You don’t have to do this.”

Selena stopped packing the toiletries she’d set out on the dressing table to take with her on the journey, looked into the mirror, and met her younger sister’s woodland eyes. “Yes, I do.”

“You don’t owe them anything.”

Selena struggled not to smile. So fierce, so protective. Rhyann had always been that way, willing to hurl insults—or sticks and clods of dirt when words weren’t sufficient—in defense of a sister who was different, who wasn’t even a real sister by birth.

What she wouldn’t tell this sister of the heart was that it was Rhyann’s loyalty and love that was as much a spur to making this journey as her own needs.

“No, I don’t owe them anything.” Selena turned to face the young woman who had been a touchstone during the storms in her life. “I’m not doing this for the Fae, Rhyann. I’m doing it for myself. The moon calls. I can’t escape its pull any more than the sea can. There’s a power in me waiting to be released, filling me until it’s become everything. I could celebrate that rising alone, but I think I need to do this by the Fae’s customs. This time I need to stand among them.”

“Why?” Rhyann asked, her voice worried and a little plaintive.

Selena sat on the dressing table stool, then waited for Rhyann to settle on the corner of the bed. “Do you believe what the storyteller, Skelly, told us when he came traveling this way? Do you believe there are men called Inquisitors who have made it their work to kill witches and destroy the magic in the Old Places?”

Rhyann nodded reluctantly. “It’s hard to deny what he said when the wind tells the same tale. Every puff of air that comes from the east brings sorrow and anger and fear—and a feeling of malevolence that rejoices in the sorrow…and especially in the fear.”

“Do you believe it was the Fae Lord of Song, the Bard himself, who brought that news and the warnings to Skelly’s village?”

Rhyann shrugged. “That makes no difference.”

“Yes, it does.” Selena leaned forward. “It means there are some Fae who haven’t forgotten who and what the House of Gaian is. It means there are some Fae who care about more than themselves. If they have finally been stirred to care, can we sit in our villages here in the Mother’s Hills and do nothing?”

“No one has said we’ll do nothing!” Rhyann snapped.