.

Every muscle of him knotted as he handed her the key, swaying on a long ribbon.

“If you wear these, you will also wear their key at the same time. I have copies of the key if you lose it; I have the mould this was made from.”

That was when understanding finally lit. She sucked in a breath. “Dismae are used on fae prisoners.”

He gave a stiff nod. His dread had flattened out, as if he had buried his emotions too deep for them to be felt through the bond, but now she was generating her own dread, cold and churning in her stomach.

She swallowed. “You said before, with your enemy…Were these used on you?”

“Yes.” He bit off the word. “Damn things. But you’re right: they need not be sinister. They are simply a tool with a singular function.”

And he had made multiple copies of the keys. How many had he needed to make, to feel safe?

It was impossible, in that moment, not to hug him.

She wasn’t sure which of them was more surprised by the impulse, or by the emotion that flooded the bond between them as they came into contact.

She’d spent years repressing the urge to touch; he had walls so high they ought to appear on maps as a named mountain range.

Yet his arms came around her, and their cheeks almost brushed.

She couldn’t tell who the yearning was coming from, only that it ran achingly deep.

It was the feeling of standing alone at the bottom of a dark chasm, desperately straining for the sight or sound of another living soul. Her heart pounded against his.

She stepped back, shaken and scrambling to put the walls back up. She wanted to pile seven tonnes of rocks between them. “I’m sorry that happened to you,” she said.

For a moment, his eyes shimmered with vulnerability, unguarded, but then he looked away and the connection cut off, so sharply she gasped. Shielding.

“I escaped,” he said. “My apologies—I didn’t intend to swamp you with sentiment. I’m usually better at shielding.” He hesitated. “You understand what it’s like, to be… alone.”

To be lonely . It hummed between them in painful intimacy, threatening to re-open that awful soul-searing connection, the shared knowledge of how such an emotion hollowed you out.

“Yes.” She had to swallow, her throat was so dry.

“I…It feels wholly inadequate to apologise again, but words are all I have at this time, and I am sorry.” He’d apologised before, but it hadn’t had any weight to it. It did now.

It didn’t make it all right. It didn’t even make it better, to know that the curse had punished him, too.

It just made it feel less lonely, somehow, and also as if the ground beneath her feet had wobbled.

She didn’t want to share such painful intimacy with someone, to feel exposed down to her bones.

She definitely didn’t want to share it with her lifelong nemesis.

“I know. You don’t have to keep saying it.

I believe your apology,” she said, which was all that she could give.

She couldn’t look at him. Instead, she picked up the dismae.

They slotted around her wrists easily, the bracelet size adjusting by magic.

She waited to feel something else, but there was only the cool of the metal against her skin, deceptively innocent jewellery sparkling in the sunlight.

The lines of his face stood out starkly, almost skull-like, but she couldn’t feel any of his evident anxiety. On a whim, she reached out to touch his forearm. He tensed but didn’t move away.

There was… something, still there, a faint echo of the touch-pull, but it was nothing like the usual flood of sensation she got from touching him. “The bond feels more muted but still there. Does it feel different to you?”

A crease gathered between his brows. “A little, perhaps.” He withdrew, shoulders coming down in relief as they lost contact. “You should test whether the dismae allow you to leave now.”

The dismae didn’t change the length of her leash, she could tell before she got halfway across the meadow.

She stared unseeing into the middle distance, feeling the weight of the bond tugging her back towards Skymallow.

She wasn’t relieved, exactly, because of course she didn’t want to be stuck here as an unwanted guest. But it made her goals clearer.

If she’d been able to leave, unpredictable magic no longer a threat, well, perhaps she ought to go home.

Her family would be worrying about her, wouldn’t they?

What if they’re not? And what about the gold?

She blew out a sigh and turned about. Mal was watching the test from the front doorstep, and she felt the echo-twinge of his disappointment. He had to be finding it tiresome, giving houseroom to her with no proper end in sight. But he had his expression under control by the time she reached him.

“No such luck.” She held up her wrists to show the dismae still firmly in place.

His tail swished uneasily. “Leave them off as much of the time as you can—certainly outside, at least, and when you sleep. And you must tell me if you experience any side effects.”

“Very well, mother,” she said drily, but it felt oddly nice for someone to be so concerned about her wellbeing.