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At the curious looks directed his way from everybody, he huffed. “Unless you want her to walk out of here like that?” He gestured at her shabby garments. “She won’t make it half a mile without shoes.”
“Good thinking,” Hazel muttered, then ushered them all out of the room so Rose could change.
Isa followed Basil to the entrance of the cave dwelling, found him staring down the ravine, his hands on his hips.
“Hey.” She slung her arms around him from behind, pressed her cheek against his back next to his quiver.
“We found her.” His voice was a low rumble she felt as a vibration on her skin.
“She’ll be all right.” It might take time—lots of time—but Rose’s future looked infinitely better than even a few hours ago.
He let out a rough breath. “I hope so. I’ve seen Maeve come back from worse. I’m just glad we got her out.”
She squeezed him. “Well, I’d say your mission into Faerie was a success. You found Rose. You unlocked your powers. You even found a father you believed dead.”
He turned, grasped her face with both hands, laid his forehead against hers. “I found you.”
She wound her arms around his neck and pressed her body closer to his. “That you did.”
“Finders keepers,” he murmured against her mouth. “Marry me.”
She laughed into his kiss. “The human way?”
“Human, witch, demon, fae…I don’t care which one. As long as I can claim you as mine.”
Her fingers tangled in his hair. “Then we’ll do them all.”
“So that’s a yes?”
She looked up into those mesmerizing eyes of multihued brown, let the love and warmth of his gaze wash over her. “A thousand times yes.”
Epilogue
“This is so unreal,” Lily muttered, staring out the kitchen window into the backyard of the Murray mansion.
Basil followed her look to where Rose lay on the lawn, face turned up toward the starlit night sky, her fingers twined in the grass. She’d been like this for an hour already, Isa keeping her company and talking to her in Fae, while Rose soaked up sounds and sights and sensations like someone criminally underfed. Which she was, in a lot of ways, not just in terms of nutrition. From the bits and pieces about her captivity that Isa had gotten out of Rose so far, she’d mostly been kept indoors and underground, had only been allowed out on rare occasions…when she’d been “good.”
She was so starved for nature and fresh air that, even after the journey here from Faerie, which had taken several days, she still couldn’t seem to get enough of the outdoors.
“So. Unreal,” Lily said again, gaping at a twin she’d never known existed.
Their first meeting had been…interesting, to say the least. Lily, who always seemed to have a comeback for everything, who had a witty or sarcastic remark for every situation, and who tended to indulge in running commentaries about what was happening—even when it was in her best interest to shut up—just stood there in shocked silence for a full five minutes when they presented her with Rose.
Basil had to pinch her to snap her out of it. And Rose…indigo eyes wide, slack-jawed, marveling at the sight before her, raised a hand to Lily’s face, as if to trace the features that so resembled her own, only to draw back with a flinch. She started to apologize in Fae—translated by Isa—when Lily grabbed her hand, raised it to her face, and let Rose touch her.
That moment still gave Basil goosebumps.
“Seeing her next to you,” Basil said from his seat at the table in the breakfast nook, “drives home just how frail she truly is.”
Compared with Lily’s strength—not only from her demon nature, but from years of exercise and martial arts training—with the healthy glow of her skin, the humor in her smile and the sparkle in her eyes, Rose was a wraith, a haunting specter of what Lily might be if faced with years of neglect and starvation. It was unsettling, infuriating, this stark reminder that Rose should be just as healthy, her magic just as strong, her spirit unbroken.
“I wish,” Hazel whispered, “Tallak had left them alive.” Her brown eyes bore a hard glint, and her nostrils flared, as she looked out at her daughter. “So I could deliver the slow and painful death they deserve.”
“I second that.” Lily narrowed her eyes—which had started to show red specks, a sure sign she was getting demonically pissed—then took a deep breath and exhaled roughly, her eyes returning to deep blue once more. She was getting better at controlling her new otherworldly instincts. “So this kind of treatment was okay with the fae who swapped her? Didn’t she say Rose was going to be well cared for?”
Basil and Hazel were still in the process of bringing Lily and the others up to speed on everything that happened—as much as they knew, at least. Some details were missing yet, and it would take time to piece it all together. Rose needed to adjust, and they didn’t want to pressure her into a bare-your-soul therapy session.
“From what she told Isa so far,” Basil said, “it seems those fae we freed her from were not the ones she was originally placed with when she was brought into Faerie. The fae couple whose tracks Isa and I followed had Rose for the first few years. Rose mentioned that the fae who gave her to that couple did check in regularly for some time, but stopped doing it after some years. By the time Rose’s powers kicked in when she was seven, the couple hadn’t heard from the fae in a while, and they assumed she wasn’t interested in Rose anymore. Apparently they didn’t know how to handle Rose’s awakening witch magic, and were glad to get rid of the burden when another fae approached them and asked to buy her.”
