Lily came around to a strange mixture of dull pain and safe comfort. She didn’t want to open her eyes and tear her mind from the calming emptiness where it had floated for who knew how long, but there was a vague sense of urgency that told her she should.

I’m running out of time.

And she knew it to be true, even if she couldn’t tell what the deadline was for.

She stirred, tried to force movement into her limbs, and a cool weight fell on her shoulder.

“Careful, Lily,” said a voice over her, very close. Troy. “Your body requires more rest.”

“I can’t afford it,” she croaked, struggling to open her eyes and sit up.

“Because time is running out?” Troy sighed. He sounded tired. “I believe I have already told you that time is meaningless here, have I not?”

“Where are we?”

“Safe.” A smirk, tangible in his tone.

“We’ve had this conversation before,” she mumbled.

“If the familiarity helps you feel better, we may rehearse it as many times as you wish.”

“Oh, ha ha. Funny.” She tried to twist around to see him and found she was curled on her side, her back pressed against his thigh as he sat sentinel over her. His hand still rested on her shoulder and she welcomed his touch. It worked like an anchor. “Seriously now. Can you tell me what happened?”

“You succeeded in slipping cold iron past the guardian,” he said. “It appears to have killed him, but unfortunately the cave was tied to his existence. He had created his own haven, much like this is mine, and it crumbled to pieces without the will of its maker to hold all the threads together. We were forced to flee.”

“So that place doesn’t exist anymore?”

“Not as you saw it, no.”

“That’s… sort of sad. It was beautiful. In its own way.” Lily felt a shift travel through her back and shoulder. A shrug from Troy.

“It is as it is,” he said.

“Does that mean it was all for nothing? If we can’t go back, we can’t collect the stone. After everything, I botched the bargain.”

Troy’s hand moved from her shoulder, traveled down her arm, and captured her own, pulling it toward him. She rolled with the movement, lying on her back and staring up at him quizzically.

His green eyes bore into hers and his other hand pressed a smooth, slippery black stone into hers.

“You got it.” Her fingers trembled.

“I stole it while you distracted Cuelebre with the bargain. You did a fair effort this time, but might I recommend against striking deals with every fay you encounter?”

“Wait.” She struggled to sit up but his grip left her hand and returned to her shoulder, holding her down. He gave her a warning glance not to move and she ceased her attempts, but didn’t let go of her questions. She had too many of them. “But why were you there? I thought you wanted no part in the confrontation.”

“I assure you I did not.”

“Was it because of the necklace then?”

His fingers slid to her neck and picked up the silver chain. He held all three charms and studied them, the back of his knuckles brushing the soft skin over the hollow of her throat. She felt her breath catch and he smirked when he noticed, a flash of white peeking between his lips.

He let the pendant fall back into place. “It would appear that is not the reason.”

Lily squinted at it. “When Grandma gave it to me,” she began, “I could have sworn that there was one wilted rose and two in full bloom. But the other day, when we met your friend, the especially weird one? There were two wilted roses. There are two wilted roses now. Does that make sense?”

“Yes.”

There was a moment of silence and Lily stared up with all the stubbornness of a mule until Troy’s lips cracked a thin smile.

“To answer your unasked question, the charms represent the number of times a life will be saved,” he relented. “Blooms for promise and wilted carcasses for what has already come to pass.”

“So you’ve saved Grandma’s life once, and then mine another time.” She let her fingers play with the cool metal, thinking. She wouldn’t bother asking about her grandmother because getting that information could be too tricky, but then… “That doesn’t add up.”

“Does it not?”

“No. You’ve saved me three times already. Once from the bogeys, once from the redcaps, now one from the cuelebre.” She counted each occasion out, tapping her fingers. “But I’ve only spent a bloom. How does that work?”

“In a most complex manner.”

With a huff, she ignored his restraining hand and sat up. Dizziness caught up to her for a moment, but she managed to cover up her swaying under a shift to look away from him.

“You could just say ‘I don’t want to tell you,’ you know,” she said.

“And you might learn to phrase your questions properly, Lily. Each answer obtained is a debt incurred and I cannot understand why you would beg for favors when you already know the truth.”

“Because that’s what people do!” She whirled on him. “We talk about what we know and reassure each other and say important things without the other person having to wrestle each word out of our mouths!”

“That is what humans do,” he said, his cool not breaking in front of her sudden passion. “You would do well to learn to think like us if you want to prosper while straddling both your mortal world and our own.”

Her fire banked, leaving behind the embers of embarrassment. Hugging her knees to her chest, she took deep and even breaths until she regained enough control of her voice that she could sound as calm as he did.

“Okay,” she admitted. “You’re right. I’m not thinking in faerie terms and it’s rushing me from bad situations into dire ones. I’ll try to be smarter from now on.” She dared to smile a little at him. “I guess that just giving me that piece of advice put me in your debt, right?”

Troy laughed and the sound washed over her like a river’s current over pebbles on the shore. “Indeed it did,” he said. “But worry not. I gave up on tallying after our first conversation.”

“Sorry.” Troy arched an eyebrow, still smiling, and Lily sighed. “Another notch?”

“If I were keeping count.”

“Why is saying ‘sorry’ so bad?” Troy went to reply but she held up a hand. “Wait, wait. This is another of those things I already know the answer for, isn’t it? Let me try.” She began to tap her fingers against her lips. “It’s because it means you’ve done something wrong… Because if you apologize to someone, then that means you’ve wronged that person,” she said after a moment.

“And this entitles them to demand compensation for each time you have apologized to them,” said Troy. “Would you care to keep guessing?”

“About the necklace?”

He nodded.

“Sure. Let me think.” She gave him a small, nervous grin. “I’m not sure I remember the wording you used that first time you told me about it,” she confessed. “But you did say before facing the cuelebre that it had to be within your possibilities. Still, that can’t be it because you did manage to save me so, technically speaking, you could. Am I right?”

“You are correct. In fact, even if you do not recall my exact words, you have inadvertently stumbled upon the answer already.”

“Have I? What did I—? Not possibilities, so then saving me. That’s all I said, and that’s not an answer. That’s talking circles.”

“A clue?”

“Yes, please.”

“You should know that ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ are nearly as terrible a misstep as ‘sorry.’”

Lily laughed at his smug smile. “Okay, you! Out with the clue then!”

He regarded her for a moment longer, shaking his head with an amused light in his eyes. When her chuckles subsided, his eyes fell to her necklace, resting in the hollow of her throat.

“Saving you, Lily, must not be mistaken with saving us.”

“That’s not fair,” she said, suddenly subdued. “It doesn’t count because you were there with me? You still saved me and it doesn’t matter that you were in danger too.”

“That was my mistake when crafting the necklace, Lily,” he said with a shrug. “I hope you understand now the importance of detail?”

“Yeah, I think I do.” She bit her lip and plunged on. “There’s a detail I can’t figure out yet.”

“And that is?”

“Why were you there, Troy?” She caught his eye and he let her hold onto it. “You said you didn’t want to. You told me to find another way, but still you came. Why?”

He was silent for so long that Lily had to avert her gaze. He was silent long enough that she was sure he wouldn’t reply. He held his silence, and she felt his attention on her, studying her while their bantering mood dissolved in tension. She bit her lip to keep from fidgeting, and just when she thought she would explode and apologize to him in spite of what she now knew, she felt the back of his fingers against her cheekbone.

She startled and held her breath.

“You are a most peculiar creature, Lily,” he said, his touch sliding down the side of her face and under her chin, tilting her head so she had to look at him. “In my experience, humans will blunder happily to their deaths because they refuse to acknowledge the world as it is, because they do not allow themselves to remember that they are neither alone nor quite as powerful as they believe in the true scope of things. You blunder forward with equal determination and enthusiasm. You court disaster with every step you take toward your goal, but you are conscious of it. And yet your awareness of danger, of how heavily outmatched and how badly outclassed you are, does not seem to arrest you, does it? That is peculiar and interesting indeed, Lily Boyd. Even though I know that only a fool would find foolishness worthy of respect.” He stood up then, a languid unfolding movement that broke contact between them and freed her from the spell of his gaze. “If your curiosity is sated now,” he continued, staring at the tree-line beyond their little clearing, “I would advise you to rest before we return to Glaistig. You shall need your wits and your energy for that encounter and we do not know when another opportunity for sleep and healing will present itself next.”

She wasn’t tired. Her body might have been, but thoughts whirred in her mind and she felt as powerless to stop them as she was to stop her heart from beating. Her curiosity was far from sated and she longed to continue their conversation even as he turned his back on her and walked to the edge of his riverside haven. Still, there was truth to his words, of course, and the least she could do after he had answered all her questions was respecting the need for distance he was expressing now.

She curled up on the ground and faced him, contemplating the lines of his shoulders and the way stray droplets of water would sometimes drip from his hair down his back, and let the vision of him lull her to sleep.