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I couldn't unknow that now.

"That is not what I came here to offer," the creature said.

"I know. I'm asking anyway." My voice threatened to break, so I slowed down until I trusted it again. "My mother made sure nobody could ever use me to pay a debt. Fine. She won. But I'm not going to spend the rest of my life knowing I was the only person in this family somebody thought was worth protecting."

Behind me, Danika made a quiet sound like she couldn't believe what I was saying. Yeah, well. I was not her. We will all bear our weight when the time comes to meet Hecate face to face.

I didn't turn around. If I looked at her, I wasn't entirely sure I'd finish. "What would it cost?" I asked the creature.

"A great deal."

The answer should have frightened me more than it did. "Would any of that cost come from me?"

"No price may be exacted from you. Your mother saw to that long before this hour." The Fae regarded me in silence, and when it spoke again, its voice carried the weight of something that had watched centuries pass. "Should I choose to bear this cost, it shall be mine alone to give. Know this, child of Lyra: you stand before a power older than the names your kind has given it, clad in borrowed garments and wearing but a single boot, and yet you ask a boon of me without tribute, without bargain, and without knowing whether the asking itself might earn you my wrath."

I held its attention. "So is that a yes?"

"It is not a refusal."

Then the creature did something I would spend years trying and failing to explain.

It bowed.

To Danika, not to me.

The movement was shallow, almost formal, the acknowledgment one powerful thing might give another when neither was willing to pretend they were friends. My grandmother stared at it for a heartbeat. Danika Byrne had spent six decades refusing to bend for creatures more terrifying than most people's gods, but after a moment she inclined her head in return.

"Saturday," the Fae said.

The wall closed.

There was no explosion of magic and no dramatic flash. The marble simply folded forward from the gray, sealing itself along seams that disappeared as quickly as they formed. Within seconds, the wall behind my grandmother's desk looked exactly as it had for two hundred years, with no sign that anything had ever stood inside it.

A moment later, blue flames sprang to life throughout the corridor.

Nobody spoke.

Danika's legs seemed to make the decision for her. She reached backward for a chair that was no longer upright, and River caught it with one hand, set it behind her, and guided it into place before she could hit the floor.

My grandmother stared at her desk unseeing. Then she looked at me.

"You asked a Fae power for a favor without negotiating terms."

There were several possible responses to that. None of them would improve the situation. "Yes."

"Hazel, I need you to understand that what you just did may be the single most reckless thing anyone in this family has ever attempted, and I am including your mother in that assessment."

Considering what I'd learned about Lyra recently, that was almost impressive. "I understand."

"No, you don't, but I've accepted that this is apparently how you intend to live."

I opened my mouth to defend myself but something in her expression stopped me. Danika looked down at her hands. When she spoke again, her voice had lost its edge.

"It is also the first time that anyone has stood in a room and asked for something on my behalf."

There are moments when words simply abandon you. That was one of mine.

I went looking for a joke instead, because jokes had gotten me through funerals, demons, family dinners, and several situations involving nudity that I still refused to discuss. Unfortunately, before I could find one, I realized my grandmother was crying.