24. Homecoming

"Focus your mind on the place you need to find," Two says on a heavy sigh, his tone so different from One's—impatient and dry.

The runes I've drawn on my wrist should allow me to return home. I ply the glass of the sceawere between my fingers and my lower arm but only manage to glimpse at the wrong bedroom, my queen-size bed undulating beyond the surface of the glass. "That's my room here in Faerie," I say, frustrated.

Two lets out a low chortle. "You used ‘Fae' and ‘Faerie,' are you really surprised?"

I shake out my shoulders and grip the handle of the inked paintbrush, quickly drawing "a lack of" next to the other runes and switching some things around.

Two clicks his tongue, his annoyance palpable. "That's sloppy at best. Dangerous. You'd probably end up anywhere in the old world or the new."

"What should it be, then?" I snap. "Teach me."

He shakes his head. "What it'd be for me is immensely different to what it'd be for you."

"How does that make sense?"

"If you sang a song longing to return home to the castle you grew up in, how could it be the same song I'd sing to visit a drab building in a strange land filled with superstitious fools?"

I punch his upper arm as hard as I can, but my obnoxious tutor only flashes me his teeth.

"Come on, now. Focus."

I stop trying to make a sentence and think of music. Music isn't brains, it's guts, and so I hit "heart" and "flame" and concentrate on Cece.

The mirror in front of us ripples into the basement of my father's castle. Yes! Victory!

Two blinks a few times, clearly surprised by my breakthrough. "Hmm. Not bad."

"That seems to be the only compliment you know."

The grumpy pout on his face is sweeter than chocolate, and I do a little happy dance. The new inked rune smudges my arms, the ink we use for runes clearly not as magic as the one used on paper. "I get why I don't have tattoos, but most of the others only have a few. It's clearly a pain to redraw the runes every time, I'm sure."

Especially since a wonky-looking rune could leave an imprudent traveler stranded in another world.

"Permanent runes are earned. One by one." He motions for me to shoo. "I trust you can find your way back in fourteen days?"

I offer him a wry grin. "As long as you don't enchant me to forget."

"No enchantments needed. You know the rules. If you fail to show up…"

"I know. You win. I lose…and I can't know more. Got it."

He cracks up, the smile more genuine than any previous smile adorned by his beautiful mouth. "This bet was really rigged in our favor, wasn't it?"

"Absolutely."

My heart stumbles. Two is worlds apart from One. He doesn't have the same voice, the same temperament, or even the same facial expressions, but no matter how many times I remind myself of that, my body disagrees. After last night in the gym… I won't let One forsake me so easily.

"Anything else?" Two asks, his brows raised in question.

I shake off the nerves and turn my back to him, erasing him from my vision. "No, I'm good." I slip on my mask and step through the glass, leaving Two and his sarcastic quips behind.

It's early in the morning, so my father's castle is bustling with activity, but my powers have grown, so I stay easily out of sight, using the shadows in the foliage of the gardens and the dark corners of the castle to skip to my room to change. I open the door—I asked Esme to leave it unlocked this time around—to find Cece crying on my bed.

The surprise pulls me out of the shadows, and we both gasp in unison.

She clutches the letter she's holding. "I couldn't reach you in Faerie, Nell. I'm sorry."

My current thoughts vanish at the obvious anguish in her voice, her red eyes quickening my pulse. "What's going on? Is it Father? Esme?"

She shakes her head, her cheeks flushed, and wipes her tears off with the sleeve of her lavender dress. "No." She hands over the crumpled letter. "I opened your letter. I know you warned me never to open them, but Mathilda Haysting wrote to you while you were gone. Firenze cut his leg, and it got infected… I think they're going to put him down soon. They were holding out for you, but Father told them you were very sick."

"You did good, Cece." I kiss her forehead. "Come on, we have no time to waste."

"You mean?—"

"Let's go!" I hurriedly trade my huntress uniform for a dress.

Esme enters the room, her nose wrinkled on a sad, hopeless grimace. "I was afraid you'd say that… I already asked the king if we could go, and he said no. Besides…the Haystings have probably already cut the poor horse's suffering short."

"Where is he?" I ask Cece.

"His office. But?—"

Seeing red, I storm out of the room.

"Miss Penny, please take a moment to think," Esme shouts behind me.

Climbing down the stairs two at a time, I hurry past the main hall and the confused guards to reach the end of the southern corridor. Before they can come to their senses, I barrel through the closed doors of Father's office with a confidence that would have eluded me in the past, but I won't let Firenze die. Not on my watch.

My bravado fizzles out faster than a falling star as I take in the sight of the two diplomats sitting opposite my father. Oh no… I certainly interrupted an important meeting.

The men's deep frowns cause me to slow down, but I straighten up my skirt and walk to the king with my head held high. "Please excuse my ghastly interruption, Father, but I have an urgent matter to discuss with you."

Father clears his throat loudly, a fierce red tint sticking to his cheeks and nose. "Please give us a moment."

The men look a bit cross as they step out of the office the same way I came, and I wait for the thick doors to close behind them before saying, "I want to go to the Haysting's farm and heal Firenze."

Father's eyes narrow, and he slowly rises to his feet, his gaze angled to the side like he'd rather look at the empty wall than his own daughter. "Urgent would be you or your sister risking death or disgrace. Urgent would be news of a rebellion in the kingdom, or a declaration of war from our neighbors. A horse dying is not a good reason to barge in here as though you're some savage, uneducated child. Women are not allowed in here, as you well know. "

"You're right. I apologize," I say, mostly to appease him. "Be that as it may…I think Firenze's condition is worth my attention. And time is of the essence."

He waves my concerns away with a mean, dismissive gesture. "Silly girl. It's only a horse."

My teeth clench. "I want to go."

"Me too." Cece runs inside the room, a desperate Esme clutching her skirts to slow her down.

"Now, girls, you shouldn't talk to your father this way," Esme says in a chastising but hesitant manner. Our Fae governess sways from side to side like she doesn't quite know which leg to stand on.

Father looks at Cece and Esme in turn, but he still won't look directly at me, and his stubbornness is a direct dart to the heart. He gambled away my freedom—to a Fae king, no less—and condemned me to this half-and-half fate. I don't truly belong to either world while I live out his contract, and he should find the courage to look me in the eyes.

"If you don't arrange a carriage right now, I'll go alone," I say quickly, my chin held high.

Father chuckles unkindly. "And how do you propose to do that without my help? Do you have your own money, or your own horse?"

My jaw clenches in the angriest line it has ever known. "I don't need money. I can walk there. Through the mirror you keep downstairs." I'm not sure I could find the Summer house in the sceawere, but I could find my way back to Faerie and beg One or even Two to take me there.

Father's face becomes white as a sheet. "What did you just say?"

"You heard me."

His already red face turns almost purple. "If you can walk through mirrors, you're no daughter of mine!" he shouts before whipping his head around to look at Esme. "You told me she wouldn't become one of these crawling, disgusting creatures. You swore there was no way she could be transformed into a Fae."

I jerk away, terrified of what he might do.

Cece gawks at me, her pupils wide and deep, but I don't detect a hint of fear in them. In fact, if I had to describe the fire in her eyes with one word, it wouldn't be sadness or disgust or fright. More like unabashed curiosity. Even…excitement.

Esme clears her throat loudly after a moment of quiet reflection. "Do not worry, Your Grace. This is nothing but an empty teenage threat." She looks down her nose at me, her best haughty governess voice on full display. "Say it's not true, Miss Penny. Admit that you've made up this unspeakable lie to upset your father so he would cave in to your silly demand, and I will accompany you to visit the horse." She wets her lips, her keen intelligence shining in her eyes. "By the Mother, tell the truth, and I swear that I will get you there today."

I know what she's doing. It's clever. She gets to pacify Father by coaxing a false apology out of me, and if he decides we can't go regardless, she can cite her formal promise as a reason to find a different way to punish me.

A Demeter woman knows never to swear on our Mother's head, but Esme can pass it off as a foreigner faux-pas. Despite the fact that she's lived here for decades, she can claim she didn't know any better.

Thank you, I try to convey with my eyes.

She offers me a discrete nod.

Father will punish me. He'll think of something I would have found dreadful in the past to assert his authority, but no punishment could truly impact me anymore. If he takes away my books, I can get new ones from Faerie. If he grounds me, great! It doesn't matter because I'll be a social pariah for at least another season anyway. And if he decides to punish me physically, the way he did after mother died…I can always sneak out of the castle without being seen.