Of course I remembered them all. I had pestered him to tell them over and over, always begging for another story. And, in the long years since I last saw him, I repeated them in my mind, imagining the sound of his voice.
I tucked the white flower behind my ear. “What do you remember of your visits here?”
He sighed, closing his eyes. “Games of chase, the sound of your laughter in my mind.” His grin widened. “And your many secret words.”
“Code words,” I corrected. “In case we need to flee.”
“I think shouting ‘run’ would be just as effective.” He chuckled, clasping his hands behind his back and slowing to a creeping pace. Maybe he didn’t want this moment to end as much as me.
“I don’t think shouting ‘run’ is particularly stealthy.” I teased, tapping my forefinger to my chin in mock contemplation. “Our current one is ‘quiver,’ by the way.”
He barked out a laugh. “How would one stealthily work the word ‘quiver’ into a sentence without being detected?”
“I’m sure we’ll come up with something.” I winked at him, and he nearly walked smack into a sapling, dodging it at the last moment. This was the playful Wolf I remembered.
Grae pulled up short, staring at the spot where the trail ended in dense forest. “Where’s the cabin?”
With a laugh, I pointed to a thin seam of warped air. The image of the forest bent as if looking through steam on a hot day. “For all the faery stories you tell, you haven’t seen a glamour before?”
Quirking his brow, Grae reached out and touched the bending air. His mouth dropped open as his fingertips disappeared.
I snickered and looped my arm through his; the contact making my cheeks burn as I tried to hide it with bravado. “Come on,” I said, tugging him through the glamoured air. “Vellia will delight you with her magic once we’re inside.”
Stepping through the seam, cool air rushed over my skin and the cabin appeared. What was once an empty forest was now a sprawling acreage, complete with gardens and stables. Two golden carriages parked in front of the house, the horses already unhitched and grazing in the grassy gardens beyond our home. I dropped my hold on Grae’s arm, flustered at that buzzing contact between us, and clenched my hands by my sides.
I really needed to stop touching him.
Grae’s eyebrows shot up. “This is the cabin?”
Vellia built the three-story house from giant redwood trunks. Garlands of wooden beads hung from the rose-colored shutters, vivid summer flowers filled the window boxes, and a bright blue door greeted us. A faery clearly designed the home.
“Do you like it?”
“All these years running in the woods together, I’d imagined you were returning to a one-bedroom hovel,” Grae jeered. “I should’ve known better.” Shaking his head, he followed me up the steps to the front door.
“Did you want us to live in a dilapidated shack?” I teased.
“No, no—of course not. It’s just . . . this,” he said, gesturing at the house.
“Dying wishes make for powerful magic.” Before he could reply to that—and before my fingers could reach the handle—the door opened.
Vellia stood in a sage green dress that made her pale gray eyes seem to glow. A matching scarf wrapped around her silver hair, fluttering as she dropped into a low curtsy. “Welcome, Your Highness.”
“Thank you for receiving me,” Grae said in a princely tone that sounded so different from the easy one that had just flowed between us.
Vellia took another step backward, opening the door with a flourish to grant him entry. She gave me a wink. This day was a victory for Vellia. Upon my mother’s deathbed, Vellia granted her dying wish: protect my daughter until her wedding day. The power of that wish had filled Vellia with immense amounts of magic. I always wondered if my mother would have changed her wish if she had known I was about to arrive a moment later. The elderly faery seemed to think so, and so Vellia had protected Briar and me both with a ferocity that would make any mother Wolf proud.
The cabin ceiling rose high above us as we spilled into the grand entryway. A towering gray stone fireplace bisected the room. Boughs of evergreen covered rough beams of wood, and an antler chandelier flickered with hundreds of magically lit candles. A circle of guards stood beside the fireplace. They all had the same thick black Damrienn hair, angular faces, and light golden-brown skin. Wearing thin plates of silver armor, their hands rested on the hilts of their swords as they laughed, listening to a joke from the elegant woman in the center of their circle.