“You are a menace, Mom.” The sound of his voice reminded me that this was still my son.
“Am not.” I took his hand and allowed him to haul me up. I looked around and saw the extent of his power. “Oh, Rhys, it’s beautiful.”
All around us spring had come, pushing out the winter’s gloom. It was as though someone had put a dome over the valley we were in and locked out the cold. Trees had sprung where there had been none before, and there were swaths of white and purple flowers.
“Uhm, I would like to point out that I wasn’t actually going to eat anyone,” a far more cultured voice said. The troll suddenly didn’t sound so savage. “I have a deal with the Hidden Folk. I help them with their system of justice and they help keep the humans away from my bridge. I’m actually a vegetarian.”
I glanced to my right, and the troll who’d called me a sweet meat was wrapped in thick vines, his head the only part of him visible. “Sure you are.”
“No, I truly am, Your Grace. Had I known who they were asking me to frighten, I would have explained that Her Grace, Queen Zoey, cannot be frightened by such a little thing as a troll. And good day to you, Prince of Spring. You seem to have finally come into your powers.”
I stood in front of the troll, hands on my hips. He was at least five nine, with a roughhewn face and a head of scraggly hair. “Oh, you are not complimenting your way out of this, mister.”
“He’s not lying.” The female was corporeal again, her legs tied up in long threads of grass. “He’s there to scare people away from our field, and we try to do the same for his bridge. The humans have many meetings about demolishing the only home he’s ever known. We persuade them not to. We whisper to them at night and seed doubt or convince them to forget this place exists. He would not have truly eaten you. Like I said, my mate is a stubborn male, and you pricked his pride.”
“Well, he needs therapy,” I announced. It had done wonders for Danny.
“What we need is the spring,” she replied. If she was upset she’d been trapped by grass, she didn’t show it. “Green Man, my name is Asta and my husband and I lead this tribe. We’ve been pushed to these fields, and they are fallow, my lord. We are starving and sorely in need of your help. I beg you to look past your anger with us and see that we are Fae, too. We are yours, too.”
My son stood at my side as we saw what we hadn’t before. The Hidden Ones shimmered to life before us—all thin and hollow. The shadows they pretended to be had become the truth of their existence.
I saw mostly adults, with a few children clinging to the hands of their weary parents.
“Sweetie, I’m afraid you can’t take out your vengeance on them. No matter how much you want to,” I said quietly.
“And there is the mother I remember.” He stepped in front of me, a flick of his hand releasing both troll and sidhe. He turned toward Asta. “If I do this, the Hidden Folk must change. I understand the old ways taught us to torment humans, that it was our right to play with them because they are mortal, but that stops now.”
“And you can’t like stand by a person’s bed while they sleep and whisper to them,” I added. “It’s creepy and weird.”
“But then they will take my bridge,” the troll lamented, fat tears welling in his eyes.
“I will handle it,” Rhys promised. “The only thing my father grows better than plants is money, and you will find the humans understand that particular language well. If I grant you fruitful fields, how will you hide them from the humans?”
A big old field of spring crops in a place that didn’t normally grow much more than moss would probably cause someone to have questions.
“We can hide our fields the way we do our homes.” Asta’s words held a note of hope.
“And you may punish me in any way you see fit, Green Man.” Magnus moved to stand beside his mate. He got down to one knee. “I will take the punishment in exchange for food for my people, for that place at the table your mother spoke of. We have been voiceless for eons. My death will be a good exchange.”
I groaned. “Do you people know what a drama llama is?”
Rhys’s seafoam eyes narrowed. “There is a reason you do not deal with politics.”
I shrugged because truth matters. I preferred to shoot things. Especially when I could see them.
“Until now I have not used my power because I’ve always been afraid of it. I worry if I use it, it will overtake me and I’ll be further from everything I love,” Rhys explained. “But my mother was right many years ago, and she’s right today. I have power and if I choose not to use it for good, then who am I?”