Laurel rolled her eyes. Her long absence certainly hadn’t dampened his bravado.
“How is everything?”
“Fine. Good. Everything’s good,” she stammered.
He hesitated. “How are your friends?”
“My friends?” Laurel asked. “Could you possibly be more transparent?”
Laurel unconsciously touched a silver bracelet on her wrist. Tamani’s eyes followed the movement.
Tamani kicked at the dirt. “How’s David?” he finally asked.
“He’s great.”
“Are you two…?” He let the question hang.
“Are we together?”
“I guess that’s it.” Tamani glanced again at the intricate silver bracelet. Frustration clouded his features, transforming the glance into a glare, but he dispelled it with a smile.
The bracelet was a gift from David. He had given it to her just before Christmas last year, when they officially became a couple. It was a delicate silver vine with tiny flowers blooming around crystal centres. He hadn’t said as much, but Laurel suspected it was to balance out the faerie ring she still wore every day. She couldn’t bear to put the tiny ring away and, true to her promise, every time she thought of the ring, she thought of Tamani. She still had feelings for him. Torn and uncertain feelings, mostly – but strong enough to make her feel guilty when her thoughts wandered in that direction.
David was everything she could ask for in a boyfriend. Everything except what he wasn’t, what he never could be. But Tamani could never be what David was, either.
“Yes, we are,” she finally answered.
Tamani was silent.
“I need him, Tam,” she said, her tone soft but not apologetic. She couldn’t – wouldn’t – apologise for choosing David. “I told you before how it was.”
“Sure.” He ran his hands up and down her arms. “But he’s not here now.”
“You know I couldn’t live with that,” she forced herself to say. But it was barely a whisper.
Tamani sighed. “I’m just going to have to accept it, aren’t I?”
“Unless you really want me to be alone.”
He slung one arm around her shoulders – friendly now. “I could never want that for you.”
She put her arms around him and squeezed.
“What’s that for?” Tamani asked.
“Just for being you.”
“Well, I certainly won’t turn down a hug,” he said. His tone was casual, joking, but he wrapped his other arm around her tightly, almost desperately. Before she could pull away, however, his arm dropped, then pointed down the path. “Come on,”Tamani said. “It’s this way.”
Laurel’s mouth went dry. It was time.
Pushing her hand into her pocket, Laurel felt the embossed card for what was doubtless the hundredth time. It had shown up on her pillow one morning in early May, sealed with wax and tied with a sparkling silver ribbon. The message was brief – four short lines – but they changed everything.
Due to the woefully inadequate nature of your current education, you are summoned to the Academy of Avalon.
Please report to the gate at mid-morning, the first day of summer. Your presence will be required for eight weeks.
Woefully inadequate. Her mom hadn’t been too happy with that. But then, her mom hadn’t been too happy with much of anything involving faeries lately. After the initial revelation of Laurel being a faerie, things had been surprisingly OK. Her parents had always known there was something different about their adopted daughter. As crazy as the truth actually turned out to be – that Laurel was a changeling, a faerie child left in their care to inherit sacred fae land they had accepted it with surprising ease, at least at first. Her dad’s attitude hadn’t changed, but over the last few months her mom had grown more and more freaked out by the idea that Laurel wasn’t human. She’d stopped talking about it, then refused to even hear about it, and things had finally come to a head last month when Laurel got the invitation. Well, more like a summons, really. It had taken a lot of arguing from Laurel – and a fair bit of persuasion from her dad – before her mom had agreed to let her go. As if, somehow, she would come back even less human than when she’d left.
Laurel was glad she’d neglected to tell them anything about the trolls; she had no doubt she wouldn’t be standing here today if she had.
“Are you ready?” Tamani pressed, sensing Laurel’s hesitation.
Ready? Laurel wasn’t sure if she could ever be more ready for this…or less.
Silently, she followed him through the forest, trees filtering the sunlight and shading their trek. The path was scarcely a path at all, but Laurel knew where it led. Soon they would come to a small, gnarled tree, a unique species in this forest but otherwise ordinary in its appearance. Though she had spent twelve years of her life living here and exploring the land, she had seen this tree only once before – when she brought Tamani back from fighting trolls, wounded and barely conscious. Last time she had witnessed the tree’s transformation and gotten a tiny glimpse of what lay beyond. Today she would go through the gate.
Today, she would see Avalon for herself.
As they walked deeper into the forest, other faeries fell into step behind them, and Laurel forced herself not to crane her neck and stare. She wasn’t sure she’d ever get used to these beautiful, silent guards who never spoke to her and rarely met her eyes. They were always there, even when she couldn’t see them. She knew that now. She wondered briefly how many of them had been watching her since she was just a child, but the mortification was too great. Her parents watching her juvenile antics were one thing; nameless supernatural sentries were quite another. She swallowed, focused forward, and tried to think of something else.
Soon they arrived, emerging through a stand of redwoods clustered protectively around the ancient, twisted tree. The faerie sentries formed a half-circle and, after a sharp gesture from Shar – the leader of the sentries – Tamani dislodged his hand from Laurel’s vicelike grip to join them. Standing in the middle of the dozen or so sentries, Laurel clutched the straps of her backpack. Her breathing quickened as each sentry laid one hand against the bark of the tree, right where its stout trunk split into two thick limbs. Then the tree began to vibrate as the light of the clearing seemed to gather around its branches.
Laurel was determined to keep her eyes open this time, to watch the entire transformation. But even as she squinted resolutely against the glow, a brilliant flash forced her eyelids shut for the briefest of instants. When they opened again, the tree had transformed into the arching gate of tall, golden bars, laced with curling vines dotted with purple flowers. Two sturdy posts on either side anchored the gate into the ground, but otherwise it stood alone in the sunlit forest. Laurel let out a breath she hadn’t realised she was holding, only to hold it again as the gate swung outward.
Tangible warmth rolled forth from the gateway, and even ten feet away Laurel caught the aromatic scent of life and growth she recognised from years of gardening with her mom. But this was stronger – a pure perfume of bottled summer sunlight. She felt her feet begin to move forward of their own accord and was nearly through the gate when something tugged at her hand. Laurel tore her eyes away from the gateway and was startled to see that Tamani had stepped out of formation to wrap her hand gently in his own. A touch on her other hand prompted her to look back through the gate.
Jamison, the old Winter faerie she had met last fall, lifted her free hand and set it on his arm like a gentleman in a Regency