She stood where she was a long time, watching him in silence as the shadows changed and made leaf tattoos on his skin. There was peace in simply standing there, wrapped in calm, but eventually she whispered, “Does it help at all?”

He didn’t startle, didn’t so much as change the steady slow draw of breath, but after a little while he spoke. The words were music, incomprehensible at first, but as the moments went by, their meaning became clear. Seelie language and truthseeker magic wound together, making a story of sorrow and pain.

“A little,” Dafydd breathed. “The moonlight here is cooler. At home it would burn a path to my heart, strengthening me.”

“What will happen to you if you stay here?” Lara had an answer for that, one she didn’t want to consider, and Dafydd’s sigh said her fears were well founded.

“I don’t know. With the staff, I think I would survive. Without it … your world can only give me a fraction of what I need.” Dafydd put his hand to his chest, a spasm of pain tightening his features as he did so. “There is a wound here, Lara. An empty place where I once was connected to the Barrow-lands. I’d never noticed its presence until its absence told its tale. The pale magics of your world might flood it, but they will never fill it. I reach for things here, for the sounds of nature, the taste of the wind, the cool light from the sky, and they fall away from me.” His hand rose again, this time to capture one of the insects in his palm. “Like these biting creatures, your world simply does not recognize me well enough to give me sustenance. I might become a wraith if I stayed here. Like the nightwings became, before they took that man.”

“I won’t let that happen.”

He smiled suddenly, brilliant in the moonlight. “No. I don’t think you would, at that.” Finally he opened his eyes, then put out a graceful hand, inviting Lara to join him. She knelt by his side, then leaned in to kiss him.

“Good,” she whispered. “You’re still real. There are so many things I need to ask you, Dafydd.”

He nodded, gaze solemn. “So many things to talk about.” Then he smiled again and drew her closer. “What was it you said? ‘Shut up and kiss me’?”

Lara laughed. “I only said shut up.”

“That,” Dafydd said, eyes bright, “I can do.” Then, for all the honesty in his voice and promise in his words, he added, “You came for me. Thank you, Lara. You might not have.”

Lara put her forehead against his, lost for a moment in simply wanting to touch him. His skin was cool, almost cold, and she took his hands to warm them as she sat back on her heels. “There was never any chance I wouldn’t.”

“Unless you’d been lost to the Barrow-lands forever. How did you come back? How did you open the door?”

“Me! What about you? You disappeared in the middle of a war! How did that happen?”

“I’ve had months to wonder about that.” Dafydd shook his head. “The Barrow-lands will only permit someone of royal blood to cast that spell, and it certainly wasn’t me.”

“Well, it certainly doesn’t seem very likely that it was Emyr, and I’m sure it wasn’t Ioan.”

“Hafgan, perhaps. The Barrow-lands will heed Unseelie royal blood as well as Seelie.”

“No, it wasn’t Hafgan. Ioan’s been ruling in his name for centuries, maybe longer.”

“Ioan has what?” Dafydd gasped and Lara dropped her gaze to their entwined fingers, gathering herself before answering.

“Hafgan abdicated and Ioan took his name. For consistency, maybe. Your brother is king of the Unseelie, Dafydd.”

Astonishment kept Dafydd still, though his gaze went through Lara as if he saw something distant. “Not for consistency, but because Emyr would take abdication as a folly. He might have seized the opportunity to attack the Unseelie court, to push an old enemy out of sight when they were at their weakest. Hafgan can’t be dead, can he?” He refocused on Lara, leaving her with the alarming impression that she should have many answers she lacked.

“I don’t think so, but Ioan said it was so long ago that the Unseelie have all but forgotten someone else used to be king. How long would that take?”

“Too long for it to have any meaning, Lara, or even any number I might name for you. Oisín keeps some mark of the years, but our nature doesn’t incline us to. I don’t see how the Unseelie court could forget their king was once a different man. Our memories fade until even our own lives are nothing more than stories and legends, but Ioan’s Seelie coloring would forever remind them.”

“Ah.” Lara puffed her cheeks. “I wouldn’t have known he was Seelie if he hadn’t told me. He says the Unseelie used to be pale, too, but living underground for so long has changed them, so he chose to change, too. He’s dark-haired now.”

“They? He thinks of himself as one of them?”

“Didn’t Merrick think of himself as Seelie?”

“Not so much that he let our magic work subtle changes to his coloring. I didn’t even know that could be done.” Dafydd fixed his gaze on the black pond. “So my blood brother truly is of another people, while the brother of my heart lies dead and I am, perhaps, trapped in a world not my own. I suppose it could be worse,” he said eventually. “It could be raining.”

Lara shot a look toward the sky, then shouldered him. “Even I know better than to say things like that.”

Dafydd flashed a brief smile at the stars. “I’m a weatherman. It permits me a certain leeway. Am I forgiven my follies, then? I should have told you about Merrick,” he said more quietly. “I am sorry, Lara.”

“I know. And yes, you’re forgiven. A year in jail is more than enough penance. I didn’t mean for that to happen.”

“You didn’t cause it to happen. I spent a great deal of time worrying about you, Lara. It seems impossible it was only a day.”

Lara shook her head. “I know. I spent hours reading news archives on Kelly’s computer. It was like reading a past history of a world that never was. But it could have been much worse. You were gone from the Barrow-lands for ten days, and a century passed here. I could’ve been missing for a decade.”

“Some aspect of the spell I used to hold time in tandem must have clung to you. Either that or a truthseeker’s will can find its way through time as well as the space between worlds.”

“In that case I need to work on my timing.”

“Well,” Dafydd said in a wonderfully mollifying tone, “it was your first time.”

Lara laughed aloud. “Practice makes perfect, is that it?”

Dafydd took the question for invitation, brushing his mouth against hers and murmuring, “That’s the human expression, yes.”

“I’d just as soon not have to practice that, though. I can think of better things that might need perfecting.”

“Really. Like what?”

Lara sat back, trying to look serious. “Well, the cut of your shirt. It’s all right when the glamour is working, but right now it looks like you borrowed your big brother’s clothes. And—”

She shouted laughter as Dafydd tackled her, knocking her back into moss and soft earth. “My dress! You’re going to destroy it! I made this, Dafydd!”

“My deepest apologies.” The phrase was teasing, not sincere, and Lara pursed her lips uninvitingly as he tried for another kiss. “Ah, is a man not allowed to offer perhaps slightly insincere apologies to salve his lady’s heart?”

“Not with me. It grates on my skin.” Delight flooded Lara, though, turning her sour expression to another smile. “His lady?”

Dafydd looked discomfited. “It’s absurd, I know, Lara. We’ve spent barely a day in each other’s company—”

“And you still haven’t learned when you’re talking too much.” Lara touched her fingers to his lips. “Shh. We can give it some time before we start putting the absurd into words. Right now—”

“Right now nothing.” Kelly’s voice came out of the shadows, and after a moment she appeared to lean against a tree. “If I had a bowl of popcorn I’d probably just sit down and watch, but since I don’t, we should probably hit the road.”