This is the third lesson:

Never offer faeries any kindness.

They will take it from you and pay it back in cruelty one hundredfold.

I was at the time only Niamh Wicklighter, born Niamh of Conamara, now wretched and nameless since Mother had died and her father turned us out. He had never liked our own father - a mere watchmaker of mean birth, he’d said, who Mother had only loved for his clever fingers and cleverer wit, the way magpies love cheap trinkets. He could never have been Lord Conamara, no matter how handsome the watches he made or how fine the silks Mother dressed him in.

It had been sixteen years since I’d even seen Conamara Hall. Still, I drew upon all the haughty pride and disdain of the mantle I’d never had the chance to bear, and I looked the strange man in the eyes and said, “You’ll do no such thing.”

I still had the iron spit in my hands. It would’ve done me no good, I knew, if he’d wanted to kill me. I was not Eire with her knives and arrows and her quick hand and sharp eye. I had spent all these years playing at being the lady of the house in hopes some passing petty lord or rich merchant would take notice and marry me, that I might be able to drag us up out of the sorry backwater where we’d found ourselves. I was soft, therefore - soft and pale and weak, at least Eire thought so; I knew from the looks she dared to cast my way whenever she got the rare courage to do more than skulk and snivel. I told her she was only jealous because she’d never had the chance to be brought up right and taught to read and do numbers the way Mother had done for me, the way I did then for Aislin. That wasn’t fair, I knew, for it was my fault for never having taught Eire, but I hated her for never so much as trying to be a lady, and told myself that shunning her was a fair reward.

Still, soft though I was, I was fierce. Not Eire’s sort of fierce - not tooth and fang and blood and steel - but the kind of fierce that had me matching his gaze without blinking, eye to eye, chin up and shoulders down, drawn up to my full height - still hardly up to his throat, and dwarfed by the crown of antlers that graced his brow, but seeming to look down upon him anyway, or so I hoped.

He only smiled, and I hated how charming his smile was, for all that it was full of sharp points and deadly promise.

“Oh?” he said. “And how do you mean to stop me?”

I hefted the spit. He only raised a graceful, mocking brow.

In truth, my head was spinning. I could hardly believe what he’d come to say in the first place - Eire could not possibly have killed a fae; the legends said they were deadly, and how could something that terrible be felled by one girl? Besides, the Wall was built to keep them out, all those ages ago, and despite Mother’s warnings I’d come to doubt that any of them could have stepped foot past it for ages since. But here he was, and he was fae himself, without doubt, from the tips of his antlers to his beautiful, unearthly smile. And if he was here, then what of the Wall? I didn’t know enough to question him, but I knew something was wrong.

But I knew this much: A fae’s word is ironclad. Promises and debts and covenants - the Covenant - are not just courtesies; for them, they are life and death. If we said no to his offer, he would have no choice but to leave.

I said, “She hasn’t agreed to go with you.”

He looked at my sister.

“Is that so?” he said. “You won’t be my bride?”

Trembling, wide-eyed, Aislin looked like nothing so much as a doe caught in the moment before the hunter’s arrow reached her. I didn’t think she had the wits about her to speak just then, but she shook her head and said, in the smallest voice, “I - I don’t know.”

How could she not know? Of course she couldn’t go with him. We didn’t have much, but what little we did have was all here, in Avon, with Father and me and the remnants of what Mother left to us outside of Conamara. And Aislin was so young, so innocent. How could she have managed herself alone with a strange, terrible, beautiful man - let alone a fae?

“Well,” said the fae, “that is a disappointment. I’ll go.”

And he turned away and stalked off into the snow.

Aislin said, “Wait.”

He stopped. Around him I saw that the snow, too, had stopped: not that the storm had abated, but that in a little space around him, there simply was no snow, as if it simply didn’t fall where he stepped.

“You must be very cold,” said my foolish, sweet sister. “And tired. Perhaps you’d like to come in for tea.”

We had no tea. We had used the last of it for Father when he’d had a coughing fit two weeks ago, and even if we’d had any left, it was only sorry strips of bark soaked in hot water given an awful, bitter taste. Nothing fit for a fae (if anything was, for Mother’s stories said they liked strange and terrible things - birds’ wings torn from their roots, shimmering insect skins, teeth without mouths and eyes without faces).

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

But the man smiled and said, “Of course. How kind of you.”

I said, “No. You can’t.”

He shook his head. “She invited me,” he said. “I can’t refuse that.”

“She didn’t ask you to come in,” I said quickly. “She only said you might like it.”

For an instant his face flashed hot with fury, and I was truly afraid that I’d done it, made him angry enough to do away with the strange fae rules about words and promises and force his way into our cottage, to take my sister away whether she wanted it or not. But he said, “Clever, bright one. May I come in?”

I said, “No,” while at the same time Aislin said, “Yes.”

He smiled. “Excellent,” he said, and stepped over the threshold.

At once the fire roared to life in the hearth, and as soon as the door shut behind him the drafts inside were gone; the chill had disappeared. But that wasn’t all. Where his feet met the ground, flowers bloomed, little white blossoms that made a thick carpet and burst outward, over the floorboards, up the walls and around the rafters. They bloomed from his antlers, too, and petals drifted off and settled along the newly verdant crevices. I heard Aislin gasp softly. It was beautiful. It was wrong.

He strode to the big chair by the fire - the one Father took with us from Conamara, the one he used to sit in when he’d been well - and draped himself over it, graceful and careless. His deerskin folded over the back. I saw that it, too, had come alive with flowers - no, not flowers: a living blanket of clearwings and moths, jewel-toned wings and eye-spots, a dizzying array of color and movement. No one seeing it could possibly have denied any longer that he was not of this world.

I looked at Aislin and saw that she was stricken, utterly enchanted.

Eyes fixed on the fire, he said, “So, now that you see my magic, you know I could bring you warmth if you asked for it. But you won’t be my bride - is that right?”

Aislin started to speak, but I was quicker. “You shouldn’t even be here,” I said. “The Wall - how did you cross it?”

A fae must answer a question asked of them directly; he knew this and so did I, and the look of distaste that flickered over his face filled me with satisfaction. “There was another who crossed it first, and I followed their path,” he said.

That meant little to me, but I didn’t care. I only needed to keep him talking until I could convince Aislin not to speak to him at all - the more she answered him, the more dangerous she made it for herself, my sweet, foolish Aislin.

“You said Eire killed one of your kind,” I said. “Was this one the one who crossed first?”

A smile spread on his face. “Yes,” he said. “So her name is Eire, is it?”

“That doesn’t matter. Tell me - is she dead too?”

He scowled. “No,” he said, and then, before I could say anything else, he turned to Aislin and offered his hand. The tines on his antlers had grown long and sharp; the clearwings were withering from his back. The flowers at his feet and on our walls had turned red. “You love her, don’t you?” he said. “You don’t want her to come to any harm, do you?”

Aislin said, “I don’t.”

She was trembling, and I knew she was only saying it out of fear, but I didn’t think fae distinguished between that and things said out of true desire.

I picked up the iron spit again. It was in vain. The end of it was dull, and I couldn’t undo my sister’s word with iron.

“Will you be my bride, then, and make sure your sister stays safe?” said the faerie, his eyes as bright as the fire that roared behind him.

I saw it in her eyes: She would. She would say yes, against everything Mother had taught me - everything I had taught her - because having told her of the dangers of the fae was one thing, and staring one down, telling him no, was another.

In a flash I knew what I had to do, and it sickened me.

I stepped forward. I set the spit down against my hip. I said, “I will.”

The fae looked at me, and I saw genuine surprise in his beautiful, terrible face.

“I will be your bride,” I said. Saying it was like chewing whole cloves - sickly sweet, bitter and burning. I pushed on: “Trade me for our sister. I’ll go with you instead.”

Aislin was staring at me too, open-mouthed and stricken. I dared not look at her; looking would have broken my heart. Instead, I fixed my gaze on the fae and willed up all the iron that Lady Conamara would’ve had, and I said, “ Take me.”

The fae hesitated. Him, fae! - left speechless by a mere girl. I was afraid, mortally afraid, but I willed myself not to let it show; I clenched my hands into fists and thought of Aislin, sweet Aislin - my dear little sister - and of his antlers and his sharp teeth against her soft, weak flesh, and I didn’t look away.

My sister clapped both hands over her mouth. On the walls the flowers opened, withered, shut and bloomed again, and the moths on his shoulders fluttered their wings like so many blinking eyes. But the fae was quiet and still. He was considering, I realized, and my heart beat fast, for I was both terribly eager and terrified, all at once.

“All right,” he said at last, and it was done - just like that. I blinked, turned to look at my sister, and she wasn’t there. Nothing was. The whole cottage was gone. There was only the carpet of flowers - above and below and all around, thicker than ever, pulsing a sordid rainbow of colors.

There was the fae, suddenly at my side. The antlers on his brow had grown and spread, heavy and mocking, over my head; dark strands of hair and burgeoning moss alike festooned each tine. “Well then, my bride,” he said, “I didn’t think you’d agree so fast. Shall we celebrate?”

The taste of cloves scorched my mouth. The spit was still in my hands. I leveled it at him and said, “Give me my sister back, right now.”

He arched an eyebrow. “I haven’t done anything with your sister. We’ve gone elsewhere.”

“Take me back, then,” I said. “I still need to speak with her.”

My heart was pounding, but not from fear anymore. I was angry. These were the fae tricks my mother had warned me of all those years ago, and I wasn’t going to let him make off with it. The iron was warm and heavy in my grip. My ears thundered; in that moment I was ready to abandon every pretense of being Mother’s lady daughter and resort to tearing his lovely, terrible antlers off with my bare hands, the way I imagined Eire might have, if only she were there.

But the fae only smiled - and this time there was no taunt to it. He looked sad.

“Oh, bright one,” he said, “I can’t. Your sister will never be able to see you again - for as long as your little mortal life lasts. You’re one of ours now.”