She was Seelie, as all the most tempting Tuath were in those days. She was good and beautiful, and she danced better than fae twice her age, and she adorned herself with rubies and onyx, not caring that these were Unseelie gems and that they would draw Unseelie eyes. When she thrust her hands into the soil, the plants would grow more heartily and vibrantly; when she walked through a garden, the flowers' heads would turn and watch her pass. But Cian did not love her for any of these things. In truth, he did not know exactly why he loved her, only that he did not need to know the reason. The mystery allowed the love to blossom, and so he would let it be.

The children, too, were Seelie. Twenty years prior, Alma had taken a lover, and together they had borne seven golden-haired youths, each possessing the grace of their mother and the courageous spirit of their father. Perhaps it was for the worse that they had retained their father's bravery; perhaps they would meet the same end, and Alma would soon tend eight graves instead of one. But Cian found that the children were pliable, easy to teach and easy to care for. As inexperienced as they were, they shied away from the skirmishes at the border, preferring instead to tend their mother's garden and read the books that their mother's new lover brought them.

In matters of politics, they were cowardly, but in matters of the heart they were brave. They asked that the wedding take place at night. They asked that it take place at all.

Any court would have found Alma and Cian's marriage to be illegitimate, but Cian did not care for courts. He cared for his wife and their home in the Old Land, decorated in the florid Seelie style. He cared for the books he bound in the basement, and he cared for friends who did not mind where he had been born, only that he stayed where he was and talked with them for as long as he was able. He cared for foggy nights on the riverbank, whispers of affection, the feeling of hands on wrists and kisses on foreheads. He cared for safety and secrecy and love and warmth, and he did not care that he was breaking the law.

Every so often, he would watch people leave the Old Land for newer shores. They claimed that the courts cooperated there, that the strange people who resided there made cooperation necessary. Peace was a distant dream, but some could not help but chase it. And so the travelers who had been Cian's friends would wave goodbye to him, and Cian would smile and send them off with words of encouragement. "May the road rise up to meet you," he'd say, and his friends would tread into the ocean and never return.

There was a more pertinent saying for these people. "One cannot return to the Old Land," the seers would sometimes murmur, "even if one tries." And so Cian vowed that he would not leave the Old Land, that he would dwell in his wife's house until his skin turned pale and his magic ran dry. If he had been cleverer, he would have sealed this vow with something powerful and valuable. But at this point in time, Cian was not so much clever as he was earnest. He believed that good intentions lasted, that good hearts could not be changed, that good people's lives proceeded the way they wanted them to.

Alma was the best person that Cian knew, and she died suddenly in the night. Her mother had died in the same fashion, gray-faced and panting, but Cian had anticipated prior warning before being forced to watch the breath drain from his wife's lungs. The shock was painful enough. The emptiness was worse. Loss had been a stranger to Cian, and now it laid beside him in bed, allowing the rose on the mantle to droop and wilt. Loss opened a great void inside of him; loss whispered that nothing would fill that void, that he could not restore the old feelings exactly as they'd been before.

But he laid in bed with the loss anyway, and he closed his eyes, and he willed the void to be filled regardless. Couldn't he go back to the way things were, if he at least tried?

And he did try. He failed, of course—he wasn't a clever man, and a clever man would have seen failure at the end of this road—but the trying made all the difference in the end. The trying tied him to the children.

He didn't love them as he'd loved his wife, but he didn't need to. What he found with the children was calmer and steadier, the hum of a kettle compared to the blaze of a hearth fire. It melted the ice around his heart without burning it; it lulled him to sleep at night and allowed him to wake in the morning. It was nothing like the love he'd received from his wife, and yet it saved him from abject despair.

He didn't know when the sense of loss disappeared. He couldn't pinpoint a specific occasion, but he could select from quite a few. Perhaps the loss had disappeared on a night in the middle of winter, when Cian had awoken from a nightmare to find the children huddled together at the foot of his bed, fast asleep. Perhaps the loss had disappeared after Cian had thrust himself into his bookbinding, on an evening when the children had filed into the basement and asked him to read something for them in the ancient tongue. Perhaps the loss had disappeared slowly, in stages, with every favor the children asked of him and every small blessing the children bestowed upon him. Perhaps the loss was fully gone when he looked into their faces one morning before breakfast, and it occurred to him that he could not imagine life without them.

They healed him without meaning to. They sang their childish songs and cooked meals in ways Alma never would have considered, and they entered each day with such bravery that Cian was glad they'd inherited something of their father's. At times, they held Cian's hand as if he were their father; at times, Cian forgot that he wasn't.

He found that he couldn't help but continue in this way. The children continued to rely upon him, and he continued to rely upon the children, and soon they seemed more of a family than they had even before Alma had died

Friends continued to travel to newer lands. As they fled the shores of their birth, the Old Land grew more and more vacant, and the village streets grew quieter and quieter. But it was in this way that the travelers brought peace to the fae—they had not discovered it in the new land, but they had left it behind them for Cian and his family to enjoy.

On a mild day in the middle of spring, a father took his children to the cliffside. They stood on the grassy edge, hand in hand, and they stared into the dawn together, and the father swore to himself that he would give his children the world.

But he was not clever enough to keep his vow.

In the distance, a kestrel screamed, and Cian beheld the last Old Land sunrise he would ever witness.

*

In the heart of modern-day Chicago, a representative for the Unseelie Court made a phone call intended for the Cachail. They assumed that the Cachail answered it.

When he picked up the phone, he didn't speak, but Willow assumed that he'd guessed why she was calling. A day earlier, she'd reminded him that the precinct would contact him when the lab had completed its tracking spell. He'd know that he'd be expected to follow the lead, that the Court would want him to close his own case. Knowing the Cachail, and knowing the shackle she'd assigned him, he'd have no trouble carrying out the orders. He'd be disgruntled after his run-in with the Seelie, of course, but he wouldn't complain. And if he didn't complain, Willow could file a favorable report with the Court, and her superiors would finally retreat from her inbox and allow her to do her own fucking job.

"I'm calling about Word of Atropos," said Willow, as if the Cachail needed the information.

The other end of the phone was silent, and Willow wondered if she'd somehow reached his voicemail until the Cachail said, "Continue."

The vestiges of tension in Willow's chest dissipated. He sounded as he always did, controlled with a twinge of curiosity, and the familiar cadence allowed Willow to relax in her chair.

"We've traced the book to an apartment on the West Side," she said casually, tracing her bracer with her finger. The designs usually faded with anxiety or anger, but now she could see the outline of a skyscraper in the metal, one black window sticking out among a sea of white. "We'll email you the details—you can take a taxi there, or we can send a car to pick you up. You're still at your apartment, correct?"

The line went still. Then the Cachail said, "Where else would I be?"

This caused Willow to sit up straighter, her muscles suddenly taut. Something twinged in her stomach, and she glanced at the bracer to see that the apartment complex had vanished.

"How have you been today?" said Willow, the casualness in her voice sounding threadbare.

"Fine," said the Cachail, and the dismissal was so like him that Willow felt a flash of confusion. "I plan to take a taxi. Send me the address when you can."

This was all normal. This was all textbook Cachail, cutting straight to the punch and skipping the extraneous sentiment. This was what her employers wanted to hear about. What her employers would not want to hear about was that brief moment of obstinacy, the flicker of anger that had tainted the Cachail's tone. What her employers would not want to hear about was a shackle that might be failing.

"Let me know if you experience any trouble," said Willow as she twisted her bracer from side to side. "If you feel your power coming back, we can strengthen the shackle. The Court doesn't want you endangering any civilians." She almost hoped that he'd ask for a better shackle, if only to ease her own misgivings.

But the Cachail said, "That won't be necessary." After a pause, he added, "Tell the Court I'm in control."

Willow allowed herself a small smile. "I'll pass it along."

"I'll see you in a few hours."

As the call ended, Willow slumped in her leather chair, letting the phone fall from her grasp onto the desk in front of her. The Court had not prepared her for these difficulties, and if they had, she might have reconsidered the position.

The office felt empty without him. She talked to the other investigators on occasion, Doughall when he needed guidance and MacLahren when she needed answers, but their relationships had been shorter-lived. The Cachail was different in that he was experienced, in that he did not need the hands-on approach that the others demanded. He performed his job well. She enjoyed seeing him perform his job well.

Today the oak paneling of the office seemed stifling, and the blood-red accents seemed garish, and the decorative skull on her desk stared at nothing at all. Today her office felt empty, and Willow felt empty, too.

She looked at the vacant chair in front of her, and her gut twisted again. Something inside of her whispered that she'd let the Cachail hang up too easily. Another part of her whispered that after this case had concluded, and after the Cachail embarked on the vacation he'd been promised, he would never return; and a third part whispered that she hadn't spoken to the Cachail at all, that her only friend had disappeared before the call had ever taken place.

She sighed. She clacked her fingernails against the desk. She returned to her work, because in times like these, she could do nothing else.

*

Veya had murdered Dorian H'Langraash because she truly hated him.

The weapon had made it easy. The weapon had made it impossible to fail, and she'd practically waltzed into the manor with her advanced enchantments and godsmetal dagger, knowing that her preparations would not allow her to fail. Other people might have faltered at one point or another, gotten caught by the security measures or surprised by Dorian himself, but Veya had been resolute. Veya had disemboweled Dorian H'Langraash without a shred of regret.

The regret had come afterward, not because she wished she hadn't killed him but because she wished she'd done it differently. If she'd taken her time on it, perhaps she wouldn't still hate him as fervently as she did now. Perhaps she wouldn't still see his face when she closed her eyes, smug and superior and smirking, and perhaps she wouldn't remember that people like him still existed in every corner of the world, ready to trample those with less power and fewer means.

Perhaps she should kill them, too. Perhaps she should leave no one she hated behind.

When the investigator arrived at her door, she smelled him before she saw him. Immediately, she cursed, because there was no point in attempting to escape now—her magic was intended for stealth and secrecy, and Veya had already been discovered. Slowly, she reached for the dagger under the bed frame anyway, if only so that she could prolong the inevitable.

He opened the door, and Veya knew that something about him wasn't right.

His eyes were blank, and the skin beneath them had been rubbed raw. As Veya crouched and gripped the dagger more tightly in her hand, the investigator only stared at her without moving. The way he looked at her made her feel like a painting on the wall, opaque and two-dimensional; the way he looked at her made her feel like she was someone else.

She knew who he was. She'd thought that she had more time.

"The Cachail," she said, hating the way his name tasted on her lips (and she hated him too, she hated every bastard with an ounce of entitlement), but the man before her only shook his head.

"Get out," he said.

Veya blinked, and the knife slipped a little from her grasp. "Excuse me?"

He stared at her for a long while, and the more Veya examined him, the more she hated him. It was easy to hate people like this, people who wore designer suits and spent hundreds of dollars on haircuts, people who'd been handed the keys to success before they could walk. It was even easier to hate the Cachail because he was Unseelie, and because Unseelie despised Seelie for their blood alone, and because people who despised Seelie for their blood would despise Veya even worse. The Cachail had been born to look down upon a half-Seelie like Veya, and so Veya would look up at him with all the hatred that she could muster.

But the Cachail's hands were shaking, and he was pointing somewhere outside Veya's apartment now. "I said get out." His voice was even, though something about it seemed tenuous. "You'll be all right if you go north from here. Leave the city and don't come back."

He thought that she was gullible. Veya laughed harshly and re-secured the dagger in her hand. "You fucking idiot," she said, standing from her perch on the floor. "You think I don't know how many people you've put away?"

"I'm not the Cachail," said the man in front of her, and Veya was forced to lower the dagger and stare at him point-blank. He said it again: "I'm not the Cachail."

And he couldn't be the Cachail, because he'd said it himself and because fae couldn't lie.

Every one of Veya's instincts screamed for her to find the loophole, to decipher why this investigator had been able to lie so smoothly to her. But suddenly the blank look in his eyes seemed familiar, and the tremor in his hands wasn't anger but grief, and Veya realized that she had entered a story far larger than her own comprehension.

"Get out," he said again, and Veya's eyes burned into him.

"What's your name?" she said, and the investigator's breath hitched.

True names had power. True names could destroy an individual, could recreate them from the inside out, could erase their memory and twist their mind and forge them into a beast. Working fae did not use their true names.

But when the man in front of her whispered, "Cian," Veya knew that she could be hearing nothing else.

They had an understanding now. She would not betray him. He would not betray her.

As Veya fled the apartment, hesitant but fleet-footed, she knew intrinsically that the man behind her could not be the Cachail. The Cachail would have taken Veya into custody, desperate to capture the truth and lock it away. But the man called Cian turned on his heel, and he left Veya and the truth behind him.