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My fae child resolved into being for me at that moment.
Vividly real. Precious and perfect.
The earth’s core welcomed me, mother to daughter to granddaughter, and I drank from it, filling myself and layering my fleshly body with her enduring strength.
I turned to the cat, which still tried to savage me, desperate to separate from the soil it had grown in.
Don’t try to control it.
My thought or Rogue’s? Mother Earth’s? For this was her daughter too.
Mentally, I stroked the feline, showing it love and care. I had no desire to trap her. Together we would find a way. In good faith, I shared Mother Earth’s energy with her, feeding her.
She didn’t exactly give in, but she subsided, drinking in what I offered and, replete for the first time in her conscious existence, relaxed.
As compromises went, it was a good one.
*
I opened myeyes.
Rogue sat nearby, long arms wrapped around his bent knees, chin resting on the backs of his hands, watching me with midnight eyes that revealed little of what was going on in his head. A fleeting impression made me think he’d been waiting a long time.
I sat up, aches in every fiber of my being, somewhat dismayed to see the curved platinum claws still extending from my fingertips. But the magic surged through me, the steady pulse of the heart of the earth.
Not to control, but to coexist. Rogue had suggested that from the start, but apparently I’d had to learn it for myself.
With a pointed thought, instead of getting rid of the claws, I retracted them. An important distinction, the pulling of them back inside me, from whence I could extend them again.
Or I could,the cat murmured, sleepily and from a great distance.
Yes,I replied.If I agree.Then I flexed my fingers, delighted to have this key characteristic of my humanity back. At least on the surface.
“Well done.” Rogue uncoiled into a more relaxed position. “Though it was a near thing.”
“She nearly escaped me.”
“Yes. I saw.”
“But you didn’t interfere.”
“As I’ve tried to persuade you many times, my Gwynn, some things are beyond even me. Though your confidence in me is gratifying.
“That’s why you wanted to do this in here,” I said, the light dawning. “If she had broken free, the silver here would have contained her.
“Hopefully, yes. It should come as no surprise to me that your animal is more powerful—and in an unusual way—than any I have seen. It would not have done to have her loose in the castle or the countryside.”
“If silver could contain her here, then wouldn’t silver have kept her inside me, also?”
Rogue’s eyes gleamed in the sourceless light. “Of course.”
“Then why—”
He shook his head at me, the abrupt movement stopping me. “Do you think I forget my promises to you so easily? I swore never to bind you in silver again. Even to save your life or our child’s life, I would not violate my oath to you, my Gwynn.”
Oh. From the resonance of his words, I knew he meant more than the typical consequences for oathbreaking, becoming vulnerable to Titania’s psychotic whims. That was plenty bad enough. No, he meant something else here. Something intimately between us. I was an idiot. “If I’d realized before, I could have made peace with it. Maybe it would be different, if I’d made the choice.”
As he studied me, his lips twitched, in a not-smile. The black lines on his face seemed to unfurl then tighten again. His animal crawling near the skin. The Dog, pressing to escape. My own skin itched at the left temple and down my cheek, knowing how it felt.
