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“I wasn’t proposing to keep her for longer than the journey takes. No offence intended, princess; you would find me more trouble than I’m worth, and I’m not in the business of stealing humans.” His general sunniness dimmed a fraction as he scowled once again at the house.

“What’s this about challenging claims?” Gisele asked. Could the bond be transferred to someone else?

Kairon shrugged. “No need for that, if you’re gone before he notices.”

“She’s magically bound to him,” Apfela put in. “Can’t go farther than across the meadow.”

“Ah, that does make it trickier. But will that still hold if we cross to Mortal?”

Gisele knew she needed to clarify matters and explain that Mal was far less in favour of the dismae than she was, but a warm, unfamiliar feeling was blocking her throat, as the discussion shifted to how one might foil tracking spells and whether Gisele ought to wait for darkness and then sneak out to meet Kairon.

Kairon reached out and took hold of her hand again, examining the dismae more closely as he and Harlang discussed key-spells.

“Are you delivering mail, Kairon, or holding court?” a familiar voice broke into the hubbub with unfamiliar menace, and the conversation died like someone had shot it.

Kairon dropped her hand and retreated a step in sheer reflex before his spine stiffened. “Just introducing myself to your new guest .” He emphasised the last word.

“I’m sure you were.” Mal came to stand right next to her, closer than he would normally, puncturing the careful bubble of space they’d been keeping around each other.

He took the intimacy a step further, tucking her arm into his.

She gave him a startled look but didn’t resist. A bitter mix of emotions ran through her before he shielded himself, which made her give him a second, stronger, sideways look. He pretended not to see either.

What was this uncharacteristically territorial move about?

She puzzled at it, flustered by so much voluntary physical contact.

Her ego would’ve loved to believe it was some jealousy-driven impulse from seeing Kairon touch her hand, but it didn’t seem likely.

Mal’s body was tense despite his icy expression, and the assembled group were watching him with deep mistrust.

He wanted support against that wall of hostility, she realised with a start. Not just hostility— anger. They were angry with him on her behalf.

She blurted out: “He isn’t keeping me prisoner. I came to Faerie to find him; he didn’t steal me from Mortal, and he’d probably much rather I took myself back there than stayed with him.”

Mal made a small, reflexive sound of protest, and she pulled herself free.

“You might not like telling people things, but I don’t see why I should let them go on thinking of you as something you’re not.

I have the key to the dismae.” She fished out the key from where it hung beneath her clothes and applied it to the bracelets, pocketing the offending items. “See?”

“You are wearing dismae… by choice?” Harlang’s bushy brows were halfway towards his hairline.

“Did he put them on you?” Apfela glared at Mal. Mal glared back.

Gisele quickly intervened. “Yes, but he wasn’t happy about it. They’re to help me control my magic.”

Harlang turned to Mal. “Is this true?”

Mal nodded slowly, fur bristling. “Gisele is not my prisoner. I would not use dismae on any living creature against their will.”

“Why can’t she leave, then?” Nevermourn asked.

“A magical mistake,” he said shortly. “One I’m trying to rectify.”

The tension in the air ebbed.

“You could have told us all that sooner,” Nevermourn said to Gisele, her eyes narrowed. “Or do you enjoy watching people make fools of themselves?”

“I should have,” Gisele admitted. “I was simply overwhelmed by your willingness to help me.”

Nevermourn rolled her eyes. “ I made no such offer.”

Mal’s ears went up in curiosity. “Help?”

“Help spirit your prisoner to safety, away from your reign of terror,” Apfela clarified.

His ears went flat. “I see.”

“You can’t blame us for assuming the worst. Why would a princess want to stay with you voluntarily, after all?” Apfela added with too much innocence to be convincing.

Mal’s tail lashed. “There are many perfectly plausible reasons a person might want to stay with me. I have an excellent library, for one.”

“Are you opening your library to visitors?” Harlang asked with sudden enthusiasm.

Mal’s ears flicked again. “Not at this time, Harlang. Gisele is an exception.”

There was an awkward pause. Gisele addressed Kairon. “Everybody keeps talking about you delivering mail, but where are you keeping it? You don’t have a bag.”

With a shake, he was once again his flirtatious self, putting a hand on one hip. “Would you like to search my person?”

Mal made a low sound, almost a growl, quickly stifled.

Kairon caught it too. “Are you jealous? Would you rather search my person?” He fluttered his lashes.

Mal’s eyes took on that disturbing, too-penetrating aspect they got sometimes, burning with other-worldly fires, one cold, one hot. “I would rather you didn’t keep pretending you can bury your fears under the sheer weight of hands put upon you.”

Gisele had no idea what Mal was talking about, but Kairon sucked in a breath, and a shadow passed briefly over his face before his ready grin reappeared, as if it had never left. “Such a tease, Malediction.”

Mal blinked, the unnatural intensity in his eyes fading. He turned to her accusingly. “ Malediction? ”

“Don’t blame her. If you want us to call you something different, you’re welcome to offer alternatives,” Apfela put in tartly.

Mal sighed. “Give me my mail, Kairon.”

Kairon gave an arch smile. The sense of water flowing out of sight increased, and he reached into thin air and, with a flourish, pulled a parcel out of nothing.

Gisele gasped. “How?—?”

“Magic,” he told her with a grin.

“They’re called sinum voids,” Mal said. “A type of personally-attached pocket dimension used for storage. Brook horses have the innate ability to make them.”

Kairon gave him a sardonic look. “Take all the fun and mystery out of it, why don’t you?”

“I don’t think anything could,” Gisele reassured him. “How big are they?”

“My size is prodigious,” he said promptly.

Apfela rolled her eyes. “Never expect a man to give an objective measurement. He’ll claim a majestic cucumber even when all he’s got is a modest gherkin.”

Kairon’s eyes danced. “I’m a stallion, Apfela; you have to admit it.”

“I have to admit you’re reminding me why I prefer mares. Give our Malediction his mail and get on with the rest of it.”

Kairon put a hand to his heart. “Ah, Apfela, you wound me.” Despite his careless attitude, he handled Mal’s parcel with care. There was a flash of insignia during the exchange, and she recognised Mal’s hot metal and vanilla.

Swiftly, Kairon pulled forth the rest of the mail. Harlang received a wrapped book-shaped package. Apfela got several thick letters. Each time Kairon handed things over, there were little flashes of different insignia. A magical contract? Payment?

Nevermourn tried to appear indifferent to the proceedings, but Gisele noticed the way she straightened as Kairon doled out the mail, a desperate hope rising and then falling when he shook his head at her.

“Nothing for you today, my lady.” His tone was gentle. “Did you want to send anything?”

Nevermourn shrugged, her expression once more a mask of bored indifference. “No. It’s not worth wasting the paper.”

“I have some drafting paper spare, and an old pen,” Mal said, fishing a crumpled leaf of parchment and a pen out of his pocket. He held them out. “I was intending to replace it—the nib’s getting worn, I’m afraid, so you might as well take it as not.”

Nevermourn teetered on the edge of indecision, her eyes darting from person to person. Everybody was doing a fabulous job of insouciance, so Gisele attempted to mimic the same, not quite understanding why they were doing so.

“What’s in the package?” she asked Mal, as if the question of whether Nevermourn would take his offering was of total irrelevance.

Mal gave the paper an impatient wave at Nevermourn, half-turning his attention back to Gisele. “Books, mainly. I’ll show you back inside.”

Nevermourn took the paper and pen, and the collective held breath released.

“I can wait if you want to write something now; I’ve even got spare ink,” Kairon offered.

Nevermourn hissed. The paper disappeared somewhere about her person. “No. I don’t need your charity.”

“I wasn’t?—”

But the girl began to stride away, shoulders high.

“Well, that could have gone better,” Kairon said once Nevermourn was out of earshot.

“Give her a few days and pretend she’s inconveniencing you,” Apfela advised. “She can’t bear kindness, that one.”

“Don’t tell a horse how to eat apples.” Kairon looked around. “Does anybody else have anything to send? If so, give it to me now. I’m not extending the patient goodness of my heart charitably towards the rest of you.”

A few letters were handed over, which Kairon duly disappeared.

“Right then.” He leaped back into the brook, transforming into his stallion form as he did so, but his hooves sank right down through the forming whirlpool without meeting the ground. With a last toss of his head, he sank beneath the surface.

The brook returned to its usual shallowness, burbling happily. Harlang took his leave with a nod, and little Rosenna—and how had Gisele forgotten her all over again until this moment?—piped up in farewell.

Apfela lingered, weighing Mal up. “That was a good thing you did, before,” she said grudgingly. “Are you giving up your ungenerous ways, then?”

Mal gave her a hard look, a spark of arctic fire flaring again. “Don’t test me, Apfela Greenhame. I know it isn’t generosity that motivates you .”

He held out a commanding hand for Gisele, who left it hanging there for a moment longer than necessary just to emphasise her feelings on this literal high-handedness. But in the end, she replaced the dismae on her wrists and took his arm again. Only a flicker in Mal’s eyes betrayed his relief.

Apfela made no effort to hide her disapproval, mouth curling like she’d sucked on something sour. Gisele gave her a half-apologetic smile. “We’ll talk later,” she promised, because she was dying to get Mal alone and question him.

They left Apfela at the gate. As soon as she was out of sight, Mal dropped her hand. Right . So that gesture had definitely been aimed at an audience, then, not Gisele herself. Which was… fine. Everything was fine, apart from the fact that she could still feel the impression of his hand on hers.

“What did you mean by what you said to Apfela? That she isn’t motivated by generosity?” she asked him, when it became apparent he wasn’t going to say anything unprompted.

He hesitated with his hand on the front door. “Just that her reason for wanting to move into my orchard isn’t simply to care for the trees. She wants a fresh start.”

“A fresh start?”

“Ask her what happened to her old orchard, if you want to know. It’s not my story to tell.”

Gisele digested this. “And Nevermourn? Niressa,” she amended when he looked confused. “What was that about with the letters? Who does she write to? Or who is she hoping will write to her?”

“Her grandmother. It’s a sad story. Niressa came to the meadow only a year ago, after her parents died.

It had just been the three of them until then.

Nixe are matriarchal, and Niressa’s mother was the heir to a powerful saltwater shiver but chose to give it up to follow her freshwater lover, who was in turn cast out of his.

So Niressa is alone. She hopes that her grandmother will ask her to rejoin her mother’s birth shiver. ”

An ache of sympathy filled her. Gisele’s relationship with her own parents might be complicated, but at least they were still alive. At least there was always the possibility of reconciliation while that was true.

“And she’s just living in the meadow stream?” Gisele said, rather appalled. “Couldn’t you offer her houseroom?”

Mal glanced towards the meadow. “A stream is a perfectly natural home for a nixe, but even if it wasn’t, she won’t accept my help—or anyone’s. She doesn’t want to be indebted.”

“Who does that remind me of?” Gisele couldn’t help saying. “You won’t even let old Harlang into your library! And even if Apfela has complicated motives, she would still help you with your orchard if you let her.”

Mal grimaced. “It’s not the same. I explained about the wards; they’re struggling enough with your presence, let alone with adding more people.

Besides, if I let the others inside, they will know exactly how precarious my situation is.

It is better that they think me aloof rather than weak.

If word of my weakness spreads… well, my old enemy won’t be my only problem.

Skymallow would be a ripe plum for the plucking if people thought it undefended.

Without my name, the appearance of power is all I have to keep it safe. ”

Gisele eyed him doubtfully. “Yes, you keep talking about how necessary it is to keep your distance from people, but you know an awful lot about the meadow folk for someone pretending to be a hermit. What makes you think they haven’t already deduced just as much about you?”

Mal shook his head. “They haven’t.”

“You do know that confidently stating things doesn’t actually make them true? Certainty and correctness are two separate qualities.”

He flashed her a grin. “I can’t lie, princess. Now, do you want to see the new books I received or not? I asked my contact at the Golden Archives for any more books they had on rare uses for metallurgical magic. I’m getting closer to figuring out how to fix your issue, I think.”

She followed him grudgingly into the library, where Mal set down his parcel and began to untie the string securing the brown paper packaging.