If a fae seems to offer you kindness,

turn it away.

They wreak nothing but ill devices upon mortal men.

For a long time Eire dreamed of nothing but darkness, for there was nothing but darkness for her.

Slowly the darkness took form and became a twilight between waking and sleep. In this half-dreaming she felt that she had roots, and that these roots went deep into an endless, rough ground, deeper and rougher than any heath or moor. She was uncertain of who she was, or what, but at least she did not hurt. She didn’t feel bad at all, in fact. There was no cold; there was light, a strange pale gleaming that bathed her and made her feel at peace. And there was a whispering like wind - but wind did not shape words and call her home by name: Eire, Eire, Eire .

There was movement, too: the darkness beneath her rolled slowly like waves in a sea, but no sea was warm and solid like this. Nor did the sea breathe in deep, even sighs, nor was it clad in a pelt as soft and vast as the earth itself.

She was sad, she found. There was a deep and gentle melancholy that had worked its way into herself. She wanted to reach deeper into that darkness and root herself so tightly that nothing could pull her back from it, and sleep forever, but the more it went on, the more she found something tugging her back. Eire , it whispered, wake up .

Mother? she wanted to say, but could not, for she had no voice.

The darkness answered: No, little one, your mother is not here.

This was no whisper; this was a voice, real and proper, though deep and slow and rich, more like the rumble of falling rocks or the rushing of a river than anything Eire knew.

What was it, if not anyone from the life she knew - from her old life in the big house on the cliff by the sea, or her later one in Avon? She tried to open the lids of her eyes, but if she still had them, they were too heavy to move. The darkness was whole and unyielding.

Do not worry about who I am, said the darkness, as if it heard. Worry about who you are, and where. You have a long journey ahead. Open your eyes. Wake up.

And then she was awake.

Here it was still dark, and she still felt as if she had roots. But the darkness shifted slightly, and then a little more, and then she made out trees - not the slender birches and snowy pines around Avon Town but big hulking things that loomed out of the shadows, far bigger than anything she’d ever seen before. And through them was light, the pale yellow of early morning, but only a little, for the trees were so vast and close together that hardly anything slipped past their long limbs. Around their trunks swirled gray mist that seemed to deaden even the sound of her own heartbeat.

For she had a heartbeat. She was not dead, then.

She was rooted, and there was something carrying her through the trees. With one hand she felt a mass of woody stems that twisted around her legs and up her waist, pinning her against the thing beneath her, no matter how she tried to struggle out of it. And what was beneath her breathed in long, slow waves, just as she’d dreamed it, and when she reached out her fingers met with fur, impossibly thick and deep, deeper than any pelt she’d ever hunted and skinned, deeper even than the wolf she had killed in the snow-stricken woods.

She could not wholly see it, whatever it was. The strange brambles that held her down didn’t let her twist her head far enough to look at anything beyond a vast, shifting mountain of fur, a rolling peak that suggested perhaps a shoulder blade, though one far bigger than any she’d ever seen before. But she could hear it, and when she dug her fingers into that impossibly thick pelt and pulled, the creature’s breathing changed, and then she heard the beast speak.

The beast said, “Stop yanking my fur.”

This too was not a voice any mortal creature she’d heard would have. It was something like a man’s voice - rich and deep and almost sweet - but there was another part to it entirely that made it not a man’s voice at all: for he didn’t just speak, he growled.

It was not a growl the way she’d heard Hart Harrowe once growl (when he’d still been alive) over a field of crops full of ergot and rot, nor of a man faced with his lover’s lover. It was a beast’s growl, guttural and strange, and under it lay stranger sounds still - the murmur of wind through branches, the rustling of leaves and undergrowth, the chittering of beetles and the whine of hummingbird wings in spring. It was a thousand different things all put together and only a little part of them was anything she knew. And it came, unmistakably, from the creature underneath her.

All along her spine and the backs of her arms, her hair rose up.

Any other day she’d have been afraid. But she was Eire Wicklighter - Eire Conamara, if not for her mother’s cruel father - and she had already looked death in the eye one winter night before this and not blinked.

She said, “Who are you?”

For a long moment the beast did not reply. She listened to the sound of that great heavy breathing - like distant thunder, like a quiet sea - and the swaying of the shoulders beneath her almost lulled her back into that sleepless dark.

Just when she thought maybe she’d dreamed it - for what beast could really talk? - that voice said, “I am your enemy, and you have killed my friend.”

She knew what that meant, of course. That was the wolf - the fae in the guise of a wolf - who had lunged at her in the forest. A hot lance of defiance ran through her, and she said, “Your friend tried to kill me first.”

The beast said nothing.

“I never wanted to die,” she said. “It was me or him.”

“You were hunting for the same deer,” said the beast. “You would have killed him for it if he had not struck first.”

This was true. She would have, for what else would her sisters and father have eaten? They’d used up the last of their roots already, had gotten close to the end of the bark they could strip from birches, and the winter had been so harsh that even the Harrowes had turned them away.

“You did not even take the deer to eat,” said the beast.

How could she have? She’d had no time to stop and carve up any of it herself. She’d been too afraid of the spreading white flowers and the ichor and the grasping brambles. And she could hardly have brought the corpse to her family; she’d have doomed them to the same curse, of that she was certain.

But she said, “I didn’t want the deer,” though that wasn’t true. “I - I was hunting the wolf.”

This she said the way a cat would’ve hissed and arched its back at a bear, the way a snake might’ve spit at a diving hawk. It was a lie, of course, and surely the beast knew she was far too little and weak to go after a wolf that big, all by herself, in the dead of winter. She didn’t care. She was the iron and the ash, brittle and slender but still burning with venom, full of desire - need - to at least make him sting, even if she could not really defeat him.

“Then you are a fool,” said the beast simply.

This incensed her. All her outrage and her helplessness made a potent poison that boiled up and over.

She rolled over and, with all her might, sank her teeth into his fur.

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“Ow,” said the beast. “Stop that.”

He didn’t sound angry. He didn’t even stop walking. This made her all the more furious, so, of course, she bit harder.

The beast reared up; the mass of briars twisted around her and bit into her skin. She was thrown loose, and only the woody limbs at her wrists and ankles and waist stopped her from slipping off wholly.

“Good Fate,” the beast roared, “are you trying to get yourself in trouble?”

She spat out the fur in her mouth and made to bite him again. He shrugged her away, and suddenly she was hanging in front of him - still caught in the tangle of briars - upside down, staring him in one great amber eye. He was huge , far bigger than the biggest bears she’d ever seen, and those only ever in the far distance, tall as woodsman’s houses. And he was no bear. His face was that of no beast she’d ever seen before: a little lupine, but too big and broad and rough to be a wolf’s; too proud and narrow to be a bear’s; too sharp and full of teeth to be an ox’s.

And from his brows curled two great ram’s horns, black as obsidian and polished as stars, and from behind them flowed a mane of the same dark rich brown as the rest of him, endless and vast.

“Well?” It was strange seeing his voice - a man’s voice, and not - come from that wild, wide mouth, bedecked with slaver and fur. “What is it, then?”

She thought it was beautiful. She thought it was terrifying.

She hissed, “I’m already in trouble. What else have I got to lose?”

The beast sighed out through flared black nostrils.

“I saved you,” he said, with surprising decorum. “Would you like to at least thank me?”

Eire scowled at him, which was a little difficult to do convincingly while hanging upside down.

“You were asleep and on the brink of death when I found you,” he went on, unruffled, “entombed in snow at the foot of one of our great-trees. Are you going to try to tell me, morsel, that you would have saved yourself there?”

“I’d rather you’d let me die.”

“You want to die?” said the beast, tilting his terrible head.

“I’d rather die than this,” she blazed, and made to swipe at him, and failed miserably. “I’d rather die as myself than be cursed by fae magic and eaten by you.”

The beast made a chuffing sound that she understood, after a long moment of bewilderment, to be a laugh.

“Oh, little morsel,” he said, “I didn’t bring you here to eat you. There’s nothing on your bones, and I am not hungry.”

“Why bother with me at all, then?” She was struggling again against the twisted briars, which had only seemed to get tighter around her. “What’s it to you, demon? Aren’t I a waste of your time?”

“Yes,” said the beast. “But the Covenant says you owe me your life in exchange for the one you took, so here I am.”

“I’d have killed you too if I could have,” she hissed. “You should have let me die when you got the chance.”

The beast made that chuffing noise again, quieter this time.

“Little morsel,” he said, stretching back the black-red edges of his mouth in a terrible not-smile, “you couldn’t hurt me if you tried. But it’s charming of you to act like you could anyway.”

He rose from his haunches and made as if to keep walking. She kicked, and the briars held her back.

“You should really stop that,” said the beast, watching her coolly. “You’re going to fall off if you keep it up, and it won’t be pretty.”

“Just let me go!” she cried. “I don’t want to be bound to you! I don’t want to be here at all!”

“You bound yourself to me,” sneered the beast. “I wouldn’t have even seen you at all if you hadn’t reached out to me.”

She stilled and stared at him, eyes wide. “You’re lying. I was asleep. You said so yourself.”

“True,” said the beast, “but the dris was not.”

“The what?”

“The dris.” He pointed his nose at the mass of brambles. “It’s yours, isn’t it?”

She swiped at him. He turned his head away, easy and slight, and the movement shook her from head to toe (or toe to head, since she was still upside down). That didn’t stop her.

“None of this is mine!” She was a wildcat, a storm, biting and howling. “You cursed me with these thorns! You’re lying!”

“Little morsel,” said the beast, turning to look at her fully now, “we fae can never lie.”

“So you’re admitting it,” Eire breathed.

The beast flicked one ear. His other eye was not amber, but brilliant blue, and the fur around it was streaky burnt gold. “What is there to admit? It’s the truth of what I am. No less.”

She’d started struggling again. “You’re a monster!” The beast did not flinch. “I hate you. Let me go, let me go, let me go.”

“The dris is yours,” said the beast heavily, “and so you must let yourself go. I cannot do that for you.”

“You’re lying!”

The beast shook his head.

“Relinquish your hold,” he said. “Let your heart be soft. Think of flowers withering and returning to the earth.”

She didn’t quite know what he meant, and her rage still burned sun-hot, but in the midst of her fury he lunged toward her - teeth bared, but shut - and she recoiled so suddenly that her jaw snapped against her skull and she saw stars. Then she was on the ground with an abrupt thud and the whole length of him loomed over her, a mountain of dark fur and bright eyes that filled all of her sight, slaver lacing his blood-red lips, the still-bared tips of his fangs as sharp and lovely as blades. And he was panting like a wolf at the slaughter. But he did not move.

“There,” he said, the dark fur along his mighty shoulders rippling with each pant, “you’ve let go. Good.”

Eire forgot to be afraid. The briars had vanished - shrunk away to nothing, somehow - and she was free, and that was all that mattered. She was up on her feet before she could think, her whole body taut and already twisting out from under him, up and away, and somehow there was the broken ruin of the ash and iron arrow - the one she’d pierced and killed the other fae, the wolf-fae, with - in her hand, but she didn’t stop to ask how it got there or to drive it into this beast too. She fled.

Well, no. She tried to flee. But two heartbeats later had her flat on the ground, her legs tangled under her, and she couldn’t feel the ends of them at all.

The wind was knocked out of her. She could do nothing as she heard - felt, in tremors through the sweet-smelling earth beneath her - the beast come closer. She knew he saw the arrow in her hand, and she knew that he knew she could do nothing about it.

This is the end, she thought. This is where I die, really this time, no more dreams and cursed brambles and talking beasts. He will have me now, and it’s all because my foolish feet won’t carry me. Is this more of the price for having killed that wolf? I suppose it doesn’t matter.

The beast’s breath wafted hot over her back and down her neck. She waited for his teeth to snap shut over her throat and finish her in one brutal, blood-swept slice.

She heard him say, “Your leg’s still weak from your wounds, idiot.”

Then she was suddenly hoisted into the air. Thick, hot drool crept down the back of her neck, and she shuddered, deeply disgusted.

“If you’re going to act like a baby,” he was saying, “I’ll treat you like one. Since I don’t suppose you know the dris well enough to call it back up and tie yourself to me, you’re going to be carried the rest of the way.”

“I’m not a baby,” she managed to get out. “I’m twenty-one summers old.”

The beast snorted.

“Then you’re even more of a baby than I thought,” he said (a little muffled, for he was speaking around the bunch of her shirt that he had in his mouth). “Now stop struggling. I’ll drop you again, and you’re in no shape to go on by yourself.”

“I’ll stab you,” Eire wheezed. “I’ve got iron and ash on me.”

The beast chuffed again.

“You’d be doing us both a favor,” he said. “But you also wouldn’t last a moment here without me, and we are too close to the Heartwood now for you to kill me with that little thorn alone. Come on, stop struggling. Look - we’re here.”

Eire didn’t care - cared for nothing, in fact, except the idea of finding enough iron and ash that she could kill him - but she had no choice, for he pushed through one last thicket of vast, looming briars (each thorn as long and wicked as her arm, as sharp as a spindle, and he brushed them aside as easily as she would have swatted past wheatgrass at home), and suddenly light poured through and onto her face, golden and glorious, nearly blinding her. And she could not help but look and see -

Below, and before them, was a dream in green and blue and gold: trees upon trees upon trees, trees in every shape and size and color, in jewel emeralds and buzzing laburnum yellows and whisper-jade and birch silver and white; trees as big as villages, for they loomed above the rest (the rest being mere dwarves as tall as the ancient ash in the middle of Avon, or bigger), so big that Eire thought she spied clouds drifting around the very tops of their spreading crowns. And through these trees wove rivers (for she saw the way the big older trees gave way to lush, verdant trains of delicate undergrowth where streams surely wended down among them), and they were clad with flowers, gem-bright, a thousand different colors and a thousand different seasons abloom all at once. It spread as far as the eye could see, and farther, turning into mist purples and blues at the horizon, far brighter and more lovely than any forest could ever have been. And above - in a perfect blue sky marbled with clouds, streaked with rose and blush and aquamarine - above, oh, there was the sun, but the sun was like it never had been before, a vast golden eye that beat down unflinchingly and yet did not burn her. No, the more she looked, the more she wanted never to look away.

And she knew beyond the shadow of a doubt: This was not Avon, and this was not her sun.

And the sun - not her sun - was enchanting. She felt that she’d been looking into it for an eternity; she felt that she’d been looking at it long enough to forget all about the fae and the arrow and the cursed brambles that had been growing out of the wound in her leg. She might have forgotten everything else, even her name, if not for the beast, who shook her a little and said, “Focus. Don’t lose yourself, morsel. This isn’t home for you anymore.”

She said, still half in a reverie, “Where did you take me?”

The beast let go of her, and she did not run this time. She stumbled against him and was caught in his deep, soft, earth-dark fur, and he lifted his head high over hers and fixed his eyes (the one sun amber, the other sky blue) on the horizon. Now that she could see all of him, she saw that he was terrible - far vaster and more monstrous than she’d thought - and beautiful, and wholly other.

“This is my home,” he said. “Morsel, you should be so honored to lay living eyes on this place, for it is not a place where mortals are ever welcome.”

She said, “What do you call it, your home?”

And he said, “Behold, morsel, and remember it well: what remains of the Court of the Risen Sun.”