Roiben is always stuck doing king things, these days, and Kaye is busy trying to keep a hold on both worlds without letting her mother find out who she is and isn't. It sucks—a harsh word, crude and real, like mortality—that they can't just name what is between them but that's not possible, any more than being able to change who they are to let it breathe more often—but that's the way the world works. Any world. Mortal or Seelie or Unseelie or something else she still hasn't been warned of yet.

And she misses him in a slow, dull way, like being able to hear your heartbeat when you stick your head into the ocean. It's almost covered by the waves she causes with her own well-meaning actions that always turn out wrong. She's afraid to ask if he misses her because if the answer is yes she might not be able to leave him, and if she never lets him out of her sight she won't be able to keep him safe. It doesn't matter anymore that she has loyalties to mere mortals. She could leave them behind in a heartbeat.

"No," she mutters tiredly, tilting the last of the beer up to her glamoured lips. "Damn. No."

She can't.

So she's spent the past week hiding in cheap dark bars with dim lighting where mentioning the shadiness of the tree-lined streets has more than one meaning, buying newspapers with look-alike leaves and watching every news show she can. Trying to remind herself of the awfulness in humanity. It might work better if she could forget the awfulness of Faerie.

The problem lay in this: Faeries aren't her people, but they are her race. Humans are her family, but she is no more related to them than she is to apple trees. Blood is thicker than water. Memories are fragile. Kaye is drunk.

This last thought chased her out of the bar and onto the boardwalk nearby. Where Janet had died. And that's another reason that she can't just pick a side: she will outlive most everyone she loves, and the ones with whom she will survive will treat their children and grandchildren like sport. This she cannot abide. This is inevitability, framed and hung painfully perfectly in the muzzy fuzziness of her tipsy thoughts. This is heartbreak.

She doesn't want to pick a side. She wants the side to choose her for itself. The third or fourth or seventeenth thing is that in her head, she's only a teenager, and she still wants someone to tell her what to do.

She falls asleep on the cold wood of the dock and wakes up to the sound of angry voices asking her if she's crazy. And so the cycle repeats.

Roiben's been sending someone out to look for her every few days. It's stupid and cruel to both of them and he is fully aware that humans believe in letting go of what they love, but he isn't human, as each reflective surface apathetically reminds him. This is a source of relief, some days. Others he wishes he could become one to understand her a little better or just to renounce the kingdom he didn't much want.

But to a being, they come back with no information. No sightings. No word. The one currently before him is young and clever, though she tries to hide it behind pretended deference. Her head is bowed over the hands clasped around the hilt of the copper sword she holds out to him. "If I may speak freely, milord," she murmurs after a pause to let the news of her defeat sink in. Roiben gets the sense that she is aware of everything going on around her down to the tiniest change of his expression, though she gives no sign of this.

"Of course," he grates. The throne is lonelier without her in the bounds of his kingdom. He is many times more isolated when Kaye is not there; Kaye is the only one who dares speak to him as she would to any other person, to any other man. The realization of such a thing is hard to stomach. He had hoped to keep her safe and far from the business he had no choice to make his own.

The faerie's spine straightens vertebra by vertebra, or whatever her species uses for support. She looks into his eyes and speaks as though giving a well-rehearsed speech. At random, Roiben notices her eyes are green.

"I mean not to offend, milord, but perhaps the reason we cannot find the lady is because she does not wish to be found." He stiffens, and she pauses before continuing, eyeing his weapons warily. "Perhaps she wants only to be looked for. Or perhaps—" She stops, hesitating, choosing her words. "It seems as if she is waiting for you to go yourself."

Does she think he does not know this?

But there are no choices. He cannot leave this place except on the business he has chosen. Though he knows the true names of every last one of his followers, curse them all and himself with them, he cannot trust them. He knows this more than he knows himself. Kaye—

"Though for one who knows the politics of Faerie as well as she professes to, this is rather stupid of her, yes?" Roiben replies cruelly, showing no trace of the sudden surge of longing that rises up in him without provocation; he had thought of her, yes, but he is always thinking of her. "She knows I cannot leave this court or one such as you would surely try to steal it."

The look in this faerie's eyes flashes with something that looks almost like pity, and she bows her head again. "I do not want your kingdom. I am merely giving you a theory." She licks her pale lips, tilts her head. "Although it is true that she would not jeopardize your rule. Perhaps there is only the wish that such a thing was possible keeping her gone for so long."

Roiben knows that missing her damns them both, that she could be used against him, that anyone who wanted to be king or queen or ruler would need only to threaten her and he'd surrender it all if killing them was impossible. And he can't stop himself.

It is an unprecedented twenty-one days later before she walks into his chambers, that same tired smirk glued to her features while her eyes drown him in their sorrow.

"Honey, I'm home," she jokes drily. "Did you miss me?"

His mouth moves faster than his brain and he says, "More than light is missed after a decade in the underground."

She gives a startled grin, quick and joyous, and everything is okay between them. For now.