She didn't stop to pause, but instead she ran, feeling him as he tore his way through realities in pursuit of her, but he was in Ceress, her territory, and she knew the layout while he did not.
He came in third on speed behind Kai and her, meaning she wouldn't be able to escape him by jumping between realities at speed. Instead, she used her knowledge of the landscape against him.
Jumping into the trees, Etani felt him following her. She smiled grimly, throwing herself back into the human world and he followed, only a second behind.
Different trees, smaller and sickly looking compared to the beauty of Ceress, and still she ran, still he chased her.
He was good—disturbingly so—but she knew she was faster.
Back into Ceress and again into the human world, back and forth until she had enough of a lead on him that she burst into the human world and immediately took a step back, allowing Faerie to pull her.
She stepped back into Winter and smiled, crouching down, and waiting.
He didn't appear, he hadn't seen where she had gone through. He would know she was in Winter, but not where in Winter, and she could almost hear his screamed profanity as he realised he had lost her.
Ignoring the pleasant sting at the changes in her form as Winter recognised and greeted her, she set off in the direction she knew she needed to go and was glad she hadn't said a thing to anyone. She was alone, and that was a terrible thing to be in that moment. But she refused to let the pain speak to her; instead, she focused on the plan and getting to the grove. It would all be over in a few hours. He would be gone from her mind, and he could be happy with his vampire wife. She wouldn't remember a single detail about him, and that pain inside her would vanish like a snuffed-out candle.
The grove was small and private, but that was only the illusion the fairies wanted others to see, for as she stepped over the ring of hidden items with no ill will towards the fairies in her heart, the world expanded around her, and she was swallowed up by fairy magic.
Her presence was noticed immediately, and the once tiny, winged creatures were now four and five-foot-tall men and women wearing little or nothing. They whispered as they saw her, giggling and trying to get her to come with them for what she gathered to be a very large sexual party.
She declined politely and headed deeper, the path guiding her exactly where she wanted to go.
The palace was quite small, made up only of a three-storey building with two little two-storey buildings on either side of the main one, but she didn't need to go inside.
The three elders were waiting for her, and they looked at her warily. They were all silver-haired and ancient, with wrinkly brown skin and walking sticks, though their wings still seemed to work perfectly.
"Your Majesty, this is a pleasure," an elderly woman said.
The honesty made Etani smile, and she dropped into a deep, respectful curtsy to the elders. "I am afraid this is not a social visit," she said.
"We felt your intent when you came through. What is it you would ask of us?"
"I ask that you make me forget a person. His name, his face, and everything about him."
The elders exchanged knowing looks, and the woman spoke again. "A man you no longer love, I take it?"
"A man I can never love again," she said.
The woman nodded, stepping forward to take her hands. By comparison, Etani's hands felt huge. "You understand that you will owe us?"
"Yes, I do," Etani said gently. "I will do whatever you ask of me when you need it."
"Very well; let me look at you," the old woman's brown hands curled under Etani's chin and lifted her face, their eyes meeting.
Etani shuddered at the delicate invasion into her mind. She saw Jaia, his fury and his anguish, his wanting to punish her while she wanted to punish him. The invasion only lasted a moment before the fairy released her and backed to the two males, taking their hands, and they began to hum gently.
It lasted almost exactly the same amount of time Etani had been examined, and the fairy turned back to her, her eyes pained. "He loves you deeply, more than any other I have seen."
"It doesn't matter," Etani said.
"Are you certain you want to do this? There is no reversing it."
Etani nodded. "Yes... do it."
"He will hate you."
"Good," she said. "If he hates me, he cannot love me."
"The demon is here. He found her. We will keep him distracted," a young male said as he approached and looked at Etani curiously, fascinated by their Queen being in their midst.
"For a third time, Your Majesty, are you sure this is what you want?" the old woman asked for the third time.
Etani felt that tingle of magic at the question being repeated.
"Yes, I am sure," she whispered, unable to hold back the tears that swelled in her eyes.
"Very well. I will grant you this request, you will forget, and then you will sleep. We will let your demon in, and in time, we will come to you to return the favour."
"Thank you, mother," Etani whispered, her voice cracking.
The fairy smiled at her sadly before her arm extended in a wave. A light mist brushed over Etani's skin, leaving it first tingling and then burning. Looking down, she saw her veins deepening to black, and she shuddered as the magic leached through her body.
Jaia's face burst into her mind, laughing and warm, with that love dancing in his eyes as he watched her. He had loved her, but that was before everything had gone wrong.
Closing her eyes, Etani laid down on her side and endured the memories as they moved through her mind in reverse: his standing at the stairs, his cruel amusement as she saw him and his wife. Back and further back in their history to their leaving her when she was no longer a vampire, to his draining her to clear the toxins from her blood, back to the first instant she had seen his face in the dining room with his dark eyes burning in curiosity.
Then she could no longer recall his name, nor the sound of his laugh, or his growl, not the sound of his footsteps; and finally, as her mind began to relax into sleep, his face faded, and he was gone.