Only a few hours later, Sy and I were literally still catching our breath as the house lights went down and the stage lights began to burn. On the other side of the lights, was a stadium full of people who, I couldn't help but think, were busy hating me. It was a persistent, ugly feeling, something like anxiety but with the teeth of facts to back it up. I'd seen my socials today: it wasn't good. My Instagram was flooded with Sy's fans telling me what a garbage waste of space and breath I was. Cass had been busily deleting and reporting all day, but the deluge was endless. They called me a thief, a pretender, a phony, and a lot of other less flattering things. And I was helpless. I—or rather Cass—didn't post anything new, not even a story. And yet the comments kept coming. In this moment, right now, I focused on breathing deeply. I wanted to feel the thrill of the show, the gathering energy waiting to boil into powerful magic. But all I felt was dread. As if I were going in front my Qu

We set our guitars carefully on their stands. My mind was racing. The studio was soundproof: no human could have heard us, even if they were prowling around the house. But whatever I'd felt at the edges of our magic had absolutely not felt human. I didn't want to admit it to myself: I recognized that dark, sour rot. It was Unseelie magic.I'd stopped being bothered by Sy's Unseelie magics. I don't know when. His magic, his nature, it couldn't be unpleasant to me because it was Sy. Sy, who was heading for the studio door."What are you doing?" I asked sharply, hearing the fear in my own voice."Going to greet our uninvited guests." Sy's voice sounded grave and cold. "They know we're here. They'd have to be dead not to have noticed all that magic."So, he didn't think they were human either. Did he know…?I stepped out of the studio after him, into the cool of the basement. "And what do you think YOU'RE doing?" Sy twisted around as he heard me shuffling behind him. "Coming wit

Sy held my hand—my non-iron-ring-hand—in his as we stepped gingerly back into the chalet. I felt him edging toward the living room, where the wood stove and the invaluable iron poker were waiting for us. His skin was buzzing with magic, and I caught an edge of that dangerous red-rage magic like lightning in his flesh. Still controlled, but coiled, dangerous, waiting. If Jarrah was already back, if he challenged Sy again—I knew Sy wouldn't be able to hold back. He'd attack his own people. And I'd really have doomed him. I felt the bright shimmer of power in the chalet's open design living room and kitchen. For an instant I was almost comforted—This was certainly Seelie power, not Unseelie, that I felt now. But then my brain caught up. Luckily there were no fae manifesting visibly, which absolutely didn't mean we were safe. It just meant they weren't here yet. "Poker," said Sy under his breath, and we shuffled toward the wood stove. Sy took up the iron poker like a sword, looking bot

Sy brought the poker with us to the bedroom, I think as a bit of a security blanket. We laid down together on the broad bed with its picture windows looking out over the stormy mountain ravine. We were too preoccupied to notice the view. We lay together, clothed, and safely enfolded in one another's arms. Sy kissed my lips, my nose, my eyelids, and I pressed my forehead against his, treasuring the small, sure contact of skin to skin, of his hand stroking my waist, my back, of my arm draped around his strong, lean form. I heard the storm fade, the thunder going soft in the distance. And no Seelie or Unseelie appeared to drag us apart. No Jarrah, no Raelen, no armored warriors of a Seelie Queen or an Unseelie King…"Sy," I said, beginning with our small ritual of offering the other's name. "We need to talk about the whole prince thing.""Do we?" he sighed, and I felt his dear, wolfish smile as he kissed me. "Can't we just keep on ignoring it?""I mean, I wasn't ignoring it per se,

I could feel the prickly residue haunting us as we settled into the studio though. At the bottom of the golden sense of the music between us, there was the rocky underbelly, like a rough stream bed sharp against your feet. Underneath the lyrics and melody, the melding of the chords into flow as we experimented with new beats and jazzy combinations, there was that unsettled sense of disquiet. It clung to us like brambles as we tried to move past it. And eventually, I couldn't take it anymore.I stopped playing at the end of a long improv session, bouncing off each other, alluding to songs we knew and riffing on them in the chord progressions. The sense of warm golden strength between us hovered like warm mist. Through that brilliance, I met Sy's eye."I think we should talk about what you said," I broached bluntly. "I know it was the heat of the moment and all that. But when my uncle was saying all that about the war, and you said you didn't believe it was really happening…What did yo