Sunlight was already bleeding through the windowpanes, ghastly, gold-streaked nonsense that made everything in the cottage look... domestic. This place breathed magic—subtle, mortal-flavored, and far too cozy for comfort. It was nothing like the twisting, elegant madness of the Courts. It was soft. Smelled like cinnamon and wet bark.

She draped herself with deliberate theatricality across the curve of a brass lantern sconce hanging above the sitting room. It swung slightly under her weight as she let one leg dangle mid-air, the other bent just so at the knee. A picture of idle disapproval from the tiny fae.

Below her, the woman who saved her was moving about. Probably steeping something or burning something or doing whatever forest recluses did when they weren't groveling in fear or handing out dangerously binding promises.

She hadn't been called yet, which was rude. Or... perhaps expected. That was the worse offense, really.

Her green eyes, void of visible pupils, narrowed from behind her golden spectacles. Her expression was unreadable—except for the very readable way her lips were ever-so-slightly curled in a petulant scowl.

She sniffed. Not because she needed to, but because it made a statement. A huffy and discontent one.

The scent of wild herbs, heat, and faintly metallic spellwork danced on the air. It prickled at her senses. The cottage always hummed like this, with the faint buzz of magic that wove itself into the threads of everything. Even the furniture seemed annoyingly earnest about existing. If there was one thing she missed about Unseelie Court, it was the ever-present gloom that didn't hiss against her skin. Eternal night was far preferable to whatever... jauntiness this was.

It made her itch. Not physically, but existentially.

A quiet click of ceramic meeting wood echoed from the kitchen table. Betsy didn't look down. She refused. Instead, her gaze drifted lazily to the window. Her clawed hands toyed absently with the hem of her loose sleeve, gaze far away now.

Somewhere deep in the bark-dark forests beyond the glade... blood in the soil, creeping cold in her lungs. The forest floor had been damp, sinking and slick with wet blood. Muddied. The world had blurred into greys, dull greens, and browns. Her own breath rattled in a collapsed chest, green blood slick beneath her nails. A ruined wing. The scent of iron in her throat and rot in the air, and the bitter knowledge that she had been left to die. The Unseelie did not forgive failure, and they certainly did not send search parties for pawns who got too clever for their station.

Then the mortal came. With hands too warm and eyes too full of concern, pulling her from the edge she'd crawled so far to reach. She hadn't even cursed her. Hadn't taken anything.

The sting of the memory flickered across her mind, but she smothered it quickly with something sharper. Irritation.

She'd been scooped up like some shivering scrap and brought here, limbs bent wrong and pride leaking out with every drop of blood. She had mended her. And Betsy, in the stupor of fever and torn wings, had done the one thing she shouldn't have done.

She hadn't bitten. She'd been too weak. Too far gone. Too... grateful.

And like a fool, she'd thanked her. Aloud.

Betsy's eye twitched.

The debt still sat heavy on her chest like an anchor. Binding. Suffocating. She could taste it, like bitter herbs she'd been forced to swallow down just over a year ago.

Betsy narrowed her eyes again and muttered, not loudly—but just enough.

"You know, I've seen crows look more graceful in the morning." A pause, then a lilting hum of feigned consideration.

"Oh, don't mind me. Just waiting for my next humiliating act of service. Do let me know if you need your boots licked, mistress." She tilted her head, all fluttering wings and contempt.

"I hear I do that now."