“Very protective” is one way to put it. “I think it’s amazing,” I tell her, because I do. I’ve never even imagined a place like this could exist.

“My mate built it for me.” Her eyes go shuttered, and her warm brown skin turns a little sickly looking. “Every part of the house can move to open up for more space or close down in protection, with pulleys and levers. My mate wanted this house to be a safe sanctuary for the kids and me, but now, well, the tree uses its earth magic to protect us. He’s so much more than a blacksmith.”

“Absolutely,” Hudson agrees from where he’s studying the elaborate carvings on the handrail. “His craftmanship is incredible.”

“It is,” she agrees. “But my mate didn’t do those.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Hudson looks embarrassed by his assumption. “Did you—”

“The house did them,” she tells him, and for the first time, there’s a tiny twinkle in her eyes. “For my mate, so that when he returned, he would be able to see all the things that he missed.”

And just like that, the carvings make a lot more sense. Two girls picking apples, learning to swim, dancing in the forest. These are records for their father, of his children growing up.

“That’s so beautiful,” I tell her. It’s also sad, but I don’t tell her that. Then again, I don’t have to—it’s written in every pore of her skin, every breath that she takes.

She nods her thanks. Then asks, “How may I help you?”

“Actually, we were hoping to talk to you.” Flint gives her his signature grin. “We have some questions, if you don’t mind?”

It doesn’t seem to work, as her voice is as listless as the rest of her when she asks, “About what?”

I think about lying, about trying to get in the door with some bullshit story. But I’m a terrible liar at the best of times, and I don’t think this woman would fall for it anyway. She’s sad, not naive, and I don’t think she has any stomach for bullshit.

So in the end, I tell her the truth and just hope for the best. “We want to talk to you about your mate, if you don’t mind.”

“Vander?” she asks, a trace of desperation in her tone. “Do you have news of him?”

“No.” My heart breaks all over again. “No, I’m sorry. We were actually hoping you would be able to tell us about him.”

“Oh.” The painful flash of hope fades from her eyes as she turns around and starts back up the stairs.

When she doesn’t say anything else, I don’t know if she wants us to follow her or if she wants us to get lost. I’m guessing the latter…especially when the handrail slides across the stairs, barring us from even the option of following her.

Except Falia stops when she gets to the first platform and says, “You all had better come inside, then. Would you like some tea?”

Out of nowhere, the handrail springs back into place.

“We would love some tea,” Flint tells her as he bounds up the stairs after her. “Thank you so much for asking.”

And that’s what I love about him. He’s bold and brash and super funny most of the time. But he’s also incredibly gentle when he needs to be, and as he follows Falia up to the second platform, he talks to her as softly and sweetly as I have ever heard him talk to anyone.

She doesn’t really respond, but she doesn’t recoil, either. And as we climb higher, the tree stalking us suspiciously with every step we take, I hear her ask him if he would like some of the cookies her daughter made for her.

He says yes—a dragon never turns down food—and I make it up to the second platform just in time to see him flop down into the chair closest to where she’s standing.

“Please sit,” she tells the rest of us as she fills a kettle with water from a pitcher.

Hudson starts to give me a boost up onto one of the giant-size couches, but before he can, the platform does it for me. The wood beneath my feet pushes upward and plops me right down on the couch before settling back into place.

The others wait for it to do the same for them, but it doesn’t. It just lays there, and Hudson can’t help laughing as he jumps up to sit beside me. “Even the house likes you more than the rest of us.”

“More like it knows I’ve got less skills than the rest of you,” I shoot back as everyone else settles down on the various other pieces of furniture.

I look around as Falia busies herself getting mugs out of a small—well, small for giants—outdoor buffet. I don’t know what I thought when we followed her up here, but I didn’t expect the platform to look so normal. Giant-size, yes, but still normal.

This one is apparently a sitting room, designed around the large firepit table in the center of the platform. It’s beautifully wrought iron—obviously a giant design—with the fire in the middle and an iron-filigree tabletop all the way around it. Surrounding the firepit are two large sofas on two of the sides and two chairs on the other.

Falia walks over and puts the largest teakettle I have ever seen onto the firepit, then takes the lid off a large kitchen tin. Inside are homemade chocolate chip cookies the size of my head. “My daughter makes these for me. Usually they go to waste, but I’m sure she would be happy to hear I shared them with some people who might actually enjoy them.”

As we pass the cookies around, she puts a quick tray together with cups the size of soup bowls, spoons, honey, and several different types of tea bags. Hudson jumps up and offers to carry it over to the firepit table—even though it’s almost as big as he is.

“Thank you,” she says as she runs a nervous hand through her short, dark curls. “I’m sorry. I haven’t had visitors in…” She shakes her head, sighs. “In a very long time.”

“Thank you,” Hudson tells her. “For inviting us in. We appreciate it very much.”

She shrugs as she settles herself into the last unoccupied chair. “After a thousand years of him being gone, people are tired of hearing me talk about Vander. No one ever asks about him anymore.”

“A thousand years?” Mekhi chokes out. “He’s been gone a thousand years?”

She nods, and the hand she uses to pass the tin of tea bags around is shaking so badly that I want to reach out and hold it, just to help steady her. The only thing stopping me is fear that it will hurt her more than it helps her. She looks so fragile, so tired, so broken that I don’t want to do anything that might make her feel worse.

We busy ourselves getting cups and tea bags as we wait for her to say something else—I don’t think any of us wants to be pushy. But when she doesn’t speak for several minutes, Flint quietly asks, “Can you tell us what happened to Vander? We really would like to help him, and you.”

Behind us, the treehouse railing starts to move back and forth, as if agitated. But it doesn’t do anything else, like try to silence us or toss us off the platform, so I decide to call it a win.

Again, Falia doesn’t answer right away. In fact, the silence goes on so long that I almost decide this is a lost cause. At least until she whispers, “The vampire king did this. The vampire king betrayed us all.”

61

With This Ring

“Vampire king,” Hudson repeats, his whole body tensing. “You mean Cyrus?”

“He is cruel,” she murmurs, and though she’s talking to us, it’s apparent that, at least in some part, she’s locked in her head with memories no one should ever have. “Deceptive. Evil.”

So far, that sounds exactly like Cyrus, so the rest of us just kind of nod to encourage her to keep going.

“He came to Vander almost a thousand years ago now, with a request for unbreakable chains. He didn’t tell him who the chains were for, only that they needed to hold a monster of unprecedented strength, a monster who would bring destruction to the entire world if he was not stopped. A monster who would destroy everyone and everything Vander loved, if he couldn’t find a way to forge chains strong enough to hold him.

“I didn’t trust the vampire.” She shakes her head, tightens the hold she has on herself as she starts to rock, just a little. “There was something not right about him, even then. I could see it in his eyes. Malice, greed, decay. It was all right there, if only Vander would look.”

“I’m so sorry,” I say softly, but she just shakes her head.

“It’s not your fault my mate is a stubborn, stubborn man. We fought about it for days. But the evil king said the one thing Vander couldn’t ignore, and he definitely couldn’t let it go. We had just had twin girls, and he loved them—and me—more than all the stars in the sky.

“Cyrus played on that,” she adds as she starts scratching her ring finger like it’s on fire.