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Some children are not meant for adventure.But Sully is. Every four years, the village pays a tithe to the Faerie King who lives in the heart of the forest; a youth from the village, of course. Sully is ten years old the first time the village chooses her as their tithe. She’s the shortest and plainest of the girls her age, the loudest and brashest and most brazen of all the village youth put together. Her parents are shocked when the council announces their decision. The chosen tithe is usually a girl, yes, but a quieter girl, a prettier girl, a girl who acts the way that most parents expect their girls to act.Nobody but the council can say why they’d picked Sully, but she’s their first and only choice. Sully's parents take her home that night and brush the tangles out of the hair she’s let grow too long, too wild. Her mother bathes her in the finest soaps they own, and they both cry that night as they put her to sleep. She cries too, because they’re upset, and because her parents have never cried in front of her before. Secretly though, she thinks this might all be a rather grand adventure.She dreams of her mother’s swollen red eyes, of the wet of her father’s tears against his beard. What she doesn’t understand, what they’d never tell her, is that this is the greatest thing anyone could ever ask of them. Just before dawn, her parents take her to the edge of the forest astride her father’s best horse. An entourage of her best friends and their families joins them. They reach the edge of the forest at daybreak and a representative from the council gives her a pat on the back when her father lets her go. He thanks her for her sacrifice, and she pretends that she cares.Before she says her final goodbyes Sumia stumbles toward her, one hand clenched around something. She offers the fist to Sully, drops a small, round thing into Sully’s open palm. “Be safe.” She’s crying a little, which is to be expected. Sully drops the thing into her trouser pocket so she can wrap her friend into a proper hug.“You too,” Sully says, though she knows that Sumia will be just fine. They’ve been friends since birth, and despite her clumsiness, the other girl can take care of herself surprisingly well. Sumia doesn’t say goodbye, just hugs her tighter after that. Sully isn’t sure why everybody looks so sombre. Sure, none of the girls who’ve been sent to the forest have returned, but that doesn’t mean she’s going to die in there. Or does it? As the midday sun begins to blaze above, her friends and family leave. The journey is long, even on horseback, and it will nearly be nightfall before they reach the village, one less youth among them. Four more years of protection from the wrath of the Faerie King.At least losing her will mean something.She watches their shapes disappear down the dusty trail, and then Sully is alone. The canopy of the forest reaches up, up into the sky, and she sits on a stump looking up at the blue of the world above. It feels like ages of staring and watching the scattered clouds, but eventually she hears footsteps. Unafraid, Sully turns toward the sound.There’s a handsome man with a well-trimmed beard and a heavy look in his deep blue eyes. Beside him walks a girl, older than Sully—a young woman, really. She’s beautiful and tranquil-looking, and her eyes are a pale bluish-green. Sully doesn’t think she’s ever seen eyes like those before. The man’s cheek bears a strange sigil, a mark Sully doesn’t know. The same adorns the young woman’s forehead. Both of them are cloaked in spun sunlight and garments the colour of the smoothest cream. They can’t be human.No one Sully knows looks like that.“Hello,” she says, perhaps against her better judgement. The village elders have always taught her not to speak to faeries, but these people seem…normal. Not at all like monsters who would steal newborn babes from the cots, or trick hapless travellers to their deaths on the road. The man looks at the young woman, and though his mouth moves Sully cannot hear a sound. “How are you doing that, sir?” she asks, using her best manners. He rewards her with a frown. The forest whispers as his mouth moves, but she does not know what it says.“Hello,” says the young woman after a few moments more. “What are you doing here, young miss?” She’s really very pretty, with the most spectacular eyes.“I’m a tithe,” she replies after the woman repeats her question, not sure what the word really means. “My parents and friends brought me here. And a village elder came too.”“Oh?” The young woman looks up at the man, speaking the same way he had done. Sully doesn’t interrupt or ask questions; so far, the young woman seems the nicer of the two. “Can I have your name?”Sully remembers what her mother had said. They’d taught her how to speak with the faeries, though of course they’d hoped she’d never have to. “My parents named me Sullivan.” At the beautiful young woman’s bemused expression, she adds, “They thought I was gonna be a boy like my brothers.”“I see.” Now there’s a mysterious smile on the young woman’s lovely mouth, as if Sully has told her the best secret. The young woman tries to touch her hand to Sully’s hair, stopping just shy of the red tresses. The sigil on her brow seems to glow. Perhaps it is just a trick of the light. “…I see. Thank you, Sullivan.” Sully doesn’t know if she’s imagined it, but the faerie seems to look at her strangely.She’s not really sure what’s happening.The young woman pulls the man away until Sully can just barely make out the shimmer of their cloaks. Sully sits in her spot and watches the sky again. The wind picks up, whipping her hair around her face, and she laughs at the feeling of the flowers brushing against her arms. It was almost too hot, but the breeze makes everything feel better. She’s almost sorry when it dies down, but the beautiful young woman steps away from the man and comes to a stop in front of Sully.“How old are you, Sullivan?”“Why?”“I’m not trying to trick you,” says the young woman. She sounds honest enough.“I’m ten. Be eleven in December.”“See, Father?” says the young woman. “She’s too young.”Sully’s eyes widen. Could this be the Faerie King? He’s in front of her in a second, hand reaching out and then—nothing. He stops. The sigil on his cheek glows dimly, the dying of the last embers. He tries to reach for her again and Sully doesn’t know what’s stopping him. She watches him try to grab her shoulder twice more before he backs away, looking strangely dejected for such a distinguished man. “Very well then. Set the human loose if that is what you desire,” says the Faerie King, his voice a rumble like thunder. “We will not punish the village.”The young woman beams and nods, clapping her hands twice in quick succession. “Come along then, Sullivan.”“Where are you taking me?”“Back to your home.”Sully grips the young woman’s cloak where she’s told to, and then the world drops out from under her. Not sure of what’s happening, she tries to look around for something, anything familiar. Nothing appears, so she closes her eyes. Something soft brushes her forehead. Sully wakes up in her bed with a headache, to the worried, hovering faces of her parents. They tell her that for some reason the tithe was not required this time, that they have four years of peace again. That she can stay home.In the eyes of the whole village, it’s a miracle. Sully dreams about a beautiful blonde woman six nights out of seven, but she never tells them that. They don’t need to know what’s happened. She’s not too sure, herself *** Four years later, things play out much the same. The council, wondering if perhaps it was just poor timing, decide to send Sully as the tithe again. She doesn’t complain, though her parents lament the decision twice as much as they had the first. They accompany her to the forest again, though this time she is allowed to ride on her own. Sumia hugs her, patting the pocket where Sully keeps her gift. She’s still not sure what it is—hasn’t ever really looked at it—but she feels like she’s meant to hold on to it. Whatever it is, it doesn’t weigh very much. Just as she’d done four years prior, Sully settles in a spot that gives her a wide view of the sky. Watching the clouds from the village green is all well and good, but this feels different. Better. More free.Every so often she turns her head towards the forest. After a few rounds of doing that and turning back to the open blue above her, she hears a rustling noise and turns, all thoughts of the sky left behind her.A beautiful young woman steps out from through the grand trees. The same young woman she’d met before. “Hello,” Sully says, half-heard lessons on Faerie etiquette completely forgotten. The young woman looks so kind. She couldn’t possibly be as evil as the villagers say her people are. Nobody that beautiful could be truly evil, right? And she’d convinced the Faerie King to send Sully home the first time“Hello. Can I have your name?” The girl holds out her hand.Sully doesn’t take it; she remembers that much. “They call me Sully, so I guess you can, too. But what’s your name?” Wait. She’d said her full name before, hadn’t she?“Sully…hold on. I know you,” says the faerie, hand still outstretched. Her pretty eyes widen in surprise. “Sullivan?”“My parents named me Sullivan, yeah.”The faerie laughs, the sound like glass-blown chimes. “And which do you prefer?”“Just Sully.” She tries for easy laughter and comes up short. “And what about your name?”The young woman smiles as if Sully has just told her another joke. “Of recently, I am the Faerie Queen. Are you ready to come with me, Sully?”“You don’t look that much older than me,” she says, because at fourteen—soon fifteen—she’s taller than most of the other girls, and stronger-looking, too.“By our standards, I am young. Almost as young as you, even.”Sully looks up into the Faerie Queen’s eyes. She’s so tall! And fair. And her hair is the same pale as the purest sunlight.“Where will you take me?”“To my home.”“Why?”“Because that is why you are here.”“Where do you live?”“In the forest.”“But why do you live there?”The Faerie Queen smiles. “Because that place has always been my home. And soon it will be yours, as well.” She offers her hand to Sully again and this time, Sully reaches out. Before their fingers touch, however, the Faerie Queen pulls back. The strange sigil upon her brow glows dimly, once. “No.” Then, almost too low for Sully to hear it, “No, not you.”Sully blinks. “Did I do something wrong?”The older girl shakes her head. “You are too young for me to lo—for you to lose your family. No, I will not take you.” She says something else, and Sully thinks she might have heard the word father, but she wouldn’t dare ask the Faerie Queen to repeat herself. “Do you know the way back to your home, Sully?”She shrugs. “It’s a straight line.” And it is. It will just take a while. Shame her parents hadn’t left her horse behind, but she supposes they wouldn’t have. “I know the way.”The Faerie Queen smiles and nods. “Then go home, and do not come back to the forest.”Sully nods, turning to go. Her vision dips a little. She’s tired. Been awake since first light. “Can I sleep first?”The Faerie Queen tilts her head. It’s unnatural, how graceful she is. “You must be tired. Very well then, no harm shall come to you here.” She snaps her fingers. “But once you have rested, you will return to the village. Yes?”“Yes.” She pauses. “What will happen if you don’t take a tithe?” Nothing of note had happened last time, but she’s not sure how the rules work.“That is not your concern, Sully.”“Okay, fair…but could I at least get your name?”The Faerie Queen smiles and kisses her forehead, quicker than Sully can think not to let her. Then she turns and fades back into the grand trees from which she'd first appeared. Sully tries to see how she’d done it, forgetting, for a moment, that the Faerie Queen has magic.Emmeryn, the trees whisper.Emmeryn, the Faerie Queen.Within minutes of Emmeryn’s departure, Sully’s eyes droop. She settles against a fallen log, soft with moss and sweet with clusters of wildflowers surrounding it. It will only be a little nap, she tells herself. Just enough for her to get back to her village without fainting away in the dust. She wakes to the slow death of the sun, and a warm breath on her face.“Wh-ah!” Sully stumbles upright as the muzzle of a great grey wolf prods against her cheek. Heart racing, she tries to feel for a stick, something, anything. The wolf only watches her, puzzled. Her hand closes on the thing Sumia had given her, she holds it up in front of her, ready to throw it at the wolf. As if threatened, he falters. Then she sees it. On his side he bears a sigil, the same as the one on the Faerie Queen's brow.
“…no harm shall come to you here.”
Sully relaxes instantly, reaching an only slightly trembling hand for the wolf. He considers it for a moment before allowing her to feel the fur around his muzzle. “We’re friends now,” she says, because it’s just that simple. “Are you here to help me?” She drops the stone into her pocket.The wolf dips his great head, settling low on his haunches. Inviting her to sit. Using the log as a stepping stool, she slings her legs across the expanse of the wolf's back. It’s so very different from riding a horse, but she feels like it will be fine. The wolf seems to know exactly what to do because, without her saying a word, he turns and runs. Sully marvels at the speed of her new friend. With any luck, she could be back home before her parents retire for the night! Won’t they be so pleased?The Fae wolf's body rumbles, as if he has heard her thoughts and has his own opinion on the matter. They arrive as the moon begins to rise, and Sully's wolf friend bumps her cheeks with his nose before disappearing into the night. Her parents are more shocked than anything else, then sad as the council members descend on their house to yell at her. They're panicked and scared, she thinks, because they think she’s run away. That she’s doomed them all.“She let me go!” she insists over and over. Stamping her foot like a much younger child. “She told me she wouldn’t take me!”The council grumbles, because she’s never lied to them before. They tell her parents that she had better behave herself. That they’re hoping she’s not lying. Her parents hold her between them, shielding her from the angry glares. “My daughter does not lie,” says her mother. Her father nods, but the council members only look on in disgust.“We shall be watching closely. With any luck, the Faerie Queen might take mercy on us. Pray tonight that she does not destroy us all, come morning.” With that they leave, and once again Sully dreams of her mother’s swollen red eyes, of the wet of her father’s tears on his beard.In the deepest heart of the night, however, she dreams of sun-spun hair and a strange sigil adorning a woman’s brow. Nothing of note happens in the week after Sully’s failed turn as the tithe. Everyone is on edge. Some of her friends' parents do not let her near their children, punishing Sully’s friends when they so much as look her way. Only Sumia speaks to her during that long and lonely week.Then, as if someone can see her suffering, things change.A large mineral deposit is found near the edge of the smaller forest they use for lumber and hunting, and it’s full of hard to come by ores. The young men of the village, once bored and thinking of nothing but leaving, find work in the development of a mine. Within weeks, they’re all lean and strong and living with the influx of wealth that the mine provides. Within months, the villages crops have exceeded expectation, both in bounty and in size. The animals grow too, just a bit too large to be natural. The children and youth are happier, the adults at ease, the council satisfied.Never before have they experienced such prosperity.Sully and her family are treated with such care and respect that one would think they were nobles amongst loving serfs, but Sully is just glad to be able to play with all her friends. Sumia’s gift to her stays in her trouser pocket, and she thinks nothing of it as the days go by. Sumia doesn’t mention it either, though sometimes they’ll look at it together. It’s just a smooth, round stone. Perfect, if without value aside from what sentiment lends to it. Life goes on, and soon it is only on occasion that Sully dreams of a strange sigil, and the Faerie Queen, and a ride on the back of an enchanted wolf. *** Four years after Sully returns from the forest, a new family arrives. They have a daughter with long, long red hair, redder even than Sully’s. She’s tall and graceful, far too mature to be nineteen and unmarried, far too pretty to fit in in such a small village, and Sumia instantly takes to her. Sully watches her friend trail the new arrival at first, but then one day, they walk toward the village square hand in hand. She’s glad Sumia’s found someone to stand beside.As for them, they’ve drifted as much as two village girls might. They still share a love of horses, and the secret of the perfect little stone on Sully’s nightstand, but Sully keeps her hair short now, and dresses—for lack of better words—like a boy. Sumia looks like a little lady, suited, like the new girl, to a life of society. Needless to say, she and Sully don’t play together quite as much anymore.They’re still friends, but it’s different.Sully spends the winter building forts with some of the village boys, now young men themselves. They toss snowballs at each other, soaking through layers of winter clothes. They hike through mountains of heavy white sky-powder, covered up to their thighs. On days the storms are too wild to weather, she listens to her mother’s tales of knights and swords and far-off places. She’s still craving an adventure.Spring gives her a taste of that freedom, and she frolics with the young men she’s known since birth, tossing stones into still pools of water and running down the path to the mine. The workers smile at them and tell them stories, and they spend days amongst the dust and dirt, staring at the lumps of unrefined ore in wonder.The sparkling glow of the sun on the rocks reminds her faintly of something, but Sully can never remember what it is. Then, early summer arrives, and it’s later this time than last, but it’s the day before the tithe. The council deliberates. They come back with an answer.The newcomers' daughter is to be their gift to the faeries.Her parents, as expected, refuse. They’d only come because of the girl’s father’s position—a merchant under his own father’s bigger, better known name. To lose their daughter…“I can go.”Sully's parents look at her in awe. Never before has a girl volunteered herself to be the tithe, but Sully doesn’t see the big deal about it. She’s gone to the forest before, and the new girl doesn’t deserve this. Sully doesn’t reallu know what to expect, all things considered, but she’s met the Faerie Queen before. Perhaps the woman will show mercy as she did four years ago...and if not, Sully was supposed to have been in the Faerie Queen's forest citadel already, anyway.She’s still waiting on that adventure.That night, her parents try to talk her out of it, try to tell her that she must let the girl the council chose go instead. She refuses. Again, her parents cry as they put her to sleep. Again, she hopes for an adventure. She knows it’s selfish of her, but she can’t help it. For the last four years, life has been good. Good, but it hasn’t been grand. That’s what she’s after, really. There must be some part of her that was born for more than just…this. She dreams again of her mother’s swollen red eyes, of the wet of her father's tears on his beard, but when she wakes she barely feels anything except the fluttering of butterflies in her stomach. Once again she finds herself outside the forest, her parents’ eyes red and raw. She hugs them as tightly as she dares, then waves them away with a smile on her face. Sumia clutches her hard for a minute the new girl reaching out a hand. When Sully takes it, the taller girl pulls her in, whispers a “thank you” into Sully’s ear. She smiles and shrugs. The girl is a good sort. Perhaps by the time she comes back—if she does—Sumia will be betrothed.This time she climbs a tree when her well-wishers leave, watching the dust that their horses kick up. The entourage is smaller this year. Some of the others think she’ll be back by supper. She isn’t sure. She might be.Sumia’s gift sits in her trouser pocket, a slight but comforting weight.She laughs aloud when the horizon is clear, not sure why she’s so giddy. The tree she’s chosen is sturdy and large, and she settles on a thick branch, back against the magnificent trunk. The birds are singing above her, the grass whistling below her. Through her canopy of green she can see the wide, blue sky. Already, she feels better than she has in days. Testing her balance, she stands on the branch.“I would not do that if I were you, miss,” says a placid, easy voice.Sully clambers down the tree as quickly as possible. It’s been another four years, and the Faerie Queen is even more lovely than she’d been when they first met. She’s even taller too, graceful and willowy, a circlet of gold crowning her hair. “Hello, Emmeryn.” Sully smiles up at the serene face that watches her. “Remember me?”“Sullivan?” Emmeryn blinks back her surprise. “No…you prefer Sully. You’ve come again?”She shrugs. “They wanted to send the new girl instead but her parents looked really upset, and so did Sumia and some of her other friends.” Her hand lifts to the back of her neck, a nervous, boyish habit that she’s picked up from Stahl or one of the other boys. “I figured, since nobody else really wanted to, that I might as well volunteer.” It sounds stupid when she says it aloud.“I see,” says the Faerie Queen as she purses her lips. “This is…highly irregular, for a tithe.”“I’m sorry,” she says automatically. Emmeryn’s look of displeasure reminds Sully of the way her schoolteacher's daughter so often looks at her. Miriel always gets an immediate apology too, with that look. “But I didn’t really count as a tithe last time, did I?” Nor had she counted the first time.The Faerie Queen tilts her head, neither in acceptance nor dismissal of the observation. She’s silent for a while. Then, “How old are you now, Sully?”“I’ll be nineteen in December,” she says, wondering if it would be too familiar to call Emmeryn by her name.“Are you excited for your birthday?”“I am,” she says, trying to seem nonchalant. “Do faeries celebrate birthdays too?”“Some of us,” replies the Faerie Queen. There’s a faint smile on her lips. “Would you like to celebrate your birthday with myself and my faeries?”The question feels…laced with something. She doesn’t trust it, not fully. Emmeryn feels different too. More sure of herself, and strong. She shrugs and keeps her half-smile on her face, not trusting herself to answer right. Long blonde curls dance in the breeze. “You know, my father was the Faerie King before me, and his great, great, great grandfather started the tithe with your village.” Sully keeps a straight face. Is she supposed to engage with that? “I’ve never liked the idea of the tithe. It’s selfish of us.”“What happens to the youths you take?”The Faerie Queen fixes her with a look that’s both stern and comforting. “I would not know. My father was not one for spectacle, though we would often see the humans roaming freely, for a time.”“You haven’t taken anyone?”“You were the first offering made to me,” says the Faerie Queen by way of an answer. “…the only one.”Sully stares at her then, at the sunlight of her hair and the cream and green of her flowing dress. “Why did you help us?”“What do you mean?”“The mine…the crops…that wouldn’t have happened without a helping hand of some kind.” The Faerie Queen quirks an eyebrow. “I know I’m not the best student, but even I knew that there was magic at hand when things started…being that good.”The Faerie Queen glides along the forest floor, and it is only then that Sully sees how far they’ve gone through the trees. “I should think a thank you would be my due,” she says, the soft timbre of her voice buzzing all around the forests.“You have my thanks, at least,” Sully says, another automatic response.“Do I?“What is this place?”The Faerie Queen’s lips quirk. Just a little. “The forest.”“Where in the forest, Your Majesty?”“This is where your world meets mine, Sully. Would you like to see the Faerie kingdom?”She wants to, oh, she wants to. But if she goes, there is no coming back. “Won’t I lose myself? Become so addled I cannot find my way no matter where I go? I can’t defend myself against that!”“You are safe from anything with the blessing of a Faerie Queen,” says the glorious woman. Her lips press against Sully’s forehead as they had once before—Sully remembers that now. When the Faerie Queen’s lips brush across both cheeks she blushes; that’s something completely new. “Now, will you come with me?”Sully knows she should say no, can half-remember ways to defer politely, without triggering a faerie's volatile wrath. The Faerie Queen’s hand looks soft, inviting, reaching for her. She closed her eyes and puts her hand in the woman’s. The forest floor seems to drop away. *** The first rule the people of her village teach is that one must never, under any circumstances, accept the food a faerie gives. Sully breaks that rule within minutes of stepping inside the Faerie Queen’s citadel. The second they arrive, a large man with dark brown hair and eyes like hawthorn branches appears at the Faerie Queen’s side. “Welcome home, milady. And who is your companion?”“This is my guest,” says Emmeryn. “She is to be treated with the utmost respect.”“We will do our best to honour our beloved Lady’s guest,” says the man, his eyes boring into Sully’s. He hands her a mug full of some spiced cider, or perhaps it’s something completely different. Emmeryn’s eyes are watching, fonder than Sully had ever thought possible, and the Faerie Queen’s slender hands cover hers around the mug. The smile on Emmeryn’s face is tricky, hungry as the drink slides down Sully’s throat. The world around her spins. Snippets. That’s all she remembers.Spinning, dancing, talking, laughing. The food is filling, the men and women all chatty and beautiful.They make her feel beautiful.The Faerie Queen laughing, a princess with golden hair sitting at her side. Sisters? Then it’s Sully, sitting there, making Emmeryn laugh instead. Hawthorn eyes watching her with jealousy as she scoots closer; ungraceful, inelegant compared to all of them. She doesn’t care. Emmeryn eyes are soft, her lips softer. Her touch the softest of all as Sully soon comes to find. And her name, her name is so beautiful, as gorgeous as the rest of her. Emmeryn. Emmeryn. Emmeryn. Days of this, never stopping, each moment spinning, careening, whirring into the next with reckless abandon. Then one night, Sully stumbles. Reaches out. The walls are guiding her, pushing her. There’s a room, writing on a scroll as long as her legs and thicker, much thicker. A human lover for the Faerie Queen? One who will appear at the forest entrance willingly. Three meetings, a stone, the sky, the upheaval of the world. The death of the F—The Faerie Queen herself arrives, her eyes downcast as she takes in Sully’s messy, sloppy shape. “You should be going, Sully. This place is not good for you.”“I’m fine,” she slurs, knowing she’s not fine. Emmeryn freezes when she sees the scroll, takes it up in her graceful hands and rolls it away, hides it away. “Is that about you? Is that about me?”“It doesn’t matter, Sully. You are dying here.” She sounds pained,“I feel amazing.”“You are dying. My people have not had a human guest in so long that they’re taking more than they should. I cannot let you stay.”“You love me, somehow, that’s why.”The Faerie Queen freezes, then stoops just a little, lips stopping at Sully’s. “Faeries are not meant to love mortals, Sully. Surely you know that.”“Yet here we are.”“You are young, mortal, and naive,” says Emmeryn, but she presses her lips to Sully’s anyway. When they part, Sully feels tears on her cheeks. Not all of them hers. Emmeryn’s eyes are wet, her breathing ragged. She’s lying, and it’s hurting her. She’s not living her truth and it’s killing her. “I’m sending you back to the place you belong. Do not return to the forest. I shall end the tithe.”“Emmeryn stop, you’re hurting yourself. You’re hurting me.”“I cannot love a human without dooming them to death, so I cannot have you here.” Sully wakes up in her parents’ home, to the hovering faces of her family and friends.It’s been months, they tell her. A half year and more. Her birthday has come and gone. They’d thought she was dead.She tells them she’s fine, of course she’s not dead (though inside she feels that she might be). *** She wastes four years in the village, waiting, but nothing really changes. Things are stable now, and everything is fine. But she wants to be where Emmeryn is, in the Faerie Kingdom. She doesn’t know if she’s been enspelled, but she doesn’t believe she has been. The stone in her pocket thrums, as if it agrees with her, but that’s silly. A stone holds no power.At twenty-two she’s far too old to be considered a tithe—though, true to her word, Emmeryn has abolished the old agreement—but that doesn’t stop Sully from riding out to the forest. Though the village and the surrounding grasslands haven’t much changed, the forest itself looks gnarled and heartsick. Vines tangle, branches curl together jealously, and there is no clear way to the forest’s heart. Sully considers riding through, but her horse is a good one, and she does not think that either of them is ready to die just yet. That day, she decides to leave her village, to travel the world. Someone somewhere must know the secret. A way to get back to the Faerie Queen who’d saved her life and set her free but stolen her heart in exchange. She tells her parents she’s leaving, and they cry with relief. Perhaps thinking that the farther she is from the village, the safer she’ll be from the faeries.Not so, but they don’t need to know that.She searches high and low, never stopping for rest, always looking for something, for someone, for anyone to tell her what she most needs to know. Nobody has answers. Nobody seems to know. The faeries of the forests she visits are all so very different, with nothing the same from one group to the next. The adventure of her dreams is proving to be more and more of a nuisance than anything else, but she cannot rest.Not until she finds a way back to Emmeryn.She’s three years into her quest and hundreds of hundreds of miles away from her humble village when she meets a little girl who knows far too much. Granted, the little girl says she’s a dragon, and Sully is smarter than to question a child with pointed ears and violet eyes and the absolute sharpest teeth she’s ever seen on any living being.“You smell like a faerie,” says the dragon-child. “A powerful one too.” She’s playing with shiny pieces of things—semi-precious stones and glass shards and marbles.“What do you mean?” The only things she can smell are the persistent odours of dust and sweat that constantly harangue many a traveller such as herself.“You’re a human, you wouldn’t understand.” The dragon-child pauses in her playing. “It’s like you’re marked. Get it?”“No.”“You humans. All so dumb.” The dragon-child stares into Sully’s eyes. “Whatever faerie you got yourself tangled up in, there’s some prophecy about ‘em. They were meant to have you, you were meant to be theirs, and yet they stupidly let you go. To save you. But you won’t need to be saved if they claim you properly. You’ll become one of them.”Become…a faerie? “And what of my friends? My family?”“Human attachments will only last so long. Eventually they die. That’s how life works.”“But I can’t get into the forest!”The dragon-child eyes her, long and hard. “You have something in your pocket there that can do it.”Sully sticks her hand in her trouser pocket. Sumia’s stone. “It’s just a stone my childhood friend gave me.”“And you’ve carried it each time you’ve been with your faerie.”“...” It takes a week for it all to click, and by the end of it, the dragon-child is so exasperated that she demands to take Sully over the seas on her back, “so that you won’t waste any more time”. Gripping the stone in her fist, Sully agrees. It’s been eight years since she last saw Emmeryn, and she cannot wait any longer. She doesn’t visit her family, just heads straight for the forest. It looks even more sickly than it had before she’d left, and Sully hopes she isn’t too late. She stands at the entrance, watching the trees, but nobody comes out when she calls. Perhaps it’s her poor command of the faerie language, or perhaps nobody can hear her, but Sully gets the distinct feeling that she’s running out of time.She waits until nightfall, then decides that if she must, she’ll have to break down the lattice of vines and bark that keeps her from getting back to the faerie citadel.“Throw the stone, human,” says the dragon-child’s voice, and she does it without a complaint. Within seconds it looks like the forest is a tapestry of shattered glass, and Sully races through the doorway, hoping it will take her to the right place if she just thinks of Emmeryn hard enough. She doesn’t know where her stone went, but she doesn’t need it any more.She runs for what feels like hours, but with no way to see the sun through the overgrowth, she cannot be sure. She stumbles as her feet hit the streets of the citadel. A body blocks her view within seconds.“And what’s this?” The hawthorn-eyed manservant from before. “What are you doing here?”“I have come to see the Faerie Queen.”“My lady does not speak with mortals.”“She spoke with me all those times before. She did far more than that.”The manservant’s face twists into something jealous and far too ugly for his handsome features. “You are just a human, no matter that you made it here on your own. You cannot speak with her.”Sully fixes him with a glare. “Eight years ago I was blessed by Emmeryn, the Faerie Queen of this forest, and I will see her. Now.”The floor melts away, and then she’s sitting, holding Emmeryn’s hand in her own. The radiance of the Faerie Queen has diminished a great deal, but she is still the loveliest woman Sully has ever seen. Even now, propped against pillows and looking for all the world like an ailing mortal woman, she’s beautiful. “I’m here, Emmeryn.” The sigil on Emmeryn’s brow glows.The Faerie Queen’s eyes flutter open in surprise, but she does not ask questions. She had been the one to bless Sully all those years before. Surely she should have known this could happen. “You cannot be here. You will die, Sully.” Tears in her eyes. Sully had always been told that faeries could not cry. “Please. I cannot bear to watch you die.”“And you will die if I leave again.”“I cannot take your life from you.”“The forest needs you, Emmeryn, and I need you all the more.”“But—“I was a tithe,” Sully says slowly. “I was a sacrifice. One you did not take, though I came to you three times and offered you my life in exchange for a blessing for my village.”She laughs as the colour returns to Emmeryn’s cheeks, as acceptance of Sully’s love feeds her the strength she needs to combat the wasting sickness of her self-deceptions.“My life is yours, entirely.”Emmeryn’s smile is sunlight against the bluest sky. “Then, by the blessing of the Faerie Queen,” she whispers, pulling Sully close, “be mine.” And Sully is.