The Terms

Faolan doesn't answer Davey. He doesn't even look at him.

"Gorse," he says, "take the brother to the Sallow and let him watch the river. Nobody speaks to him. Nobody feeds him." His eyes come back to you. "His sister and I have business."

"Ava," Davey begs as they pull him away. "Please."

The door in the oak shuts on his voice.

The room Faolan takes you to is up a staircase that spirals around the inside of the tree. It's small and round and lined with books, some of them bound in bark. A fire burns in a grate. Two chairs. A table with a single pear on it, gold as a coin.

He doesn't sit. He goes to the window and stands with his back to you, looking out over the burning forest, and you realize he's giving you a moment to stop shaking. You hate that you need it.

"Ask your questions," he says, without turning.

"Why did you take him?"

"I didn't take him. He came."

"Why did you keep him?"

He turns then. "Because I wanted to meet you."

You stare at him. "You don't know me."

"I said I wanted to meet you. I didn't say I knew you." He smiles slightly. "You're going to have to get better at listening, Ava. Everyone here talks the way I do. Most of them are less pleasant about it."

"Fine." You fold your arms. "What's the price?"

He says it the way other people order coffee. "Your nights. One year of them. You come to my court at sunset and leave at sunrise, every night, as my guest, and your brother walks out of my ring tonight unharmed and unbound."

You wait for the rest of it. There isn't any.

"That's it?"

"That's the shape of it. The details are where people usually drown."

He isn't wrong. You think of every contract you've ever catalogued in the basement of the Marrowfield College library: land deeds that gave away rivers by accident, wills that disinherited sons with a misplaced comma. You've spent five years reading the fine print of dead people. You know exactly where people drown.

"Sit down," you say. "And say it again. Slowly."

His eyebrows go up. Then, astonishingly, he sits.

You take the other chair and lean in. "Sunset to sunrise. Whose sunset? Yours or mine?"

His mouth twitches. "Yours. The ring follows the mortal sun."

"I have a job. I need sleep."

"The ring pays your sleep back. You'll wake rested every morning as if you'd had a full night in your own bed. That I'll put in the terms freely."

"And your food. Grandma said if you eat fae food, you can never leave."

"Your grandmother was mostly right." He picks up the pear, turns it. "Anything offered from my table, by my hand or my order, binds nothing. You may eat and drink and leave. That too."

"Gifts?"

"No gift given in my court will bind you without your knowing it."

"Harm?"

"You'll come to no harm under my roof." His voice cools. "Anyone who tries will learn what I'm for."

You nod slowly. It's too easy. That's what scares you. "What do you get out of this?"

"Company."

"That's not an answer."

"It's true. Which is all I'm able to give you." He sets the pear down. Then he says, unasked, looking straight at you: "And this, so it's in the terms and not just in your head. Nothing will be asked of you that you don't freely give. The bargain asks for your presence. Not your hand, not your mouth, not your bed. If anything more ever comes to me, it comes freely, or it doesn't come at all."

Your face goes hot. You didn't ask that. You were going to, and you didn't know how.

"Why would you put that in?"

"Because you were thinking it," he says, "and I'd rather you didn't spend a year wondering."

The fire pops. Somewhere below, the court is laughing again.

"Davey told me not to say yes," you say.

"Your brother is a sweet, stupid, brave man who is extremely bad at bargains." Faolan leans back. "And he's not the one I'm asking."

"If I say no?"

"Then you walk out of my ring tonight, freely. I won't stop you. And he stays."

"For how long?"

He's quiet for a beat too long. "Long enough that you'd regret it."

That's the thing about a person who can't lie, you're starting to realize. When they want to frighten you, they don't have to exaggerate.

You think about Grandma's warnings. You think about the cake that caved in. You think about Davey shouting don't you dare, and the way his voice cracked on it like he was sixteen again.

"Say the whole thing," you say. "From the top. All of it."

He stands. The room seems to get smaller. When he speaks again, his voice has changed, deeper and more formal, the words falling into a rhythm like something ancient being recited.

"Your brother walks free from my ring tonight, unharmed and unbound. In return, you will be my guest in the Autumn Court every night for a year, sunset to sunrise. Your sleep will be paid back to you. Nothing from my table and no gift of my court will bind you unknowing. You will come to no harm under my roof. Nothing will be asked that you don't freely give." He pauses. "And if you fail a night, the debt falls where it falls."

"What does that mean? The last part."

"It means a broken bargain has a cost, and the cost goes where it goes." He holds out his hand. "That's the old shape of it. Every bargain in the realms ends with a line like it."

You look at his hand. Long fingers, a scar across the knuckles, a gold ring shaped like an acorn cap.

A year. Three hundred and sixty-five nights.

Davey would be home.

You put your hand in his.

His skin is warm, warmer than a person's should be, and the moment your palms touch, something burns behind your left ear, quick and bright, like a match struck against your skin. You gasp. He doesn't let go.

"Done," he says quietly. "Freely made."

His thumb moves once across your knuckles. Then he releases you and turns away, and his voice is lazy again. "Bramble will take you both to the ring. Go home, guest. Sleep. Sunset comes faster than you think."

Davey doesn't say a single word the whole way back through the burning trees. At the ring, the copper moon goes pale and the sky goes gray, and you both step over the mushrooms into cold, real, dripping Vermont dawn. Ettie's car is in the lot with the sheriff's cruiser behind it, and Ettie is screaming your name, and Davey still won't look at you.

"What did you do?" he says finally, at the trailhead, so low only you can hear it. "Ava. What did you give him?"

"Nights," you say. "Just nights."

He makes a sound like you punched him, and gets in his truck, and drives away.

You go home. You touch the spot behind your ear in the bathroom mirror and see nothing, but you can feel it, a tiny raised shape like an embossed seal.

When you walk into your bedroom, there's something on your pillow.

A single oak leaf, red at the edges and gold at the heart, perfect, as if it fell a minute ago. It's warm when you pick it up. And as you watch, lines of fine gold script begin to burn along its veins, one word at a time, as if someone far away is writing them.

Sunset, guest. Don't be late. No one has ever kept me waiting, and I find I'm curious how it feels.

The leaf grows warmer in your hand. He's still writing.