Eli and Sabre stood together a few paces away, speaking softly. In a true tall tale, one of them would have to kill the other or get married off—no story told around a campfire ended with more than one sibling as the hero. The others had to be neatly disposed of while the hero marched around, killing giants.
That wasn’t the kind of story Rey influenced. He helped with small things—convincing a guard to open a locked door, selling a love potion to make a fool of the right person, giving a girl a fake enchanted sword so that she had the reckless confidence to start taking lessons.
But the image of Olivier spitting up stones lingered in his mind, and Sabre was standing there with Eli, summoned by…by whom? By the Harvest Mother, lying dead in a lump of ash at his back?
The beads clicked in his palm as Eli drew back from Sabre, turning to Rey. Rey got up. He knew he was too far in it now.After years of avoiding becoming too attached to one person, he perked up every time Eli looked in his direction.
“Did you know that would happen?” Eli asked as he approached. Rey shook his head. “He wants to retrieve the sword for us.” Rey waited for Eli to continue, and Eli’s brows snapped together. “You wanted to wait. And I’m not…not good enough to fight the king, yet.”
Rey rubbed his thumb over the beads in his hand. “You could be. I think I might be able to help, Eli, if I made a story out of it.”
“With your magic?” Eli stepped closer, lowering his voice. Over his shoulder, Sabre de Valois hovered uncertainly, eyeing them both with a hand on his sword belt. “Would it change me?”
“Not who you are as a person,” Rey said, quickly. “I don’t know if it’s even possible. What if I tried to use it to make you stronger, or give you an advantage?”
Eli glanced over his shoulder. “But if I fail…”
“I won’t run,” Rey said. He could feel himself trembling, the familiar terror of blood and steel sinking into his veins. He grabbed Eli’s hands tightly. “I won’t. Not this time.”
“You’re scared,” Eli said. “I shouldn’t have suggested it.”
“I can’t help that. Are you all right?”
Eli took a long, slow breath. “I don’t know. It’s like his grief is masking what I did to him, like it doesn’t matter now that I’m here.”
“Maybe it doesn’t.”
Eli dragged a hand through his curls. “I can’t think about that. Fuck. Can we do this?”
Rey reached for him, but stopped when Eli tensed. Maybe touch was too much just yet. For all that Eli was a hot-headed, impulsive little scrap, his scars were still raw. When Rey had been in his place, drowning in obligations that seemed too much for the leader of a patch of farmland, beset on all sides by warriorkings who didn’t care if the fields burned and the crops withered, he’d given up his crown to get away.
Eli wanted to run. Sabre had found him. The king knew he was alive. He’d just lost a duel with the man who’d signed his execution papers. Any excuse would be reason enough.
He was also the man who had climbed into a well to retrieve a girl he thought was dead, just because someone had to do it.
“We will,” Rey said. He tried to make it real, pulling on the magic that was stitched into his spirit, but it felt flat and weak. It was like hanging from a cliff by a spiderweb—only someone truly reckless would see it as any small measure of hope.
Rey held out the beaded necklace, and Eli squinted at it, brows knitted together. “What is that?”
“A chance,” Rey said. “I think. The king of the Wild Hunt gave it to me. He said it could compel a creature to do what you say just once—like my magic, but more powerful. He wanted me to use it on you, but I threw it out.”
Eli’s face darkened, and he took a step back. “Why do you still have it?”
Rey’s chest ached as Eli seemed to draw further into himself, betrayal making his expression go cold and hard. Rey spoke in a panicky rush. “It isn’t like that. The Harvest Mother gave it back to me. I think she knew I could use it, but what if—what if we used it on him, instead? On the king? If I could get close enough, if he was distracted…”
Some of the hardness started to drain from Eli’s eyes. “You could control him.”
“Just once. But it would be enough, don’t you think? Enough to give you a chance?”
Eli stepped closer again, his gaze fixed on the beads. For a long, terrible second, Rey thought he wouldn’t believe him—that it would all be over, and he’d lose Eli forever, just as he’d lostEmeric. Then Eli nodded and clasped Rey’s hand, covering the beads. “All right. We’ll do it.”
“You believe me?” Rey asked. “I wasn’t going to betray you, Eli. I wouldn’t turn you in to the Hunt. I can’t.”
“You’re braver than you let on,” Eli said, and grabbed Rey by the collar.
When he kissed Rey, it was quick and sudden, their noses crashing together as Eli stood on his toes to reach. Rey bent down so Eli could kiss him again properly, and when they drew away, Sabre was watching them with a guarded expression.
“So you’re a fairytale,” Sabre said, when Eli led Rey closer. “The fox that stole the baker’s wife?”
