Forest of Dreams and Whispers (The Fae of the Forest)

by Katherine Macdonald

“You have the peace of a graveyard,”

That was the best and worst thing about being mortal, Juliana had decided. The fact that you could lie and be lied to.

He spoke of her like the great storytellers spoke of the stars.

She was no longer a queen, regal and refined. She was power and chaos, nature in the shape of a woman.

She hated that smile as much as her body loved it.

“I wanted her to know you were still here,” he said, “and she wasn’t.”

“You ate like this for three years?” “We had a herb garden. Spices, sometimes. It wasn’t too bad.” “Juliana, you made food a requirement of your service to me. I am not convinced.”

Faerie was their home and their coffin.

they found themselves giggling like the schoolchildren they never quite were.

The stars here seemed sharper than in the capital, the nebulous spray glittering in the quiet depths, like a mirror of diamonds.

He remembered the sound of her laughter like one remembered a fine drink they’d had one summer and never quite forgotten the taste or found its like again.

Hawthorn smiled, listing the rest, little moments she’d long since forgotten that he’d clung to, folded away like a summer flower in a scrapbook.

“That’s what we do, isn’t it? You and I? We fight. We turn to the blade when we cannot think.” “I do that because I learned it from you,” Juliana whispered. “I don’t know another way to be.”

“I’m not worth a kingdom, Hawthorn.” “You are to me.”