“You want to be prince of the elves or not?” Al said, wavering where he sat. “Royalty always conversed with demons before they were wed. It’s tradition. It’s how I tricked Ceri into loving me. You’re not married, are you? On the side, perhaps? In Montana?”
Trent grimaced. “I need to think up a good name. I promise when I get a good name that no one can think of, I will. Why don’t you rest for a minute?”
Al delicately belched, and sighing heavily, he leaned back into the shadows until his black eyes glowed from the dark. “Capital idea. Good idea. Clever, clever elf. We will wait. You pick out a name, then call me.”
The fire snapped, and then from the cot came a long, rattling snore. Trent cautiously tried to take the bottle from Al, giving up when it began to glow. Leaving it in Al’s grip, he turned to me and shrugged. “I think he’s out.”
“I am so sorry.” Embarrassed, I got up from the fire and began to collect the stuff that Al had popped in from his kitchen. “I had no idea he’d feel the curse, much less come and see what I was doing.”
Trent handed me the bag of sand. “He probably has never dealt with grief,” he said, and I set it with the rest.
“Too much of it, rather. He was married once. Only the demons who knew how to love survived the making of the ever-after.”
Shocked, Trent looked from me to Al and back again. “I didn’t know that.”
A long snore came from behind the curtain, and a soft mumble. Trent sat down in his chair, clearly reluctant to leave Al here alone. “Do you think he can resurrect Ceri? I’ve tried.”
My chest hurt, and I sat in the chair next to him where we could both watch the fire and Al both. “No. I’ve tried several times, too. Pierce as well. They’ve moved on. I’m happy for them, but it hurts.” I hadn’t been able to summon my father or Kisten, either.
Trent was rubbing his new pinkie with his thumb in introspection. “Quen will be hurting for a long time. That’s why I insisted he go with the girls. And as a buffer for Ellasbeth.”
Hearing more in that statement than he was saying, I turned to him. “How about you?”
“Me?” He looked at the bottle in Al’s grip, then topped off his glass with the bottle on the hearth between us. “I’m not the one Ceri loved,” he said, but I could hear his regret. I waved off his offer to refill my untouched glass, and when I remained silent, he added, “I liked her, but I didn’t love her. She was . . . too proud to love me. Distant.”
“And you need someone more earthy,” I said, only half kidding.
Al snorted. There was a clunk, and the wine bottle rolled out from behind the curtain. It sloshed to a halt at Trent’s foot, and he reached for it. “A little spontaneity would be nice,” he said, touching my foot by accident when he set Al’s bottle next to ours. “I already miss her and her elegant demands and flashing indignity. You couldn’t tell the woman no.”
“Not that . . .” Al mumbled in his sleep. “He’s going to need that later . . .”
“I’m angry at her unnecessary death
This wasn’t like Trent at all, but I wasn’t surprised to see it. I was upset about Ceri and Pierce, but I hadn’t been planning on a life with either of them as Trent had with Ceri—in some disjointed, separate fashion. Alone. He had always planned on being alone, but never this apart. Even with Ellasbeth, he would be alone. I felt bad for him. It wasn’t fair. None of it.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I said, shifting to look at him. There wasn’t much space between us, but it seemed uncrossable.
“Maybe someday I’ll believe you,” he said, his brow furrowed in the firelight. “Rachel, I asked you here tonight for more than getting my fingers back.”
Panic slid through me. “What?”
He grimaced, clearly annoyed that Al was snoring in the corner. “We could’ve done this anywhere, but I wanted you to see me, to see this,” he said, gesturing at the room. “I wanted you to know where I came from, what I am under the choices I make.”
My heart pounded. “What did you do?” I asked, terrified, almost.
Exhaling, he looked at his watch, the crystal catching the light to make time vanish. Then he scared me even more when he drank his glass dry and filled it again. “I made a big mistake by not telling you why I thought the slavers were the better choice.”
“I know,” I interrupted, and his brow furrowed.
“By the Goddess, will you shut up?” he said, and from behind the curtain, Al mumbled something. A little rocking horse with wings popped into existence, crashing into the ceiling before falling to the floor to quiver and go still.
“Listen to me,” he said, and I swallowed my words. “The Rosewood babies are going to start dying next week,” he said, and my breath caught. “If nothing changes, by this time next month, you and Lee will again be the only survivors of the Rosewood syndrome.”
“But you fixed them!” I said, appalled.
“Yes and no,” Trent said after he topped his glass off again. “I had to fix their genome to ensure Ku’Sox would hold to his end of the bargain and not harm Lucy, but I worked in a small error that wouldn’t express itself until it was replicated sufficiently. I couldn’t risk that he would get his way if he killed me.”
Horrified, I stared at him. He met my gaze levelly. “You killed them. The babies,” I whispered, and he shook his head.
“Not yet.”
“What do you mean, ‘not yet’?” Feeling betrayed, I stood. “Trent, they are all someone’s child!” I exclaimed, and Al snorted in his sleep, mumbling.
Trent looked up, agitated. “I mean, not yet. Rachel, the world isn’t ready for them.”
I cocked my hip, the fire warm behind me. “When is the world ever ready for change, Trent? When?”
Setting his glass down, Trent eyed me, bitter resignation behind his frustration. “What will happen if they live? HAPA knows they exist. The only reason you survived was because you can defend yourself. You want me to give the children to the demons to raise?”
He stood, and I dropped back as he began to pace. “Or perhaps you want me to hide them and their families? I could do it. But you know the demons will find them, and one by one, a demon wanting to see the sun and escape the ever-after will either steal them outright or take over their bodies.” Eyes flashing, he pointed at me, his hand wrapped around a wineglass. “I will
From the cot, not a sound escaped, but I didn’t care if Al was listening. “But they are here,” I said softly, grasping his arm so he would look at me. “Trent. They are.”
Trent shook his head even as he met my eyes. “I thought you might say that. If it was up to me, I’d choose the hard path with the easy ending, not the easy path with the hard end.”
I drew back. “What do you mean, it’s not up to you?”
Taking a last drink, Trent set his empty glass on the windowsill. Exhaling, he scrubbed his face with a hand, hesitating to look at his five perfect fingers. “What would you choose?”
The fervent emotion in his gaze as his eyes met mine scared me. “Me?”
“I want you to decide,” he said, looking a little unsteady. “Not because it impacts your species, but because I want you there with me.”
My heart pounded. I didn’t know what he meant. He wanted me there with him?
Stumbling slightly, he went to sit on the raised hearth, snagging a new bottle on the way. “If you make the decision, you have to be there to help me with the fallout,” he said, working the corkscrew with a professional flair. “Either they die naturally, or I continue the cure and the twenty-year battle to hide them until they can defend themselves.”
