FAE DEBT
FAE DEBT
Everyone knows better than to owe the Fae.
I knew it too.
The debt came due on a night when the moon looked sharpened, like it could cut you just by being seen. Silver light bled through the trees as I crossed into the Hollow, where the air hummed with old magic and newer malice. My name tasted wrong in my mouth there, as if the forest rejected it.
I had borrowed once.
Just once.
A year ago, my sister was dying—breath rattling, eyes already half gone. Hospitals had failed us. Prayers had bounced off the ceiling and fallen back broken. Someone whispered of the Fae, of bargains struck beneath roots older than kings. I told myself I would pay any price.
I just didn’t ask what the price would be.
The Fae Queen waited at the center of the Hollow, seated on a throne grown from bone-white branches and living vines. She was beautiful in a way that hurt to look at—too sharp, too perfect. Her smile carried promises and punishments in equal measure.
“You’re late,” she said gently.
Time didn’t behave here. “I came as soon as I could.”
She laughed, and the sound made the leaves shiver. “You came when you could no longer delay.”
Fair.
Her eyes—green like rot beneath gold—dragged over me. “Do you know what you owe?”
“My life,” I said. “My service. My—”
“No,” she interrupted, still smiling. “Those are cheap currencies. Humans always offer them first.”
She stood. The forest leaned inward, listening.
“You owe me what you love most that does not love you back.”
My stomach dropped.
“That’s not fair,” I said.
The Fae Queen stepped closer, close enough that I smelled wildflowers and blood. “Fairness is a human obsession. I saved your sister. She lives. She laughs. She does not wake screaming anymore.”
My hands clenched. Images of my sister flooded me—alive, warm, untouched by death. The miracle I had begged for.
“And now?” I asked quietly.
“Now,” the Queen said, “I collect.”
The Hollow shifted. From the shadows stepped him.
My breath caught.
Elias.
The man I had loved in silence for years. My best friend. The one who smiled at me like family, never like hunger. The one who had chosen someone else and never known what he took from me by doing so.
He looked confused, human, painfully real. “Why does this place feel wrong?” he asked me. “Why do you look like you’re about to break?”
The Queen’s voice brushed my ear. “Your debt is not his death. I’m not cruel.”
She paused. Smiled wider.
“I’m creative.”
The ground beneath Elias shimmered, turning mirror-smooth. He looked down, startled—and then his reflection moved when he did not. It reached up, touched the glass, and smiled back with too many teeth.
“No,” I whispered.
“He will remain,” the Queen said, “forever just out of reach. Remembered. Untouched. Perfectly preserved in your wanting.”
Elias reached for me, his hand passing through my chest like cold mist. “Why can’t I feel you?”
Because the Fae do not take flesh.
They take longing.
The Queen stepped back, satisfied. “Your sister will live a full life. She will never know the cost. And you—”
She leaned close, her voice velvet and venom.
“—will never love anything without remembering what it costs to borrow from us.”
The Hollow began to fade. The moon dulled. The forest released me.
I woke at dawn, my phone buzzing with a message from my sister: Good morning. I feel amazing today.
I smiled.
And somewhere, just beyond the edge of the world, Elias waited—owing nothing, trapped in everything I never said.
That is the truth of Fae Debt.
They never take what you offer.
They take what you cannot stop paying.