The new scent of a new town hit me, and it was already stale. A heavy blend of wood-smoke, wet earth, and the damp musk of livestock. The dark, greedy muck of the main road gripped my leather boots, seeping into a slit in the old sole I discovered as the chill water squished between my toes. It had rained all day yesterday, the sound a miserable drumbeat on the warped, wooden roof of our cramped living wagon, dripping through the temporary thatching Fia had slapped on. The damp had been dreary enough for travel, the axle groaning and the wheels lurching in the endless muddy ruts, but after a day of sitting in the narrow cabin, it was necessary to stretch our cramped bodies—and earn some copper coin to restock supplies before the next desperate, winding road.
This place, nestled in a fold of the hills far from the grand, bustling human cities, was exactly the kind of settlement we sought. It was a place where time had stalled, the roads mere trenches of mud, and the buildings little more than rough timber and thatch. The cities, I knew from the quick flashes of thought I’d snatched from traveling merchants, boasted stone streets, gas lamps, and iron carriages; they held stability, permanence. But Fia dreaded them, so we clung to these time capsules of halted civilization.
Here, reality and myth were hopelessly confused. The rough-hewn people placed small, carved wooden shrines to their bearded old gods or their bosomed goddesses of harvest right alongside moss-covered stones draped with ribbon offerings meant for the Seelie fae. Some people saw the luminous fae as protectors to be praised, whispering their thanks for an unblighted harvest; others feared them as ancient oppressors who might switch children in the night, seduce pretty youths into the hills, or blight a herd over a forgotten slight. This contradictory devotion always made my mouth dry.
We’d arrived just before dawn, and already, I was setting up the small folding table near the market square. Most people knew me as Wren, a name as small and plain as the copper coins I hoped to earn. It was the name my adopted sister, Fia, had given me after we finally reached the human realm. A simple, forgettable name.
Fia, tall and narrow-framed, leaned against a post at the periphery of the growing crowd, watching me with a familiar tightness around her mouth. She looked exactly like a human woman in her late twenties—smooth-skinned, with bright, anxious eyes, a wild crown of auburn hair, and eyes the color of dark honey. She had looked that way for as long as I could remember. She was not, however, human. She was a changeling child, a faery, who had been traded for me when I was a toddler. It was Fia who had eventually rescued me from the faery realm, though our human parents were long gone by then.
Fia had taught me that the Seelie fae were mostly benevolent, sworn protectors of humans; it was only a few, desperate fae who lashed out unfairly. But I knew this was a lie she told herself, a desperate prayer born from her own fear of the fae blood in her veins. Fia wished to be human. It was her secret, never said out loud. But I knew she wished to belong somewhere ordinary.
Fia might not have been human, but she was better than both—better than the humans she pretended to belong with and the fey she’d saved me from. I remembered flashes of how mercurial my faery captors could be—one minute showering a beloved human child with lavish gifts and praise, the next turning a disfavored one into a toad because they sang a tune slightly off-key.
The Seelie fae did protect humans, but that was more of a claim to glory and territory than benevolence. The Unseelie fae, who were always waiting at the borders, were the truly malevolent creatures. The stories of their cruel tortures and curses were barely whispered for fear of speaking them into existence. Better to be the pet of a bear than the prey of a wolf.
Humans were not kinder than fae—they were just as capable of treachery and lashing out—but at least they lacked the power to turn that anger into instantaneous, ruinous magic. No living creature was truly innocent. Except, maybe Fia.
Humans were easily amused by simple spectacle and easily terrified by anything genuinely magical. My skills, honed from years of playing nice with a Seelie audience to stay alive, were now reduced to this. I didn’t sing or dance anymore; the thought of performing like that in front of a live audience sent a cold shiver down my spine. Now, my performance relied on deception. Subtle maneuvers—the flick of a wrist to tuck a square of wool fabric into my sleeve, a distracting flourish of the hand—made it seem like a true disappearance. Pulling off the tricks makes me feel utterly, completely in control. For once, I was the one manipulating the eager eyes.
The illusions fascinated children, but the adults in the audience always assumed there was a rational trick to it. Their confident disbelief was the perfect disguise for the real magic.
They allowed me to move among them, laughing as I passed a deck of cards or a supposedly ordinary coin into their hands. They missed the brush of my skin against their rough palms, or the way my fingers lingered just a breath too long on a forearm. We had to hide so much—the secret of Fia’s nature, the reasons for our constant flight, and the fact that I sometimes woke up, tangled in my blankets, clutching at the kaleidoscopic remnants—strands of hair ripped free, throat strained from recitations in a language I didn’t know, and purple eyes from a forgotten dream. I always told Fia I didn’t remember anything from that time. It spared her the burden of the memory and me the painful necessity of explaining the dreams.
I stole the secrets I needed, and the moment skin met skin, the rushing torrent of thoughts began. I tasted the tang of their anxieties, the sharp salt of their self-pity, the sweet, heavy rush of their desire. It was a sensory assault, a blur of words like reading pages stuck together, but it was a gift I’d had to master to survive.
“Dafydd, are you going to share the candied pear you’ve been hiding from your little friend?” I’d ask a child whose thoughts were sticky with gluttonous guilt.
“Gwen, I think you’ll find there’s a silver shilling in Llewellyn’s pocket he’s been saving for a ribbon to match your eyes,” I’d say, earning a smattering of applause and a few tossed coppers.
I glanced over at Fia. Her jaw was clenched, the fine bone sharp beneath her smooth skin. Fia used to encourage this—my trick, my gift—calling it a mark of what made me special. But that was before the hot, bruising shock of a cheating husband’s fist, before the cold slice of the thief’s knife left its scar. Now, her fear outweighed any pride. She only allowed supervised practice, requiring her watchful presence so she could intervene if my conscience or curiosity made me forget my promise to say nothing.
We had to keep moving, of course. Fia didn’t age. The constant roaming was necessary to stay ahead of those who considered her a thief, and me, stolen property. I could never tell her that every time we left a town, I felt roots snap, leaving me untethered again. I learned long ago that a girl who speaks others’ secrets could never survive long enough to belong anywhere. Not among the fae, and certainly not among the fleeting kindness of humans. I lived by keeping secrets, and I craved a place where I wouldn’t have to keep a single one. A place with four fixed walls and soil where my own small roots could finally take hold.
Once I’d earned enough, Fia would take the copper coins and head into the market with her list. Merchants couldn’t resist her allure. While Fia was ordinary by fae standards—no unique gifts, no impossible strength—even the most scrupulous human miser felt the irresistible urge to accept her haggling. It was a rare human who had enough natural resistance to break free of fae charm. Fia had spent countless hours training me to resist her pull. Her casual charms were nothing to me now, but direct commands were still a struggle—like ribbons of thick silk tied around my limbs, tangling my tongue, and dragging me to do her bidding. That was how I always ended up with the most annoying chores. One day, I’d beat her, and she’d have to clean our horse’s shoes instead. It was a simple dream, but it was mine.
Fia disappeared, swallowed by the market crowd, the dark auburn of her hair a final flash of color against the drab canvas of the stalls. I continued my performance. We’d made a deal that I’d stick to human tricks only when she was out of sight, but I never listened. She knew. But as long as I didn’t use any of the genuine secrets I’d learned, she accepted my small rebellion.
Crowds came and went, lulls in visitors giving me time to restore my energy with the dried rations that sustained us on the road. The blandness of the dried jerky was like salty leather in my mouth. I preferred it when Fia used a sliver of her magic to glamour the nuts and meats, tricking my senses into believing the flavor was real—the savory, greasy warmth of roasted meat, the soft, yeast-sweetness of bread freshly risen, instead of the day-old dry crumbling beneath my tongue. I accepted the illusion; it was preferable to the bitter truth of survival.
A handful of children lingered near the edge of my table, their eyes wide and earnest. “Show us how the coin jumps, Miss!” one boy begged. “Teach us magic!” a girl, her face smeared with plum juice, begged.
I smiled, a practiced curve that didn’t quite reach my eyes. “Not everyone can do magic,” I said, teasing them as I raised a copper coin between my fingers. “You need to be blessed with the sight. So watch closely—see if you have the gift.” I showed the kids how to pinch the coin just so between the thumb and forefinger, using the distraction of a slow hand wave to slip it into the sleeve. It was a simple sleight-of-hand. They laughed even as they accused me of using a trick. The boy procured a copper coin from his nearby mother and tried to mimic me, requiring a few more slow, step-by-step lessons to manage it himself.
The giddy pride that brightened his eyes was familiar. I’d had the feeling once. Before I learned that magic—real or not—was always the practice of manipulators.
Fia could’ve had a chance to charm her way into a lavish, stable lifestyle, but she preferred the terror of exposure, the safety of anonymity, and the constant movement, so no one in this world could ever truly know us. It was a lonely world of just us two. I loved her—as both my sister and the only motherly figure I’d ever known—but it was a deep, aching loneliness.
There was a brief, impossible time Fia and I stayed in a place long enough for me to almost belong. For a year, we parked our wagon under a sprawling, old oak tree. Fia made friends with a family of weavers—their looms’ clatter was a constant backdrop even as seasons changed. She helped with their work, learning the intricate, dusty skills as quickly as they taught them and soon surpassing them to become their quickest, tidiest worker. I would join the children for lessons in basic reading and simple addition, skills I’d mastered decades ago when I was trained by fae teachers to entertain them. Boredly, I pretended to listen, counting down the minutes until we were released so we could play games and talk nonsense. It was the only time I’d been allowed to just be—not expected to be more. In the evenings, Fia and I joined their family around the rough-hewn hearth to share meals that smelled of fresh bread and tallow and tell quiet, ordinary stories.
It was during those mundane, wonderful days that I learned my tricks from an uncle of the family, a traveling merchant who returned once a month to spin tales of his journey and earn his spot as the children’s favorite. His hands, scarred and quick, smelled of spices and cheap leather. I didn’t know then that he was a charlatan whose trade was more tricks than wares, but I’d been utterly amazed by the sheer effort of his deception. More so when Fia’s own usually guarded feelings shifted from amused to enamored. The adults began to whisper that maybe he’d marry her, finally give me a father, and finally, he’d decide to be an honest man and settle down.
That didn’t happen.
Fia’s heartbreak was the reason we left that small, wonderful place. She’d told him the truth one fragile, moonlit night, and his first thoughts were not love, but how to profit from her nature—I knew, because she’d asked me to sense his sincerity, to check if she was letting her heart lead her into a terrible mistake. I felt the cold, hard avarice in his mind the moment I touched him. He’d deceived me. All because I’d waited until then to use my gift.
We disappeared in the night, the wheels of our old wagon groaning in protest after months of disuse. The old, forgotten road swallowed the last impression of our tracks. We never stopped for that long again.
Fia returned while I was in the middle of a lesson—a flurry of auburn hair and the crisp scent of new grain—her arms full of food we’d need to prepare and dry. The little girls around my table immediately stopped listening to my instructions on the coin trick. They stared at Fia, their gazes wide, thick with an admiring envy that didn’t require my gift to understand. While all fae were more inherently charming and beautiful than humans, Fia also had a fundamental kindness about her, a warmth that made the hint of her otherworldly prettiness all the more appealing and safe. She was sunlight captured in a human frame.
It was also why anytime we’d played the role of mother and daughter, people assumed I took after my father. I had none of her bright, striking features; my own long hair was a dark, dull brown that could easily have been road muck woven into a braid. My eyes were the cold, flat grey of a clouded winter sky. I was a study in unremarkable colors. It was the oldest, most bewildering mystery of my life: why had baby me, this distinctly ordinary creature, been taken all those decades ago? I wasn’t the typical, fair-haired prize with luminous eyes the fae were said to covet. The only remarkable thing about me was the tragedy of being a lost child.
From what Fia told me of my parents, they were just as ordinary. No royal lineage, no hidden magic to tempt a fae lord. I could only assume they’d annoyed a disguised fae by plucking the wrong flower or committed some other inconsequential slight. Nothing that justified the act of switching their baby with Fia. And on top of that, Fia was denied her own birthright—fae parents she’d never know. After a lifetime raised by my human parents, she had decided she didn’t want to know the kind of monsters that would trick people as good as my parents.
I had doubts they were quite as flawlessly good as Fia described—human goodness always felt flimsy and conditional to me, easily broken by hunger, fear, or jealousy—but I did believe they were ordinary. And if I were truly just ordinary, a mistake of the fae trade, then maybe there was a stop along this endless wandering that would lead me to a place where I could melt into the mundane and finally belong. It was a flimsy, persistent daydream.
“Are you a faery, Miss?” one girl, her gaze wide with fearful awe, piped up.
Fia smiled, a movement that brought a genuine, honey-warm light to her golden-brown eyes, and looked over the girl’s head at me. The sun caught the copper streaks in her auburn hair, a vibrant spot in the drab market backdrop. Seelie fae could not utter a direct falsehood, which meant the lie—the necessary denial—was always up to me.
“She is exceptionally pretty,” I agreed, leaning back against the table edge, my tone a flat, droll counter to Fia’s effortless glow. “But she’s my sister. Surely you can tell a faery, can’t you? Do I look like a faery to you?”
The little girl glanced rapidly between us, her eyes tracing the lines from my plain, dark hair and cloudy grey eyes to Fia’s flawless, luminous skin. Her answer was a swift, childish judgment forming as her nose wrinkled. “No.” Then she giggled.
“See, Fia?” I said, raising an eyebrow at my sister. “Even the children can tell how ordinary I am.”
“Oh, Wren,” Fia murmured, a sound of tolerant affection, “Must you always be so hard on yourself?”
I leaned over the table, the little girl’s head tilted as she looked at me. “So, how could my sister be a faery when I am clearly not?” I asked her.
An older girl, sensing the game, asked Fia, “Is she really your sister?”
“Her parents were mine,” Fia said, the wording precise, yet delivered with a soft conviction that made it sound like the simplest truth in the world. To any other changeling, that mine could’ve meant ownership or enthrallment. But not Fia, who only knew my parents as her family. Hers. Not mine.
The older girl wasn’t convinced, but she had no more clever questions. The little girl, however, could only comment that she and her sister looked exactly alike…besides their different eyes and hair. That blatant contradiction did more to convince the older girl of our ordinariness than anything else.
“Sometimes sisters don’t look alike,” Fia said, smoothly kneeling to their level on the cold, damp earth. Her auburn hair spilled around her shoulders like polished bronze. “And my sister is just as beautiful, in her way.” She smiled at me, the corners of her eyes crinkling with biased, nurturing pride. “Just as you will grow up to be beautiful in yours,” she added, gently patting the little girl’s dirty-blonde hair. Now that was a color that the fae might want to steal. I’d been trained alongside so many blonde and red-haired human children, all with eyes of startling blue, green, and other luminous shades.
The humans with seemingly ordinary features always had talents, but they were taken older. I was a shy, observant child, so I didn’t speak enough to reveal my talent. Sometimes I wondered if they regretted taking me. Maybe that was the real reason no one had found me—no one was looking.
“But beauty is meaningless without love,” Fia continued, her voice soft, insistent, like a hearth fire. “My sister is beautiful because I love her so.” I felt a ridiculous flush creep up my neck. It wasn’t my first time hearing it, but she didn’t need to be so proud in public. “Tell your sister every day how much you cherish her,” Fia advised the little girl, her dark-honey eyes utterly sincere, “and you’ll see.”
The little dirty-blonde girl squealed an excited “I will!” and darted away. The older girl was trying to hide her interest behind a facade of doubt, but in villages this small, children could always be counted on to believe in spells, even if the magic was rooted in words as simple as I love you.
“Now don’t go sharing my magic secrets with anyone,” I warned the handful of kids, adding a wink and a grin.
The little boy and girl, barely as tall as my knees, nodded with wide, awestruck eyes, their small faces rapt with the seriousness of the promise. The older children laughed as they hurried away, shouting back their plans to share the secret right away. The little ones bobbed after them, afraid of being left behind with a witch and a faery.
Fia hummed a low, sweet tune—a folk melody bright and bouncing—as she loaded her bundles into the wagon. She slipped through the narrow door, her tall, narrow frame moving with the practiced grace, constantly mindful of space, careful not to jostle the door off the frail hinges again. I packed up my cards, the fabric squares, and folded the table, the old wood protesting with a groan.
The vendors at the nearest stalls watched us, their attention too fascinated by strangers to mind their own wares. But I noticed a young woman with sharp eyes slip a plum into her satchel while pointing wildly at the basket behind the merchant—a classic distraction. I slipped my own too-light, jingling coin purse deep under the waist of my skirt. Better to be safe.
I followed Fia, hefting the folded table up and sliding it through the narrow door as I hopped onto the step. Inside our home-on-wheels, the air was immediately warmer, thick with the comforting, composite scent of dry herbs, unwashed wool, and old wood. Our space was an eclectic, yet sparse collection of essentials, packed tight against the constant promise of movement.
The wagon’s interior was necessary clutter. Since it was early spring, the heavy, woven baskets and built-in wooden cabinets toward the back were mostly empty, smelling faintly of old flour dust. It wasn’t until late summer and autumn, when harvests were finally proven bountiful, that we could afford the excess—the beautiful, comforting weight of enough food.
Toward the front, stacked high against the side wall, were the personal items shoved into shallow drawers: a brimming collection of folded, mended clothes for all weather, each garment smelling faintly of the lavender sachets Fia tucked inside. We each had exactly one pair of practical, worn footwear for summer and winter, including a pair of my own cracked leather shoes that Fia was meticulously mending by candlelight these past few evenings. There was also an ornate wooden box, the only keepsake of our mother, containing precious items—a dowry consisting of a simple necklace and a few small, unset stones—too beautiful to wear, too vital to risk. They were more our emergency savings than actual adornment.
There, resting on the top of the drawers, was Fia’s wooden flute, carved from a dark, smooth wood. Its surface was worn velvety soft from years of use, and sometimes, when we were alone on the road, Fia would play it for me. The sound was always high and pure, transporting, and for a fleeting minute, as I looked at the familiar clutter, I didn’t crave a stable, rooted house; I just craved the certainty of her song. When she played the sweet, simple tunes of children’s rhymes, it was the only time I wanted to sing, and I could sing for myself.
“Are we staying in town for the night?” I asked, my voice echoing slightly in the confined space. I shoved the folded table against the wall, wedging it tightly behind a half-empty basket of cabbage and a heavy sack of oats. The dim, watery light of late afternoon made the wagon dark, lit only by a horizontal beam through the open door and a shaft of light shining downward through the high, grimy back window.
This constant negotiation about movement was our life: living on the road in a country plagued by endless rainy seasons, always balancing safety with Fia’s physical needs. The fact that we had to stop here in Afon-Glyn at all was proof of our limitations.
We had once considered traveling farther south, seeking warmer climates, but a common fae like her needed to stay within a certain proximity to the Veil—the blurred border where the realms of fae and human reality crossed—to retain her vitality, lest debilitating weakness and illness consume her. She could never risk the grand human cities, where the sheer amount of iron used in street lamps, carriages, and even buildings would feel like cold, tight pins driven into her veins.
“We don’t stand out, with so many merchants and caravans here,” Fia said, her voice strained. Her fingers drummed a frantic, soft thump-thump on the closed lid of a food basket, a habit I recognized as internal debate—a quiet, nervous rhythm. “But those children could easily mention the pretty faery with the wagon to the wrong person.”
“What if we get stuck in the mud again? We’re not going to earn much tomorrow if we can’t get back by morning,” I countered, picking up a jar of pickled plums. The sour vinegar smell made my face scrunch reflexively. Fia loved the sharp, acidic bite of preservation; I did not.
We’d been soaked by April showers for days straight, the cold damp clinging to the wool of our travel blankets. We had been desperately trying to arrive in this modest town a week before their Beltane festival. The relentless rain had made our mule, poor Beady, sick, forcing us to stop. That put us behind schedule. That delay was a trigger for Fia’s greatest fear.
It’s always about avoiding the wrong people, I thought, a bone-deep weariness settling in my chest.
We’d had the exact same argument three days ago—trapped inside the parked wagon while Beady was housed in a nearby barn. Fia had just messed up the sixth stitch in a row on my worn shoe, a sure sign her stress was overwhelming her careful hands. If the wagon had been big enough to pace in, she’d have worn a hole through the floorboards. I’d been quietly practicing a new card trick when she dramatically collapsed onto our pile of laundry, dropping my shoe, the hole wider than before. She muttered how we’d never make it to Afon-Glyn before Beltane.
Foolishly, I thought it was a good time to suggest bending her rules—that this could be the year we stayed for a festival. For once, I longed to show up for the sheer, reckless fun of it. I wanted to witness something real, like a fire dance or a grand fiddler. But I knew events as big as Beltane could attract the kind of powerful people who’d recognize Fia for what she was, and potentially know the fae I was supposed to belong to.
She’d made me recite our rule about events: We arrive before, but never during. We always leave before the entertainment can attract disguised fae lords.
“It’s been ten years, Fia,” I’d said then, letting a sliver of my weary hope escape. “This is my tenth human spring since you freed me. No one is coming after us now.”
“A decade might seem long for you, Wren,” she’d warned, her voice low and stern, her beautiful brow furrowed with genuine maternal anxiety, “but it’s barely a blink for a fae lord.”
I’d lived within the same gilded walls as fae lords for twenty years; I had lived that slowness of time. It was only when I crossed the Veil that I began to age normally, year by year, rather than maturing at half the rate. My decades of childhood memories had faded when I crossed the Veil, almost as if they were impossible for a human mind to retain. With that fading, the painful comparison was lost; human time had started to feel long.
It was her turn to repeat an old, hated lesson: “They’ll never forgive or forget.”
When I heard those words, I knew I’d triggered the speech; the refrain of warning I despised:
“House Edris is in direct service of one of the three royal Seelie houses.” Their house crest was vivid in my mind—a blue merlin perched in front of a deep green mountain—all my childhood clothes tailored in their vibrant colors. “Their reputation is built on how they manage and control their people.” The stinging memory of a reed sharply striking my outstretched hands for a mispronounced word. “An escaped human hurts their reputation. It also ruins the convenient story that all their humans serve them willingly.”
Fia knew I hated hearing their name, the way it clawed at the walls I’d built around my past. As much as I denied having any clear memories of that time, she knew I’d never forget their name. She avoided it, but it always came up when I argued to relax our rules. She knew the power it had over me.
Fia turned, grasping at a hanging copper kettle to steady herself. “We’ll stay in town tonight,” she said, her voice now firm, pulled back to the practical present.
A little bubble of hope, ridiculous and weightless, popped inside my chest. “Really?”
She rustled through the new supplies, her fingers searching for the fresh tea leaves. “Mhm,” she answered, distracted by the scent of the mint.
“So…it’s fine if I go into town?” I asked, leaning closer, lowering my voice.
She paused, looking over her shoulder. Her dark-honey eyes narrowed, instantly guessing my intention. “What’s happening in town?” she asked, a thread of warning weaving through her tone.
I rolled my eyes. “No events,” I promised. “But I heard someone mention a fiddler performing at The Holly & Hound tonight.” I didn’t want to perform; I just wanted to watch others connect to their joy, their music, their place in the world.
Fia’s dark-honey eyes dropped, crinkling as she considered the possible danger. If I let her think about it too long, she’d find a reason to say no.
So, I pounced, wrapping my arms around her narrow frame, breathing in the scent of clover that always clung to her skin. “You could come,” I said, laying on the charm. “A town this size has to have some good fiddlers. Bet you could join them with your flute.”
She laughed, a low, genuine sound, and then gently tugged my dark braid. “You know I hate busy places like that, Wren,” she said. She hated them because she attracted too much attention. Me? No one ever noticed me.
“Promise you won’t stay late,” she said, her voice stern, emphasized with a pointed finger tracing a line on my collarbone. The touch was both an order and a blessing.
I crossed a knot over my heart. She sighed, shaking her head at my theatricality, and waved me away with a tiny, reluctant smile. “Just go.”
*
The Holly & Hound was an explosion of human warmth and noise. The air inside was thick and savory, a dizzying blend of burned tallow candles, spilled ale, wet wool, and roasting mutton. Every weathered wooden table was occupied by guests: the locals, their faces familiar from the market square, and the few traveling merchants staying at the inn, their heavy, muddy cloaks draped over the backs of chairs.
Lucky for me, I’d come early, drawn by the promise of a fresh, hot meal—juicy, fat-dripping meat and tender, roasted root vegetables, nothing preserved or pickled. I secured a spot in the darkest corner of the room, facing the door and positioned against the solid stone wall. Exactly like Fia taught me: back to the wall, eyes on the exit, blend into the shadow.
I ate slowly, savoring the unnatural luxury of the fresh food, letting the noise of the room wash over me. A pair of fiddlers, positioned near the hearth, were lost in a lively jig, the notes fast and bright, weaving a thread of genuine, communal joy through the air. I watched a group of younger men slamming their tankards down in rhythm, and a woman by the fire whose laughter was so full-bodied it made her whole frame shake.
In this place, under the flickering, uneven light, I was just a girl eating dinner alone. No one saw the ex-changeling, the fae-rescued escapee, or the mind-reading nuisance. Here, I was anonymous, and that anonymity felt like a temporary coat of armor.
I people-watched, letting the warmth of the ale and the music loosen my guard just enough to dream. The innkeeper, a sturdy woman with flour dusting her eyebrows, was arguing good-naturedly with a farmer over the price of cheese. I imagined myself taking a job here—a scullery maid, perhaps, smelling of soap and steam—learning their gossip, understanding their rhythms. I imagined watching the fiddlers every night, allowing the music to become a familiar, nonthreatening backdrop to my life.
The connection the music created was almost overwhelming. It was real, anchored, unlike the constant, frantic movement of our wagon. I felt dangerously close to believing I could belong. But that was a dream. Awake as I was, slightly lost in the disorientation of good food and music, I knew this feeling would end when I left The Holly & Hound behind tonight.
A young man, tall and slender, pushed through the crowd, his back to me, moving towards the fiddlers. I didn’t hear him, yet a prickle of unease ran down my spine. It was a cold whisper against the warmth of the hearth. I ignored it, blaming the cold draft from the door, the lateness of the hour.
He moved with an impossible grace, a fluidity that made the other patrons seem clumsy, like puppets on tangled strings. He murmured something to the fiddler, a low, charming sound that carried even over the din, and the fiddler—a grizzled old man who looked like he’d stolen more than a few coins in his life—beamed, handing over his instrument with an eager bow.
The young man took the fiddle as if it were an extension of his own limb. He had a shock of hair the color of new autumn leaves—a vibrant auburn—and when he turned slightly, I caught a glimpse of eyes like polished emeralds. And in that glimpse, something in my chest tightened, a ghost of a memory stirring. His face… it was eerily similar to a face from my fragmented dreams. He didn’t have those striking purple eyes, but the structure of the face, the curve of a jaw, the elegant line of a nose. A face that haunted the edges of my forgotten childhood, glimpsed through a haze of silver light.
A woman joined him. Her beauty was just as uncanny, her skin luminous under the flickering candlelight, and her thick braid was spun from glittering, unnatural gold. The second fiddler, mouth slightly agape, offered her his instrument. The beautiful pair lined up facing each other, and they drew their bows across the strings.
The first notes were a melancholic sigh, a slow, aching lament that hushed the room faster than any shout. It was a tune that tasted of ancient sorrow and forgotten promises. Then, it began to build—a rapid, furious acceleration, the sound swelling, speeding, twisting in a way that defied human fingers, human breath. The air crackled with their combined glamour. It was a whirlwind of sound, too fast, too intricate, too much for mortal ears, yet impossibly alluring. My teeth ached, and my stomach churned.
They’re not human. This is a spell. Fia’s voice, sharp with warning, echoed in my mind, even though she wasn’t here. Get out. You need to get out. Now.
The air in the inn grew heavy, an overwhelming sweetness, like night-blooming jasmine, a scent that masked the ale and mutton. I felt the magic pulling at me, urging me to close my eyes, to surrender to the blissful quiet. Heads began to drop, softly, like ripe fruit from a branch. A tankard clattered to the floor, ale spilling in a dark, sticky pool. A woman by the fire slumped forward, her laughter replaced by a soft, rhythmic snore. Sleep was consuming them, a deep, enchanted slumber.
My own eyelids felt like lead. The music promised peace, a relief from the endless running. But beneath the yearning, a cold core of fear ignited. Fia’s years of training, her relentless warnings about fae enchantments, fought against the magic’s pull. Resist, I screamed at myself, the word a silent, desperate prayer. Move.
I pushed back from my table, my chair scraping loudly on the wooden floor, a jarring sound in the sudden, eerie quiet of the sleeping room. My heart hammered against my ribs like a rabbit caught in a snare. My muscles protested, heavy and sluggish, but I forced one foot in front of the other, creeping, not running, towards the blessedly open door. The cool night air outside was a prickling, distant freedom.
Just as my trembling fingers brushed the cold wood of the doorframe, a flash of emerald caught my eye. The young man—the fae who reminded me of a face in a dream—had seen me. His auburn head was still bowed over the fiddle, but his gaze, sharp and impossibly green, was fixed directly on me. A slow, chilling smile spread across his face, not charming now, but profoundly, personally predatory.
“Well, this is unexpected,” he said, his voice a low, resonant wave that flowed over the sleepy serenade. His low, effortless tone was painfully attractive. The agonizing urge to turn back, to walk straight into the candlelight all the better to see him, to sit and listen to him eagerly, was a powerful, physical ache in my chest, a traitorous yearning for the beauty of the trap.
My body locked like a wagon wheel stalled in the mud, paralyzed when he took a single, deliberate step forward. The floorboards didn’t creak beneath his weight.
“Tell me your name, little mortal,” he commanded. The words didn’t just reach my ears; they resonated deep in my mind, surrounded by an irresistible, velvet-smooth compulsion. Every instinct I had screamed Wren, but my throat seized, forcing the old truth out.
“Líadan,” I choked out, the sound ripped from me. Disgust, sharp and acidic, rose from my stomach. It was the name they had called me. Not the name Fia had given me. Wren was me. Líadan was their mark.
The glow of his green eyes brightened, widening slightly as he savored the syllables. The sound of my old name on his tongue was an obscene caress. “Líadan?” His smile curled, revealing a flash of uncanny white teeth, the canines sharper than a human’s. “Interesting.”
Get out. The heaviness pressing on my eyelids did me a favor—slamming them shut to block the vision of him. My limbs felt trapped, bound by countless silky, invisible strings that demanded I obey the sound of his voice. Go back. Listen to their song. Kneel at the green-eyed fae’s feet and stay.
The painful shuffle of my soles forced forward on the dusty floorboards was loud—shamefully, dangerously loud. The effort of that tiny movement hurried my breath, wrenching a ragged, sharp gasp from my throat. My chest heaved, lung burning with the fight. Don’t stop. It’s over if you stop.
The moment I stumbled out the door, the hot, savory air of the inn was replaced by the sharp, damp chill of the night. The immediate, suffocating pressure of the charm lifted like a breaking fever. The cloying, floral-sweet scent of the glamour evaporated. Those haunting emerald eyes were still glowing behind my closed lids, a final afterimage, but the seductive song was abruptly muted. I could breathe again. I could do this.
Each weighted, shuffled step felt a little faster, a little lighter than the last. The hold those eyes had on my mind shattered like thin glass in the cold air.
So I ran.
The panic was a cold surge of adrenaline, pushing me past the human limits of my endurance. I ran past the market square, the covered stalls huddled like sleeping beasts under the pale glow of the rising moon, and straight toward the cluster of parked caravans. I darted around people stoking little bonfires outside their wagons, the smell of burnt wood and damp earth striking my nostrils. A few annoyed shouts followed me, a few near-misses that slowed my frantic, clumsy path, but I didn’t dare look back.
But I didn’t stop until I saw our familiar, shadowed shape. I yanked open our wagon door, the hinges rattling in protest, and scrambled inside.
“Fia!” I shouted, shaking her violently awake. Her wool blanket fell to the floor, and her dark-honey eyes blinked, tired and disoriented by the sudden, brutal light spilling in.
“There’s fae here, Fia! We need to go now.”
Before she could process the words, I grabbed her wrist, the bone feeling impossibly thin under my urgent grip, half-dragging her to her feet. But then Fia’s fae instincts took over. The sleepiness vanished, replaced by an efficient clarity. She was rushing ahead of me, suddenly faster, already out the door and working frantically, with impossible speed, hitching Beady to the front of the wagon. The clatter of the harness buckles and the sharp slap of the reins were the only sounds now—mechanical, desperate, life-saving.
It took only minutes. Every second was counted against the fear of pursuit. The tearing pain in my side and ragged breath caught up to me as Fia hoisted me to the front seat of the wagon.
Yet, no one pursued us. No green-eyed fiddlers chased us. The town of Afon-Glyn was soon just a scattering of pale lights in the valley below before Fia slowed our pace, giving Beady a chance to catch his breath, though she didn’t let him stop entirely. The panic was over.
She relaxed the reins, the leather strap hissing softly in her hands, and turned to me, her eyes reflecting the oil lamp’s light, serious and unwavering.
“Tell me what happened, Wren,” she whispered, the danger finally sinking its sharp teeth into the quiet of the night. “Who saw you?”
The wind was a raw, frigid current now, whipping around the corners of the wagon, carrying the sharp scent of turning earth, rain, and damp oak leaves. We had turned sharply off the main road, the wagon protesting with a sickening groan of axle and timber as we lurched violently onto a narrow, barely-used cart track. The lack of pursuing footsteps—the absence of the clatter a human chase would make—was almost as terrifying as the pursuit itself. We were running from a threat that could move in silence and glamour.
“He was playing the fiddle,” I managed, my voice still hoarse and thin, tasting of panic. I stood on the seat, hands pressed against the low roof of the wagon to steady myself as I tried to peer behind us, uselessly searching the absolute blackness. “He and a woman—she had gold hair. They came in after I sat down. They took the fiddles, and then… they played a song.”
Fia’s profile was sharp and strained in the moonlight, illuminated by the distant, pale glow of Afon-Glyn. She was gripping the reins so tightly her knuckles were white, the leather creaking under the pressure. “What kind of song?”
“Not a human one,” I said, shuddering. “It was too fast, too beautiful. The air got sweet, like lavender? Everyone fell asleep. Their heads just dropped, Fia, into their plates.” The image was grotesque and total—a whole room of human life subdued by a simple melody. “He was charming them. I fought it. I got to the door, and that’s when he saw me.”
Her grip relaxed slightly, and she nodded, the movement jerky. “Good,” she whispered, turning to me as she forced a weak, utterly unconvincing smile. “You did good, Wren. You resisted.”
“He asked for my name,” I confessed, the shame of the admission like grit in my mouth.
Fia closed her eyes for a suspended moment, marked by a sharp, painful flinch that convulsed her delicate features. When she opened them, her pupils were wide. “What name?” she asked, her voice small and brittle, laced with a fear she couldn’t hide.
“Líadan.”
Hurt flashed over her face, replaced instantly with a calculating, controlled neutrality. I wanted to tell her that it wasn’t true—that it was an old lie. But the fae’s magical compulsion had been irresistible, clawing the truth from me. It hadn’t been a lie, even though I wished desperately it had been.
I swallowed, forcing myself to describe the danger without revealing the uncanny sense of recognition. “He had hair like…like yours,” I said, noticing the striking similarity for the first time, their shared, vibrant auburn. “But his eyes were green. Really green—like emeralds reflecting the sunlight…And he spoke to me…” The dangerous pull of him still lingered in my thoughts. The memory of that voice was a low, painful thrum beneath my skin. Go back. I shuddered. “He sounded surprised I could resist. Like a game was spoiled.”
Fia listened, her breathing shallow, her whole body rigid. Her eyes, those beautiful, dark-honey eyes, were fixed on the darkness ahead, but I knew she wasn’t seeing the road. She was assembling a terrible puzzle.
“Auburn hair, green eyes, and a musical charm that puts whole rooms to sleep…” Fia whispered the description, her voice barely audible over the wagon’s creaking and Beady’s sharp, panicked breaths. She suddenly lifted a hand to her temple, pressing her fingers there, a gesture of profound distress. “Wren, was he…warm, but also cold? And arrogant, like he owned everything?”
“Yes,” I admitted, the memory of his predatory smile sickening me now. “Like he was playing with mice.”
Fia swore—a sharp, quiet, utterly desolate word in the fae tongue. She pulled Beady to a sudden, painful halt, the wagon wheels burying themselves deep into the trackside mud, throwing us forward slightly.
“It was Caius,” she breathed, turning to me, her face pale, slick with fear even in the weak moonlight. Her gaze was frantic, full of a crushing self-reproach that chilled me more than the fear of the chase. “The youngest son of the Seelie King and Queen.”
My breath caught. A prince? I had just been seen, spoken to, and targeted by a prince of the fae realm. My theory of being easily replaceable shattered, replaced by the terrifying reality of being a recognized curiosity.
“I am so sorry, Wren,” Fia said, her hand reaching out to clutch my arm, her grip tight and shaking. “I should never have let you go out alone. Never.” Her eyes were flat, like she was seeing through me, her tone full of a self-reproach that chilled me more than the fear of the chase. “Caius is known for sneaking into the border towns, playing those games, testing his glamour. He calls it harmless sport. And his wife, that gold-haired woman, is known for her mastery of musical performance.”
She took a ragged, weeping breath. “But the worst of it is, I know him. Or, at least, he knows of me. Years ago, before I rescued you, I sought him out.”
I stared at her. Fia, the rule-follower, the perpetual runaway, had sought out a fae prince? The risk was staggering.
“I was desperate,” she admitted reluctantly, shame darkening her face, making her look haggard and older than she ever allowed herself to appear. “I was looking for clues to find you, to understand the trade. I thought maybe he, being…disconnected from his family, might help.”
Fia rarely spoke of what she knew of the hierarchical structure of the fae realm. I knew Caius was likely far from any claim on the throne—disconnected, as Fia said—which made him an ideal target for someone who needed insider information—close enough to know, far enough not to care.
“I wore so much iron that day, Wren, my pockets jingled, just to dull his perception of me,” she said, her eyes dropped, shadowed as she got lost in the dreaded memory. Iron wouldn’t make a high fae like Caius sick, like it did Fia, but it could distract his senses. The pain for Fia, though, would have been immense. I put my arms around her, a swelling in my chest. Sometimes I forgot what it cost her to save me.
“He gave me an hour of his time…in exchange for a song,” she continued, leaning her head against mine. “He knew I played the flute. It seemed so small a price…because he told me helpful things, things that led me to you.”
Another one of Fia’s rules broken: the price is never what it seems when bargaining with fae.
“But he ended the conversation by warning me. He told me to give up.” Fia’s voice was breaking now, the composition utterly lost. “He knew what I was, even with the iron, Wren. If he saw me now, if he connected the fae changeling who begged him for help to the woman a bunch of kids thought was a faery…he could trace us back to you. I led him to you. I told him your name then. This is my fault.”
I squeezed her harder, holding her trembling frame. “This isn’t your fault,” I insisted, rubbing her back, focusing on the simple, practical truth. “You needed that information to save me. And you did. You saved me, Fia.”
She buried her face in my shoulder, her arms clinging to me tightly, a silent, slight tremble meeting my own. It was rare to see her so afraid. Anxious, worried, fussy, sure. But genuinely terrified?
I knew why Fia thought Caius could be the reason I was caught. But even if he did realize who I was and realized my link to Fia, surely a prince had better things to do. Even a disconnected prince. I was nothing to him—to them. I was ordinary. There was no reason in the whole of the Seelie Court to want me back. No reason that could possibly tempt a prince.