Never take a gift from the fae.

Every blessing of theirs is also a curse:

No rose without its thorns.

The night the fae took Niamh, your life as you knew it was gone.

You didn’t understand why she’d left you, or where the bastard had taken her, or what he’d done. She was there and then gone, and so were all the flowers and the fire and the son-of-a-bitch fae. It was like waking from a bad dream - but you had been awake from the start. It was your fault, too. You barely understood why you’d let him in in the first place. You regretted that you had; you hated that you had. You didn’t understand.

You spent that night on the floor by the empty hearth. You didn’t even cry. You shivered. You grew cold, deathly cold. You didn’t notice.

In the morning came sunshine and the sound of birds, and you were rooted to the same spot on the floor. Now it sank in what had really happened, and that it wasn’t a dream, and you cried and gnashed your teeth and tore lines down your arms with your fingernails and prayed that she’d come back, and then that the gods would take pity on you and kill you then and there, somehow, impossibly. But Niamh did not come back, and you still lived, and you still didn’t get up.

You hated yourself. You hated Niamh for going with him, and you missed her, and you hated that you missed her, and you bit your tongue till it bled, and still you understood nothing.

The sun rose and fell, and night came, and there you stayed.

On the second day you were roused by a murmur from outside. You couldn’t bear to get yourself up and go to the door, but you lifted yourself enough to peer through the window, and there you saw what seemed to be half the village crowding in the square, and around them, the melting sunlit shapes of all their houses, half-covered still with snow.

Nobody came to your door even then; nobody knocked. It was just as well, though, for you were still mad with grief, and would not have answered.

On the third day, in the middle of a deep and dreamless sleep, you heard your own name called.

You didn’t want to answer this, either. You wanted to keep sleeping, you knew even in the midst of your sleep. But it came again, and then again, and by then the sound had fragmented your stillness too much for you to ignore.

Still half-asleep, you rose and followed: up the ladder, to the lofted attic, where your father slept. It was bright in the cottage, too bright, but the gloom up here soothed your eyes.

There was Papa on his cot, wrapped in the big blanket you three sisters had made for him three winters ago (Eire had hunted the ram whose wool you’d used; you had spun and dyed it; Niamh had knitted it with big, bright colors and shapes), where he always slept, day and night. Only he wasn’t sleeping. He was awake.

“Aislin,” he said, his voice thin but clear. “Aislin, my love, you’re here.”

This, too, you did not understand, even though it was the clearest he’d spoken in a year.

You didn’t ask him anything, though. You only let out a sob and sank into his arms, and he held you - with arms still weak, but stronger than they’d been - and whispered your name against your hair, over and over.

At last he pulled back a little and tilted your face up so he could see you, and he wiped the tears from your cheeks while you struggled to breathe. His gaze too was somehow, impossibly, clear. Here was the shrewd, piercing green regard of Arcturo Meomás - best watchmaker either side of the Emerald Sea - as he had been in his youth, not the cataracted eyes of the sick, slurring man you’d cared for this past year. He was really, truly awake this time, you understood, and that made you hot with tears all over again.

But his brow was furrowed. He said, “Aislin, I don’t understand. Has spring really come already? Have I slept for so long?”

This you also did not understand. You followed his gaze to the windows below, where the sun spilled through in buttery golden sheets. And there, at last, you saw what everyone else in the little village of Avon had come out to marvel at: the snow was gone, the sky was blue and cloudless, and the ground was thick with dew-sweet grass and flowers of every color you could imagine. Never mind that it was still winter, or should have been.

That is what all the laughter and singing and noise was about, then, and how could you blame them? It was breathtakingly lovely. It was a miracle the likes of which Avon had never witnessed before, and how could anyone bear to ask how it could even be when it saved you all?

You climbed down, heart in your throat, and peered out the window, hardly believing it yourself.

There was Alba Harrowe, knee-high in a thicket of blooming clover and mint, grinning ear to ear, her two little boys on her shoulders; there were Aoife and Rowan Hale, arms around each other, kneeling wonderingly before the big ash in the middle of the square, dark branches pocked green with newly budding leaves. Old Mag was perched on the roof of the shrine. In one hand she held up a carven Finn’s-crown, and with the other she made the sign of the raven over and over, and she wept. Below her the skin of ice over the well had broken and fresh water spilled from the big pails the Quilles carried, and someone had brought a goat out to graze.

Already they were picking the flowers that grew in the square and garlanding their houses with them. The air was thick with fragrance. Part of you yearned to go out and join them (even if you were not really one of them , not the way they looked at you).

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But Niamh was not among them.

A chill settled in your stomach. All this impossible beauty was nothing without her, your Niamh, your own lovely Niamh. You swallowed hard; your throat was tight and painful. You looked back at your father, who looked up at you, and his smile faded.

“Aislin,” he said, “what’s troubling you? Tell me.”

Your heart twisted, a sudden, sharp pain. He didn’t know; of course he didn’t. He’d been asleep. The tautness in your throat grew. You went to his bed again and knelt, and you squeezed his hand tight. A sob welled up in your chest; fiercely, the way Niamh might’ve, you tried to fight it back so that the words would come to you instead. But what words could you have for this?

“Papa,” you managed at last, “Niamh is gone.” At his furrowed brow: “Niamh’s been taken. By a - by a terrible man, he - ”

He shook his head slowly, still frowning.

“Niamh?” he said.

You nodded desperately.

He took your chin in his hands again. There was that strong, steady grip, the grip he shouldn’t have had, for he’d lost it the year of the fever that had also taken Hart Harrowe. But this was no dream. “Aislin,” he said, “mei amora, tell me, who do you mean?”

You shook your head. You didn’t understand. He remembered you now. Surely he hadn’t forgotten your sisters.

“Niamh,” you said again, and then, all in a rush, “There was a man with antlers who came and said - Eire’s done something terrible, he said that he’d help us if we paid the price - that he wanted me for a bride, and there were flowers everywhere, Papa, flowers in here, and they were white, but then he grew angry and they turned red, and I was so scared, but Niamh - ”

You were crying again. Papa gathered you close, and you smelled sleep on him, and the scent of the must on the blanket he slept in, but none of the sharp tang of sickness, not anymore.

“My love,” he murmured, “you must be still a little bit asleep. You’re speaking nonsense, mei etrela.”

You pushed him back and looked him in the eyes.

“I’m not asleep,” you said, and then, sharper, “ Niamh is gone, Papa .”

At that, a deep, slow sadness came over Papa’s face, and your heart leapt: now he understood, you thought. Now he remembered.

“Aislin,” he said, “my girl, my only flower - I don’t know who you’re naming.”

That was enough. You shook your head, and then, even though he was reaching out for you again, you pulled away and let go of his hand and turned and got up from his bed. You climbed down the ladder and pushed open the door and stormed out, into the sunshine.

The people of your village hardly looked at you as you wove through them. You were only the Wicklighters to them, the abandoned dregs of a noble house across the channel whom they neither knew of nor cared for, probably fae-cursed (for Avon was superstitious, and whispers of the fae flew thick and fast here, never mind that there had been no fae past the Wall since it had been raised - till now, of course). It was better luck not to look at you. Ordinarily you liked it that way; you were a timid little thing, always hidden behind Niamh’s skirts, and Niamh told you you were too pretty for them to have anyway. (That really might have been true, for you were indeed lovely to look at.) Today, though, you needed them to see you, and they did not. Because of the Wicklighter curse or because of the beauty of the little summer that had sprung up around you - which eclipsed even your own prettiness - you couldn’t say.

Your heart was in your mouth, fluttering like a caged bird; you willed up courage anyway. You slipped over to Alba Harrowe and tapped her shoulder, and when she did not turn, you tapped again.

At that, she started and looked back. When she saw you, her friendly, ruddy face went from joy to surprise and then shut in on itself a little, that same careful guarding nearly all of them did - even the Harrowes - when a Wicklighter girl came to visit.

“Ah!” she said, coughing. “Arcturo’s girl… Something the matter, love?”

Everything was the matter. Everything was wrong. This untimely spring, your missing sisters -

She was frowning now. “Why, love, you don’t look good at all. Is it your father again?”

You were afraid of the sudden tension in her jaw. She might have been thinking of her husband - Hart Harrowe - and the way he’d gone after trying to help Papa last winter.

“Ma, let her speak,” said Rand, who had pushed up behind Alba, even bigger and ruddier than she was. He looked at you and smiled, dimpled and freckled, and your heart eased a little. “Go on, Aislin.”

The folk here never used your name; the shock of it made you blush. But you managed to get out: “Niamh is missing.”

Rand and Alba looked at each other.

“Love,” said Alba, “who do you mean?”

Your heart dropped. You looked at Rand, whose brow was furrowed, now, too.

Rand said, “Say it again.”

“Niamh,” you pleaded. “Niamh and Eire, my sisters.”

Alba shook her head slowly.

“My girl,” she said, “what do you mean, sisters? Ain’t it only you and Arcturo?”

You were helpless. You wanted to cry or scream or shout, but no words came to you. You were beginning to choke on tears again. You looked at Rand, and he shook his head, too, and he looked as helpless as you felt.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and might have gone on, but you turned and ran and were lost in the crowd in a moment.

You ran and ran, past your heedless neighbors and the garish flowers and the budding trees and the grass. There was birdsong all around you, loud and bright and terrible. The earth was sweet and soft and tugged at your feet as you ran. You needed to find a quiet place and sink into it, and you’d find that, you knew, past the cottages and plots of land (where all the fruits and crops that should have been dead now were, impossibly, sprouting up again), past the edge of Avon itself, where Avon River cut a deep, dark rift that split the forest from the town. In your madness you thought that maybe if you lay down in the woods and gave yourself up to the moss and roots, the fae would come back to steal away your body, too, and you’d find your way back to Niamh.

But when you came to the river, it was too wide and too deep. In winter it had been iced over solid, but now, having melted (the fae’s gift, surely - no, the fae’s curse), fat with snow made water, it roared past you at breakneck speed, as black as night and scattered with floes of ice like so many stars. You looked at it and saw how sharp the ice was; it would cut you open in a heartbeat. And the current was swift and merciless.

You sank to your knees at the verdant edge of the bank and shook with sobs. Nothing made sense. Though you knew the village did not like you or your family, you’d thought surely they’d at least remember Niamh, with her sharp green eyes and her commanding voice and stride (Lady Conamara, you’d always imagined her, though you remembered too little of Conamara Hall itself to really know what that meant). They’d known her before. Of that you were certain.

It came to you then, one of the legends Niamh had recounted to you: a fae maiden who, jilted by the woman she loved, had brought winter early upon her whole village and made her own sisters forget her face and name.

You sat up. The hard little knot in your gut bloomed into a thicket of thorns, and you had only been angry once before in your life, but now you were furious. He had made them forget Niamh, and all they’d ever know was that he’d blessed them with the end of winter. Nobody remembered your sisters anymore but you.

With that, your rage blossomed wholly and bore fruit: you had never chosen your destiny before this, but Niamh was not there to stop you anymore. You saw what you would do (had to do, for nothing else could mend your shattered heart) as clearly as if it was written in the earth before you. Your destiny was this: You, Aislin, youngest and softest and sweetest of the Wicklighter girls, favorite child of Papa’s, would go out alone to find the rest of his daughters, or leave him with none at all.

If only you could have known how it would end.