“Easy enough,” the elder woman said. “We’ll take a vote. The elder of Talamh chooses to wait, clans Uisce and Goaithe want the princess to perform a quest. What say you, elder of clan Doitean?”
The bald-headed man with a red and gray beard scratched at his cheek and leaned forward to put his elbows on the table, his hooded green eyes shut entirely. After a deep breath, he opened them again. “I believe a quest is too dangerous for the princess, I prefer that she wait, but in Doitean.”
The elders grew more restless, and began arguing with one another. If I was going to stay in one city, they each wanted me to stay in theirs.
I folded my arms over my chest. Suddenly I wished that my powers of suggestion worked on this side of the veil as well as they did on my home turf. The elder Fae seemed to be able to block my will. I stepped forward and slammed both hands down on the table to get the council’s attention. “Don’t I get a say in this?”
The group blinked at me. Each of them stood in silence with eyes wide.
I leaned back again and crossed my arms. “Now that I have your attention. You have reached an impasse. Each of you has your own plans for me, and have assessed my worth. Am I the changeling princess? Do I really have the abilities Declan and Kyle say I do? You don’t know, and I can’t show you. Natural law says that only the person who made the covenant can break the covenant. But my mother is dead.” I said the words in monotone, but they broke my heart. “Honestly, I’ve had enough of waiting. I’m sick of sitting around with people watching me to see what I will do… what I can do. I’d prefer the quest. So, allow my decision to break your tie.”
Sweat beaded on the widened forehead of the Doitean elder. “Yes, well, we’ll need to discuss whether we will accept your vote, then there’s the decision of what quest we should have you—”
I rolled my eyes. “Fine. Whatever. You all can do that without me standing here, right?”
Kyle’s dad smiled and nodded to both Kyle and Declan who had been standing to the side, nearest the doorway. “Yes, princess. That should be fine.”
“Great.” I spun on my heel and started for the doorway. Passing both my guardians before they followed me. I knew just where I wanted to go, and never turned around to see if they would follow. Of course, they would. They always did.
Outside of the door at the end of the hallway stood a magnificent garden. In Nevada, I’d never seen so much green. Willows wept over a babbling brook, while a stone bridge arched over the waterway. I removed my shoes the moment my feet touched the grass. The soft carpeting brushed between my toes and gave me a moment’s freedom from the prison I’d felt I’d been in since the moment I’d reached Talamh. When I reached the gently sloping hill, I flung myself in the grass before stretching out and lying down, looking up at the two men.
“I’m sorry you feel so trapped here.” Kyle said, before taking a seat in the grass beside me. His broad shoulders still didn’t block the glare from the sun.
I pushed an elbow over my eyes and covered them. “It’s not your fault. I understand you’re only following orders and have to do as that committee says. I just want to point out that committees rarely solve problems. The most they can do is make a law that burdens the most while protecting a few. Laws have loopholes, and rules get broken.”
“You must have been hurt by someone in your past to feel that way.” Declan’s deep baritone rarely made more than two words together. The sound of it caused me to peek at him from under my elbow.
I replaced my arm and answered, “None of your business.”
That silenced both of them. The bright sun warmed my body, taking away the chill I’d gotten in the council room. After a long while, I spoke again. “What kind of quest will they send me on?”
“Have you ever read the Iliad or the Odyssey?”
I pulled my arm away from my eyes once more, and sat up. “In high school, yeah. Why?”
Kyle had picked up a dandelion next to him, and spun the yellow flower between his fingers. “The reason they are considered fiction is because those dangers weren’t found in your world. Those travelers slipped through the dimensional veil and found those dangers in ours.”
I shook my head, waiting for the punchline.
None came.
“You’re kidding, right?”
Declan plopped down in the grass to my other side. “He’s not.”
“So, you’re saying that things like the cyclops and sirens are real in this world?”
Declan ran a hand through his thick, wavy long hair and nodded. His eyes were focused in the distance as though remembering such things.
“Cool.” I wasn’t sure how to feel, but my stomach flopped. Fear intermingled with excitement in the same way it would just before I’d ride a rollercoaster.
Kyle flicked away the dandelion he’d been holding. His dark eyes glared into mine. “No, it’s really not cool. It’s dangerous. This world is full of amazing, but also dangerous and deadly things. We might not survive.”
“We? Does that mean you’ll go with me?”
Kyle blushed and looked away. He shrugged. “I don’t know. That’s up to the council to decide.”
I rolled my eyes again. “Four old people get to decide my fate for me. I think I liked it better on the streets of Vegas. At least there I could do whatever I decided to do.”
Henry, Kyle’s younger brother came
