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He opened his mouth to say something, but she beat him to it.
“You’re going alone, aren’t you?” Her voice was still so husky, hadn’t recovered even yet. Probably never would. It had been months since her rescue, and Merle and Hazel had worked all the healing magic on her they were capable of. Some things, though, not even magic could erase. Like the memories she now had to live with for the rest of her life…
“You heard us?” he asked.
She nodded. “I always knew you were more.”
When she gave him a small smile, the vicious scar that ran across her face twisted, a violent reminder of what she’d been through. Despite the best efforts of the healer witches in the community, who were able to minimize or even remove most of the scars on her body, the remnant of the deep cut crossing her face remained. Like the hoarseness from screaming for days on end during her torture.
He was so proud of her for pushing through, holding her head up high, in defiance of what had been done to her.
“Well,” he said, “looks like neither one of us is as powerless as we thought.”
Maeve looked to the side. “At least you can access your powers.”
“I don’t know…” He shrugged. “It feels like something has been knocked loose, but it’s not like I suddenly have all this awesome magic at my fingertips. It’s more like a…low-level hum I couldn’t hear before. But I have no idea what to do with it.”
“You’ll figure it out, I’m sure.”
“Thanks.”
Always, she’d believed in him. Unlike his family, and his friends in the witch community, to whom he’d been a walking liability. Even before her abduction, Maeve was quiet, not one to display enthusiasm, but she never made him feel like he was lacking anything.
Which was probably the reason he had a crush on her for the longest time.
He never told anyone, not even Lily, because Maeve…Maeve was almost family. He’d grown up with her, and just like he considered Merle a sister, his feelings for Maeve had long been those of a brother for his younger sibling. When it changed…he’d been too confused for a while to act on it, couldn’t bring himself to take a step that would irrevocably alter their relationship and how others perceived them.
And then—Maeve was kidnapped, held captive for days, tortured…raped. When she came back, when he saw how deep her scars ran—the mental ones, because the physical ones wouldn’t have bothered him—he figured the last thing she wanted to deal with was the revelation that her childhood friend wanted to be more than her big brother. He saw how she flinched in the presence of a male—any male—those tiny tells she couldn’t manage to hide, no matter how much she seemed to be trying to shake it.
He wouldn’t add to her anxiety, no way, nohow.
Instead he settled on being there for her in the non-sexual, big brother kind of way she knew and felt comfortable with, and, as the months went by, his feelings for her changed yet again. What had been a desire in its kindling form morphed into something deeper, going beyond the physical, the bond they’d always shared now evolving from big brother-little sister to a more equal footing of…true friends.
Maeve fidgeted with her loose, comfortable sweater for a moment, her eyes downcast. Then, in a move that surprised the hell out of him, she stepped forward, into his personal space, and hugged him.
His heartbeat faltered. Not because the gesture sparked anything like the desire he once felt for her, but because he knew how much this simple touch meant for her—for her recovery. In all the months since her rescue, she’d never let any male this close to her, had avoided touch unless she was with Merle, Lily, and Hazel. For her to take this step, to initiate an embrace with a man…
He blinked rapidly, clearing his eyes. Leaning down, he kissed the top of her head. When she broke the hug, she wiped at her eyes quickly.
“Come back, yes?”
He swallowed hard. “That’s the plan.”
Chapter 5
Basil closed and locked his car before trudging down a dirt path leading farther into the dark woods. He’d taken Highway 26 east from Portland to Mount Hood Village, and followed the country roads south from there as far as possible, closer and closer to the pull he first began to feel in Mount Hood Village. Faerie’s border called to him.
He’d already known that Faerie lay somewhere between Mount Hood and Mount Jefferson, and from the parts of the discussion he overheard before he left Hazel and Lily behind, he learned that the closest entrance reachable by car was located south of Mount Hood Village. The country road came to a halt at this dirt path, which must be the one leading into Faerie.
Now he needed to hike the rest of the way.
Apparently, this sanctuary of the fae was one of many across the world, and, unlike what old human folklore depicted, it wasn’t actually a pocket of alternate reality. Faerie wasn’t so much a different plane of existence that happened to overlay the human world—with the non-fae reality existing at the same time in the same place—but more of a…reservation, for lack of a better word. An area of the state of Oregon that was fae territory, and didn’t allow any non-fae inside.
Not that humans knew it was there. They had no clue, and were repelled from the area by the fae magic worked into the borders. No human settlements existed within Faerie’s territory, and on human maps, it was simply marked as a huge swath of nature reserve.
According to the bit of history Hazel taught Basil and Lily while they were growing up, fae had once lived among humans the way most otherworld creatures and witches still did. As the human population grew, however, spreading across the lands with their iron and their penchant for destroying what they didn’t understand, the fae feared they would one day be overrun, and so chose to establish safe harbors for their kind, and to retreat behind their magical borders.
To most otherworld creatures, fae were considered isolationist, suspicious of outsiders, and content to keep to themselves in the fae sanctuaries around the world, known as Faeries.
