“I swore to Cardan that I wouldn’t help you, even though I came with you that day to help.” That was the least of what I had to apologize for, but I couldn’t tell you the whole truth. I’d promised Locke I wouldn’t tell anyone.
You seemed frustrated. “Really, Taryn, you’re the one who should be angry that I got you tossed into the water in the first place. Getting yourself out of there was the smart thing to do. I would never be mad about that.”
Of course I had been angry, but when you said that, I felt guiltier than ever.
Vivi had ideas about funnier and worse pranks you could play on the prince and his friends.
“No!” I interrupted, horrified.
What Locke had done—even if it was awful to you, it was a grand gesture. It meant he cared for me. And now Nicasia and Prince Cardan had had their fun and humiliated you. Now, maybe if you didn’t provoke them further, they would stop.
Locke hadn’t visited me in days. Surely whatever they thought had been between Locke and you, they must believe it was over. That they’d ended it. That they’d frightened you off.
But before you promised to back down, Vivienne dropped the bombshell that she had a mortal girlfriend and was leaving Faerie forever.
“Here’s my plan to cheer you up,” Vivi said, leading us through a shopping mall. “We all move to the human world. Move in with Heather. Jude doesn’t have to worry about knighthood and Taryn doesn’t have to throw herself away on some silly faerie boy.”
I tensed at that, remembering that she’d helped me send the note to Locke, but she didn’t say any more. She was too busy trying to convince us that we didn’t want to stay in Faerie because she didn’t, and leaving us behind made her feel bad.
What she didn’t understand was that there was nothing in the human world for us, not even our own names.
I looked our story up once, in a library. Pulled articles onto the computer screen. Our parents’ murder had caused a bit of a sensation because of the swords. In a world of guns, swords seemed old-fashioned and a little bit funny. Weird couple dies weirdly. There was wild speculation about an affair gone wrong, and a few of Dad’s medieval reenactment friends gave quotes that tried to play down the salacious angle. But since the papers mostly chose photos of them in costume, that only made things worse.
The articles presumed that the children would turn up. Some of our clothing was missing, toys were gone. Maybe we’d be found after a few days, having slept in the forest, blanketed in leaves brought by considerate sparrows. But, of course, we weren’t.
We were never found at all.
Heather turned out to be a pink-haired artist who exchanged such a fathoms-deep glance with Vivi that I couldn’t even begin to interpret it. Despite that look, I couldn’t help wondering how Vivi could possibly love a mortal girl. She didn’t know anything. She had no magic. She didn’t even seem like she’d done much suffering.
I should have found it inspiring—after all, if Heather and Vivi were in love, then love was possible between mortals and faeries—but it made me feel uneasy instead. Like maybe they’d used up all the luck there was.
Or maybe it was because I was thinking about how Mom had started out a lot like Heather. She fell in love with someone who didn’t tell her the truest truth, who let her believe that he was human, who brought her into a world she didn’t understand, a world that chewed her up and spat her out. A world I was hoping wouldn’t do the same to me.
Be bold, be bold, but not too bold.
Be good, but not too good. Be pretty, but not too pretty. Be honest, but not too honest. Maybe no one got lucky. Maybe it was too hard.
By the time we were heading back toward our ragwort horses, I think Vivi realized that if she was leaving Faerie, she was doing it on her own.