[Faye of the Doorstep] Chapter 3 - The Vow

Faye of the Doorstep, Chapter 3

The Vow

Faye felt the guilt in her fingertips.

She knew she had done wrong. She knew Frances would not have approved, and yet an inescapable anger rose in her as she watched her mother’s legacy dismantled piece by piece over decades. It was not taken apart all at once, not loudly or dramatically, but incrementally and with care, as if no one would notice so long as each change was small enough.

She told herself the humans had lived with it long enough. They had been warned enough, they had gone far enough. Too far. It was time, she thought, grudgingly and guiltily, with a small defiant pout she did not acknowledge, for someone to step in and take care of matters.

Still, the sense of wrongness clung to her.

She closed her eyes and stepped sideways into another region of the Null Space.

There was a porch there, a single porch suspended in emptiness. The porch of her childhood. It was the place where a younger Faye had played jacks, had sipped lemonade, had listened to the radio hum from another room while the day unfolded gently around her. The door stood behind it.

There was nothing beyond it now.

Once, long ago, there had been Frances, cooking, arguing gently, drafting policy at the table, talking about dignity as if it were as necessary as food. Now there was only absence, clean and absolute.

Faye did not rebuild the house. She could have. She had the power, but she did not want a lie. She wanted the truth of what remained, so just the porch. It was a solid step to sit on, and nothing more. She sat on the swing. The chains vanished into nothing above her, held by will alone. She rocked herself gently, the way she had when the world still felt understandable, and let herself sleep.

Fair folk slept to mend what had been frayed. When she woke, she felt steadier.

She would do no more harm. She was not lawless. She was not cruel. She had made a mistake that was all. She was not ready yet to make amends, whatever that might require, but she was calm enough now to promise herself restraint.

She would follow the rules.

She would be a good citizen.

She would be a good fairy.

The promise settled around her comfortably. Too comfortably.

With the promise to be good still on her lips, Faye stepped into the real world.

Sirens and lights struck her all at once, sharp and disorienting. The wrongness of it made her sway, and it took a moment to find her balance in this changed place. She did not realize anyone was shouting at her. The sound slid past her awareness, thin and meaningless, like wind through leaves. Orders and questions and threats failed to reach her.

Then she was slammed to the pavement.

Her cheek struck first. Her chin followed, hard enough to ring her teeth. Someone’s weight drove the breath from her lungs and pinned her there. A knee pressed into her spine. A voice barked close to her ear, demanding her name, her address, her social security number, each word sharp, impatient, rehearsed.Her tongue split between her teeth. Blood flooded her mouth, copper and salt. Pain flared, bright and sudden.

And fury older than memory and hotter than grief rose up to meet it.

How dare they.
HOW DARE THEY.

She had stood beside women with cameras. She had watched this done to others. She had told herself she understood, but understanding shattered under the weight of a boot and a voice that did not care if she was listening. For the first time, Faye understood, not intellectually and not historically, but in her bones, what it meant to be reduced to a body on the ground. Names, she realized dimly, were not always asked in order to be known. Sometimes they were demanded in order to be taken.

And somewhere beneath the fury, a colder thought surfaced, unwelcome and undeniable.

This is what you loosed.

Then the world went still.

With blood on her lips, she tasted something else.

A vow.

She had not known she had made one.

To the fae, vows were immutable. They were not promises or intentions. They were chains and locks, prisons stronger than any human cell.

In the pause between breath and pain, she tasted the vow fully.

I will be lawful.

The words were not spoken. They were bound, and the knowledge shook her. Fair folk who broke their vows were cursed forever, twisted and unmade, lost to themselves.

Faye did not struggle. She let the weight remain on her back. She let her wrists be pulled together, the cold bite of metal closing around them. She did not resist.

Faye was under arrest, and this time, she would have to obey.

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