Read Chapter 9: The Missing Child

The hunt party moved through the silver-lit forest in eerie silence. Maeve kept her eyes on the pale rump of the queen's white stag ahead, her boots sinking into moss that seemed to breathe beneath her weight. She had been given a place among the lesser retinue, close enough to serve if called, far enough to be forgotten.

Three fairy lords rode ahead of her, their voices carrying back on the cold air. They spoke of the harvest, of ripe grain and the weight of mortal souls soon to be gathered. Maeve's stomach turned, but she kept her face still.

"—the child, though," one lord said, his voice dropping. "A century gone, and still the queen's garden grows wild over the empty cradle."

Maeve's fingers tightened on her reins. The speaker was an older fairy with skin like birch bark and eyes the color of spoiled milk. He shook his head slowly.

"No mention," another lord hissed. "You speak of what is forbidden."

"Only to the queen's face. But the earth remembers. The rowan still weeps at the gate where the child was taken."

Taken. A child. Maeve's heart stuttered.

The birch-skinned lord continued as if his companion had not spoken. "It was the price of an old debt. A human babe for a broken promise. The queen sealed it herself, and the mother's screams broke the glass in three counties."

Maeve's hands trembled. Human babe. An old debt. Her father's letter burned in her memory, his confession of trading her name before she was born—

The third lord turned and noticed her. His gaze sharpened. "The mortal girl listens."

Maeve dropped her eyes instantly. "I hear nothing, my lord. My ears are full of my own fears."

"Fear makes mortals deaf," the birch-skinned lord said, but there was a warning in his voice now. "Or too clever. The queen's word is law. The child is not spoken of."

Ciarán appeared as if woven from shadow, riding up beside her so silently that Maeve startled. His face was pale—paler than she had ever seen it, the flickering green lights of the Otherworld casting hollows beneath his cheekbones.

"You heard," he said, not a question.

Maeve kept her voice low. "A child vanished a century ago. Taken for an old debt. You know something."

"I know that you will forget it." His hand closed over her wrist, cold as river stone. "Maeve, listen to me. The queen forbade that tale before you were a whisper in your father's bloodline. If she learns you heard it—"

"She's already watching me like a cat watches a wounded bird," Maeve bit out. "What's one more mark against my back?"

"This is not a mark. It is an execution." Ciarán's jaw tightened. "The child in that story was not fairy. It was mortal. Stolen from a human cradle to settle a debt older than this court's memory. And the queen has spent a century making certain no one speaks of it."

Maeve's mind raced. A mortal child. A debt. Her father had traded her true name before her birth. What if the debt was older? What if her family had been tangled in fairy bargains for generations, and she was only the latest thread pulled tight?

"Why would you be afraid?" she asked. "You serve her."

"I serve the court," Ciarán corrected, his voice barely a breath. "There is a difference, and it is one the queen punishes with the same severity as treason."

Ahead, the hunt faltered. The white stag had stopped at the edge of a clearing, its antlers catching the shimmering light of a moon that never set. The fairy lords fell silent. All eyes turned toward the center of the clearing, where a single rowan tree stood.

Its branches were bare, but at its roots sat a small cradle carved from pale wood, weathered by a century of rain and sorrow. The cradle was empty.

Maeve's breath caught in her throat.

The birch-skinned lord dismounted slowly, approaching the cradle as if drawn by a force he could not resist. He touched its edge with a trembling hand. "She still remembers," he murmured. "The earth keeps the echo. The mother's grief soaked into the roots, and now the tree weeps sap like tears—"

"Enough." The queen's voice cut through the clearing like a blade.

Maeve had not seen her approach. The Seelie queen stood at the head of the party now, beautiful and terrible, her gown of autumn leaves rustling in a wind that touched nothing else. Her eyes, the color of deep water, fixed on the birch-skinned lord.

"You have forgotten my law," the queen said softly. "Or you have chosen to defy it."

"My queen—"

The lord's words died in his throat. The queen did not move, did not gesture, but the fairy's skin began to split like old bark, cracking and peeling until he crumbled to dust at the roots of the rowan.

The court was silent. Even the stag stood frozen.

The queen turned her gaze upon the cradle, and something flickered in her expression—there and gone, too fast to name. "The child was the price of faith," she said, her voice carrying to every ear. "And faith was not kept. Let this be the last reminder."

She lifted her hand, and the cradle began to splinter, rotting before Maeve's eyes, dissolving until only a pile of gray dust remained beneath the bare rowan tree.

Maeve's throat burned with a scream she did not dare release. Her hands shook against the reins. The letter in her chest pocket suddenly felt like it weighed ten stone.

Another mortal child. Another broken family. Another debt paid in blood.

Was that to be her fate? Was she already dead, and simply waiting to fall?

The queen mounted her own steed in one fluid motion, not looking back at the stain of dust where her lord had stood. "The hunt is over. Return to the court. The harvest festival begins at moonrise."

The party moved as one, turning back toward the distant spires. Maeve did not move, her eyes still fixed on the rowan tree.

Ciarán rode close to her, his voice urgent. "Maeve. We must go."

"That tree," she whispered. "That cradle. She made it disappear. Like she made the lord disappear. Like she owns every story in this land."

"She does," Ciarán said. "That is why you will speak of this to no one. Bury it so deep even you cannot find it."

"Or what?" Maeve turned to look at him, and her voice was steady. "She'll kill me? She's already doomed me. I have no name she doesn't hold. My father sold me before I was born. What more does she have to take?"

Ciarán's face twisted with an emotion Maeve could not read—something raw and old, like a wound that had never fully closed. "She can take the ones you love instead. She has done it before."

Maeve's mind flew to Declan. To his grown face in the vision, waiting every evening at the end of the road.

"If you value your brother," Ciarán added, the words like ice, "you will forget every word you heard in that clearing. Forget the cradle. Forget the child. Forget the lord who was too careless to hold his tongue."

Maeve swallowed. She looked one last time at the rowan tree, its bare branches reaching toward a dark violet sky.

"I will not forget," she said quietly. "But I can learn to seem as if I have."

Ciarán stared at her for a long moment. Then something flickered in his pale eyes—not approval, but a wary respect. "That will have to be enough."

He turned his horse and rode after the party. Maeve sat alone in the clearing for a heartbeat longer, the silence pressing against her ears.

A mortal child. A century ago. An old debt.

Her father had traded her name to save the pub. But what if the true bargain had been struck long before her father was even born? What if her entire lineage was collateral in a debt she had never been told about?

The rowan tree shivered, though there was no wind. A single red berry fell from its highest branch, landing at the dust-stained roots of the vanished cradle.

Maeve reached down and picked it up. It was warm in her palm, warm as a heartbeat, warm as if it were alive.

She slipped it into her pocket, beside her father's letter.

Then she rode after the others, back toward a court that wanted her dead, armed with a question she did not yet know how to ask.