THE FOREST LORD By Susan Krinard

“Eden,” he said, his voice cracking. “Look at me. I have not changed. I still… care for you above all others, you and Donal. I would die to protect you. To… stay with you.”

She continued to stare, her hand clutching Donal’s. “You are the one who bargained with my father. Who wanted me just for…” She swallowed convulsively. “What are you?”

“I am Hartley. Your lover. The father of our child.” He took a step toward her. She flinched.

“You are not a man,” she said. “You… are not human.”

“No, I am not. But—”

“You lied,” she said. “You lied six years ago, and you lied when you returned to Hartsmere.”

“Yes,” he admitted, sickness in his belly. “I thought I had good reason. But I came to see… that it was wrong, Eden. Because I had learned… I had learned to—”

Eden covered her ears with her hands. “Stop. Stop. I will hear no more.” She turned about and seized Donal’s shoulders. “Run, Donal! Run down the fell to the house.” She gave him a little shove, and he looked at Hartley with a question in his eyes.

“Da?”

“No!” Eden propelled him to the edge of the glade. She cast one glance back at Hartley, and in that glance was everything Hartley had feared.

Then she began to run. She carried Donal along with her by sheer force of will. Donal did not resist. He knew that his mother needed him now.

When they were beyond his sight, Hartley sank to his knees. He willed the antlers gone, and his form to its now-familiar shape. As he cast off his Fane body, the weight of the mortal world seemed to settle upon his shoulders. The weight of grief, and sorrow, and self-hatred.

It was just as if the events of six years ago had repeated themselves. He had lost her. Surely he had lost her. And in that knowledge he raged: against himself and against Eden. Eden, who would not accept or forgive.

He tore at the earth with his fingers. Tree branches tossed violently over his head, though there was no breeze. Clouds gathered thick and heavy over Rushborough’s new estate. Not a sound was heard from bird or beast.

When his rage was past, Hartley sat back and gazed up at the sky. Slowly it cleared, and a shaft of sunlight found its way onto his little patch of ground. He closed his eyes and let it bathe his face.

All the Fane that he had known, long gone, marched through his memory: those that had been contemptuous of man and fled when mortals became too numerous; those that had fallen under the mortal spell and been drawn to mate with them and help them, sometimes to the Fane’s ultimate peril; those who had merely used men for their own amusement without a thought to the consequences. And those like himself, bound longest to earth by affection for its creatures.

But rare, rare was the Fane who gave his or her loyalty to one thing or one being.

Hartley looked up at the sun. Awed wonder filled his chest and spilled through his body.

He had become like the sun with its constancy and steadfast light. He could not simply run way, turn his back on Eden, and pretend she meant nothing. He could—must—persist when others of his kind would yield, swallow the pride that came as naturally to his people as magic.

This had been a test: a test of his courage and of Eden’s. A test, too, of the depth of her feelings. But perhaps she had not failed. Perhaps she, being mortal, needed more time to absorb what he had revealed. To know her own heart.

Yes. Hope was not yet gone. Time she would have. He would send Tod to leave her a message: for three days he would wait for Eden in the wood at Hartsmere. And if she had not come to him by then…

At this moment he felt very, painfully human.

By the time Eden reached the house, her legs would carcely carry her another step. Donal, fresh as he had been at the top of the fell, showed no expression. He looked up the fell.

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