William awoke to a headache that pulsed in tune with his heartbeat -- and vague scraps of last night clamoring for attention. Whatever had happened, it had been so late that he held nothing more than noises in his room, then at his desk, and footfalls, and a slam. He didn’t remember following Ainsel, but there he’d been, knocking on the washroom door as the faucet rushed. Nor did he remember what she’d said.

With a groan and a sigh, he sat upright. At least the sunlight hadn’t woken him; it was obscured under swaths of clouds. With any luck, it would rain and he wouldn’t need to water the garden. Hopefully, the cloud cover was dark enough to promise such. He shuffled from bed and raised his hands to open the curtains -- but stopped.

That on the windowsill could not be what he thought it was. Squinting, he leaned down to look. It was salt after all, and followed an uneven line as though poured in a hurry. In his momentary confusion, he assumed that he had put it there and forgotten. But he would not have left the shaker on the floor. William nudged it with his foot; empty, it rolled beneath his nightstand. Again he glanced to the trail of salt, like it would give him an answer. Sense then clicked into place.

He pulled on his slippers and raced to Ainsel’s room. His nervous energy flared: the bed was unmade and unoccupied. Within seconds, he reached the end of the hall.

“Ainsel?” he called, not knowing what else to do.

A half-sleeping grumble came from the couch. William’s burst of fear fizzled into relief, which then gave way to caution. Each step he took toward her made him hesitate. His imagination ran rife with things from sour to sickening -- something was wrong. She was angry with him. Something was wrong with her.

He reached down and touched her hair as it spilled toward the ground; his fingertips were feather-light against raven silk, and beneath them, she shifted. Her eyes fluttered and locked on him -- there with his hand beside her cheek, dumbly frozen as she watched.

“Sorry,” he said.

His voice fell flat and the silence that followed broke when she snapped.

“I feel rotten, Liam. Go away.”

It left a bitter taste in his mouth and an acid fear in his mind to hear that. Rotten, indeed. To listen, to leave, would quell the chances of her lashing out, and if he did, then he quelled also his chances of helping. William saw her exhaustion in dark circles and hunched shoulders, in her arm tucked beneath herself and the blanket fallen to the ground.

He offered the only thing that he could.

“Do you want some tea?”

Ainsel huffed and hid her face against the cushion. Though he couldn’t be sure, he thought he had seen her wince.

“Chamomile?”

“No,” she muttered. “Why aren’t you going away?”

And at that, he had to answer honestly. “I’m worried. What happened last night?”

She lay quiet and drew her arm in closer. Her sleeve slipped; he glimpsed white. Inhibitions abandoned, he pulled her up by the waist, gripping the loose folds of the jumper he had bought her. She stared back, wide-eyed -- he could just imagine what she must think of him right now. Insolent, maybe, for grabbing her. And an idiot. Definitely an idiot.

Regardless, he asked with her bandaged hand in his, “What is this?”

She pried it free; her stare shifted to a scowl. “It’s not important. You should leave alone things that don’t concern you.”

Had he just met Ainsel, and had he still feared her, William would have obeyed without question. But instead, he pushed.

“On the contrary, I find this very concerning.”

Ainsel let out another scoff; the shivering sense that he recognized as Clarity registered where his body met hers. It fell like rain between them: cool at first, then showering, and he wasn’t certain if it was hot or cold. He could have whispered it -- Soiléireacht -- and savored it, spell-charmed and honey-sweet, were Ainsel not injured again.

“Let me see,” he urged, caution in his tone, lest he anger her. She gave no protest and made no move to stop him.

When William peeled the bandage away, he remembered her near death not in images, but in fractured feelings: confusion, anxiety, grief, illness, then focus shattering them all. He knew that he had already linked the right pieces: the salt, the noises, and now this. Still, he had to be certain.

“Tell me what this is from and I’ll fix it.”

Her gaze lowered, perhaps in shame, perhaps in embarrassment.

“Salt. I touched salt.”

It was just as he had worried, and worry was less than fear, for the salt in his desk was much less than pure. In the pocket of his fleece pajama pants, he reached for what he hoped would be there; relief dawned once he found it. William withdrew the triskele rune, and in the gentlest grasp he could, he cradled her hand.

From his deepest subconscious, as though practiced and perfected at every moment of every day, flowed the incantation that he needed.

“Leis an créafóg.”

By the land.

“Leis í grásta.”

By her grace.

“Leis an solas sna réaltaí.”

By the light in the stars.

There was no instantaneous healing -- instead, the redness of the blisters lessened, and she breathed a sigh soft as autumn’s breeze. William wrapped the wound once more, knowing that next the gauze was unraveled, her skin would be clear.

She turned from him and kicked her feet up on the coffee table: a small message, but one that William read easily. I’m fine. I don’t need help.

And yet, he was not done pushing. “Why would you pour salt on my windowsill?”

“I think you should stop provoking the dangerous faerie.”

“I think you’re only dangerous if you want to be.”

At that, Ainsel fired another glare over her shoulder. “It doesn’t work like that.”

“Aren’t we past the point of how things are supposed to work?”

He hadn’t meant it to be funny, yet it drew from her that ghost of a smile -- and from him, a flicker of hope. At least he had taken her pain. And he did not mean this, either, but he recalled holding her: Clarity was far from uncomfortable. Looking upon her, he wondered at what she felt. Did such calm really tell him that she, on some level, yearned for its effects, or was he projecting? He had to be, he told himself. Besides, if he admitted to finding it pleasant, she could make assumptions that had no business being in either of their heads.

The thought of her mind reading reappeared. Maybe that was his own neurosis, and still, it would fade if he focused on something else. He took hurried strides to his room, where he retrieved his laptop and draped the charger over his bent elbow. Upon his return, he froze again: Ainsel’s glare had resumed, her eyes black ice.

“I thought you’d just left,” she said.

“Wait, you want me here?” It slipped out before he could stop it.

“We were having a conversation!”

Beneath every manner in which he should react -- yielding to a faerie’s wishes, for one -- annoyance flickered.

“No, we weren’t. I asked a question; you evaded it.” If William’s mind had been elsewhere, he would have marveled at how unafraid of her he’d become. Instead, he sat beside her and opened his laptop, but kept his attention on Ainsel. “So, why the salt?”

“Fine! You weren’t protected enough. That’s why.”

“Protected from what?”

She laughed -- actually laughed at him -- and shook her head in clear disbelief.

“Tell me you aren’t serious. Don’t you know what’s out there?” She held up her fingers as she listed each name. “Redcaps, pookas, the Dullahan --”

“Ainsel. Stop.”

She did, a baffled, exasperated grin lingering on her lips.

“I don’t have goblins, shapeshifters, or headless horsemen in my backyard.”

“But you had me.”

He hoped that his tone didn’t betray the further drop in his mood“That was different. And don’t think that I’m ignorant regarding the Unseelie. You can have mercy and repay debts just like the Seelie --”

“Alright, Liam, you stop.”

His obedience could not have been hastier if Ainsel had used his real name to quiet him.

“There are no Seelie and Unseelie courts anymore. Did you not listen when I told you? We’re called other things now. Death-aligned, life-aligned, unaligned. That is what the rebels did. That is why my people wanted to restore the monarchy. Nobody likes change.”

“They wanted their existence dictated by a king and a queen?” William’s common sense failed him for the dozenth time; how someone could reject that change in particular was lost on him. “Look at my country! Look what we did to everyone around us!”

“It was safer than some usurper who’d come out of nowhere! England is not the same as the Realm, so don’t act like it is.”

William addressed Ainsel’s home as she did: there was greater, darker power in its name than in those of human beings. “The Realm should be free. All nations should.”

“Is this your naivety or your guilt over English history talking?”

The jab sunk in and stung, leaking venom. For several seconds, he could not answer. Of all the insults and accusations, he hadn’t expected that.

“I don’t have guilt,” William said. He spoke both in words and in faltering pauses, barely daring to ask, “What happened? We were getting on so well.”

At that moment, Ainsel’s anger disintegrated. There was no resolve left in her posture, no outrage in her expression. She hunched forward, clenching her jaw as though stifling tears; her hair fell in a curtain to shield her from view. Her silence lasted so long that he thought she might not respond at all, until she whispered.

“I’m the one with guilt.”

William wasn’t sure he should say anything. But to make her feel ignored was a risk that he couldn’t afford -- and a hurt he couldn’t inflict.

“Why might that be?”

“Because it’s true. And I didn’t do it alone.”

“You didn’t do the bad thing alone.” He repeated it less for her and more to sort through the mess of information. Little by little, he moved nearer until there were mere inches between them.

She stayed right where she was. “When... when I was thirteen, I followed this group. I guess we saw ourselves as rebels, too. They were older than me, but we were all...”

“Children,” he finished.

“Yes. There were these factions after the Minister took over. The courts remained, but smaller. In secret. And they still do. They have territories and everything, right under his radar. The Unseelie, my faction, wanted power again. I was the youngest, but they agreed when I... when I came up with a plan.”

As William listened, so close to Ainsel that he could smell the wool of her jumper, pieces of the mystery began to align. First, there were the courts. Then, rebellion. Revolution. Against that, a counterstrike. And Ainsel had been at its head.

And with a single whisper, the world stood still.

“So we took a changeling from the Seelie court. He was only eight.”

The barrier holding back torrents of emotions at once splintered. They crashed down upon him and shattered into thousands of shards -- despair, loss, confusion, the urge to break down and cry -- then those shards broke too, leaving questions in heaps.

She had switched two lives and split two families.

She had swayed others who should have known better.

Somewhere on Earth was a faerie growing up in an alien place; in the Realm, a human lost among warped time and customs that weren’t his and folk who might treat him terribly. And here beside William was someone who had suffered the poison of her secret for thirteen years. Every time he had ever lied to his parents or to Thomas paled. To hide for that long, and to hide something of such a scale, he could not begin to understand how it felt.

He didn’t trust himself to speak without his voice trembling. Rather, he reached forward; palms upon her cheeks, he nudged her chin up. Their contact burst with showers of Soiléireacht sparks. The way she looked at him -- no walls, no dishonesty, no hostility -- made his breath catch in his throat. He drew her in close; instead of resisting, she leaned into him, her head tucked against his neck. So many things could have surprised him then, and what did was her warmth. Perhaps, last he’d embraced her, he hadn’t noticed that she was warm as any person, even with her links to fall and winter. Why he noticed it now, he could not say, for the realization blinked out and another replaced it: Ainsel wasn’t pulling away. He hadn’t destroyed their connection.

“Ainsel,” he murmured. “Remember what I said about you? Before we went shopping? You have this incredible sense of right and wrong. And despite all the torment you’ve covered up, you keep trying day after day.”

A muffled sound slipped from her, halfway between a groan and a whimper; he held her tighter, closer., and continued.

“You survived the hounds. You saved yourself just as much as I did. I admire that.”

“You don’t hate me?”

“I could never hate you. First off, you were so young then. And second, the effects that a war must have on a teenager... It’s no wonder something rash was done.”

In sudden uncertainty, he winced -- would she think he had called her rash? -- but she grasped his shoulders, reassurance that she wasn’t angry.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled.

“I know. And that’s not all.” He hesitated, not certain he should say this. “You’re unlike anything I have ever dealt with. I don’t make friends; I don’t open up to people. No one but Tom understands me. Yet, in less than three weeks, you’ve made your place here and I’ve gotten so used to it. I want you here. I admit that. Do you believe me?”

With her sleeve, she wiped her eyes and did not once try to disguise it.

“Maybe,” she said. Then, “I believe you.”

A great weight was lifted, and he hadn’t realized it had been there until it was gone. Such was his relief that he did not consider his next admission.

“And you are beautiful a way I have never seen any human be. It’s like magic.”

“Beautiful like magic?” she repeated, sitting up; her brows raised. “Careful...”

Only then did it register how he’d sounded -- what he’d said. Heat crept up his face.

“Ainsel?”

“What?”

“You should sleep.” He swept the blanket from the floor and wrapped it around her to stave off any protest, but none came.

She wore it like a cape, and as William took his laptop from the table, Ainsel curled against his side. Anxiety rose and fell in waves -- should he let her? Would it add meaning to his statement that shouldn’t be there, or was that meaning there already? He thought again of a calming chamomile tea, but moving now would disturb her.

And so, there he stayed, typing message upon message in his class chatroom as though nothing was any different.

❦❦❦

Under night’s cloak, a neighborhood away, Thomas struggled to concentrate on his World of Warcraft quest through Arthur’s barking. It was a heavy, deep sound with a growl at its center, cutting into the howl of spells and clashing of swords. Barking was not unusual in his house, even that which sounded like a threat. Thus, Thomas’ focus held steady.

Until, that is, the noise wouldn’t stop. Thomas huffed, left his character up a tree to avoid enemies, and marched to the living room. There, the dog who preferred chewing shoes and startling rabbits to looking threatening paced. His ears were pricked, his tail high, as he watched something unseen from the window. Every several seconds, the rumbling core of his calls morphed into snarling.

“Arthur,” Thomas urged, his voice low. “Hush.”

Where normally commands were law, that was not the case now. His dog took a fleeting glance back, as if saying, Come look! Now! The whites of his eyes showed. That was fear -- and for Arthur, it was far from normal.

Though he’d never needed to use it, Thomas kept a baseball bat under the couch. He slid it out, gripped it tight, and crept to the window. Arthur pressed against his leg. Light poured out onto the lawn. Thomas should have at least seen signs that someone had been there, but instead, he saw nothing. And if someone were there, the motion alarm would be shrieking.

He gave his companion a nudge and said, “It’s okay. Just an animal.”

The barks and snarls turned to whining; Arthur’s ears lowered, then his tail.

“It’s almost one,” he pointed out, as if he’d receive an answer. “Let’s get to bed.”

Bat still in hand, Thomas made his way slowly toward his room; pausing on the threshold, he checked that Arthur was following -- but to no avail. The dog had settled on the couch, chin atop massive paws.

He breathed a sigh, turned off his lamp, and climbed into bed. Minutes became hours. Arthur’s pacing stretched long into the night; sleep never did come.