Free A Hollow in the Hills by Ruth Frances Long

cunning eyes. For a moment she said nothing, but her gaze lingered on their joined hands.
    Sisters . He knew Silver had once had a sister called Belladonna – Jinx’s mother, who was now dead – but there could have been others. Holly, their mother, was old, even by fae standards. And they were hardly what one might call a close family. Not with Holly at the head.
    ‘What do I want?’ Meridian murmured. ‘What do you want, Silver? That’s the question everyone is asking. You overthrew Holly, shattered her touchstone with a fingertip and drove her from her own hollow. But now you do nothing. People need leaders, sister. Your people need a matriarch.’
    ‘A matriarch like you, I suppose?’
    ‘No,’ Meridian chided, as if she was talking to a child. ‘Like you.’
    Silver flushed. Oh, she hid it, but Dylan could feel it in her skin. ‘You well know that has never been my wish,’ she said at last.
    ‘Your wish? What does your wish matter? This is your duty.’
    ‘My tree was destroyed. My touchstone—’
    Meridian interrupted her with a laugh. ‘And now you have another. You are a Leanán Sídhe, Silver, as I am, first and always. And miracles of miracles, your human is your touchstone.’
    Silver surged towards her sister, tearing herself free from Dylan as if his touch burned. ‘I have said it is not my wish, Meridian,’ she yelled. ‘That is an end to it.’
    Power sparkled from her, anger making it manifest like lightning. Meridian’s eyes widened in shock. She took a step back and her confident mask slipped. Dylan felt a smile crack his lips. He couldn’t help himself. Having yet another relative of Silver suggest she suck him dry and cast his husk aside was getting old. Or that they would be happy to do it. That he was just a thing to be used. And he loved to see her kick ass. They all seemed to expect her to mutely accept their will as she might have done Holly’s. But her mother had been more terrifying that any of them.
    Except perhaps Silver herself.
    Her mother’s first daughter.
    Silver turned back to him and pursed her lips as she read the look of admiration on his face.
    ‘Come with me,’ she told him and swept back towards herprivate chambers. Servants and kith scurried around her, but she ignored them. At least here there was no one she didn’t trust with her life. And his.
    Dylan waited, watching her pace back and forth. But he knew in the end she would speak to him. This time.
    ‘They won’t stop unless I give in.’
    ‘Then why not give in? Be their matriarch. I can’t think of anyone else I’d trust.’ Trust and the Sídhe didn’t exactly go together. But strangely he did trust her – her and Jinx, just the two of them among all the Sídhe. ‘Would it be so different from keeping your own hollow anyway?’
    ‘I didn’t manage that too well in the end, did I?’ She shuddered. ‘I got most of them killed.’
    ‘That was Holly, not you.’
    ‘It was both of us. And Izzy and Jinx. All that mess with Sorath. You didn’t see it. You didn’t see what Holly did.’ He hadn’t seen it, nor had he felt it as she had when her tree was broken and burnt, the source of her magic, a part of herself.
    ‘It’s over.’
    ‘Holly’s still out there somewhere. Oh, they’re all so certain she’s gone. But I know her. I’ve always known her. She doesn’t just give up. Besides, if I were to use my magic it could destroy you, don’t you understand? The more I use the power of the Leanán Sídhe, the less of you will remain. You can’t be a touchstone for long. You won’t survive.’
    He’d known what he was getting into when he’d kissed her. The Leanán Sídhe’s kiss was a gift as much as a curse, noordinary thing. It empowered her and opened him up to the font of creativity, to the music of the spheres. It would consume him eventually, drain him dry, drive him mad … Not for a moment would he take it back, any of it, even if he could.
    But becoming a touchstone changed