For all the hype accompanying Jake's invitation to dinner, the actual gratification from Granny's home-cooked meal turned out to be disappointingly short-lived.

So much so that when the rest of the house had barely settled into its various degrees of slumber, two pairs of feet made their way downstairs to the kitchen. From the fridge, one pair of hands extracted what was left of the post-supper apple pie while the other pulled bags of chips from the pantry and filled glasses of milk. The owners of the appendages worked methodically and quietly, as if either unusually skilled at stealth in general, or very familiar with the pilfering of food specifically. In less than five minutes, the thieves left the way they came, expertly avoiding the creaky bottommost step, and disappeared into the shadows pooling on the landing above.

Only to reappear again in a forest under an inky sky dusted with stars, their faces illuminated by the light of a full moon as they walked down a path toward an old trampoline in a clearing. In spite of the blizzard raging outside the house, the temperature here was that of a perfect summer night.

"You got the forks, right?" Sabrina broke the silence.

"Duh." Puck held them up in disdain. "You got the laptop?"

"And the charging cord. Wait . . . do you even have a power outlet in your room?"

"How else would I've been able to keep the stuff in the ice cream truck from turning to mush all these years I've been away?"

"Oh, I dunno . . . magic?"

"Like I'd use magic when I could be flagrantly wasting the limited resources of your pathetic planet."

Sabrina snorted, a tiny I Should Know Better sound of all-too-familiar exasperation. By now, she'd stopped next to the trampoline and was taking in her surroundings with a quick, sweeping glance. She frowned; unless the electric company had recently begun installing power outlets on tree trunks . . .

With one hand on her hip (and the other safely cradling their loot), she turned to Puck. "So where is it? And don't say 'by the ice cream truck' because that's nowhere near the trampoline, and unless you have an extension cord longer than the Great Wall of China . . ."

"Uh . . . oops."

Sabrina silently counted to ten while reminding herself that this was the boy who not that long ago didn't even know how to use a toilet.

"Well, I guess we'll just watch the movie till the battery dies," she conceded with admirable restraint.

"Or one of us falls asleep," Puck added unhelpfully.

"Or you could ask your minions to get us one."

"Or you could ask yours."

Sabrina colored slightly. They hadn't talked about Puck's extravagant gift since Christmas Day when she'd summoned the pixies in front of her family. Still leery of commanding a fleet of finicky sprites, she hadn't used the pipe after. "About that . . ."

Puck waved dismissively as he hopped onto the trampoline with a flutter of his wings and then extended his hand to her. "So you messed up that first time and thanked them. No biggie. You'll get used to ordering them around before long."

"No. I -" Sabrina ignored his hand and hoisted herself up onto the springy mat. "Thanks, I guess. I didn't expect it, especially since we didn't agree to give each other anything for Christmas. And a whole army of pixies -"

"That was technically only a small cohort," Puck clarified, looking slightly crestfallen. "An army is much larger and would've been so much more awesome. But I didn't want to make everyone else feel inadequate, so I scaled it down."

Sabrina's eyebrows seesawed. "Thinking of others? I find that hard to believe."

"Okay, you got me. Look, the army was always the plan. Sadly, there's great demand for pixies during the holiday season - gifts aside, they're also popular for hire to ruin someone's happy solstice. This was the best I could do on such short notice. But lest you think I'm being stingy, we can always recruit more over -"

"No, no, they're fine," Sabrina quickly assured him. "Most humans give each other socks or books or a sweater or stuff like that for Christmas. Not a . . . platoon of wish-granting flying living things."

"Cohort," Puck corrected her. "And I'm not human. Plus, I'm royalty and I have the coffers of Faerie at my disposal, not to mention favors owed by countless debtors foolish enough to cross me in all the centuries I've graced this universe."

He flopped down on his belly and reached for Sabrina's laptop. "So don't worry - in case you were worried: I didn't have to sell my soul to get you that pipe. And you don't have to sell yours to - hey, wait, did Henry give you a hard time about it?"

"No," Sabrina lay down beside him and snatched the laptop back, flipping it open to pick a movie.

"Are you sure? I saw him talking to you the other night. It looked serious."

Sabrina continued to surf the online entertainment options. "I told him I was as surprised as he and Mom were. We . . . we didn't know where that whole Queen of Faerie thing came from, is all."

Puck twisted to stare at her. "You kidding me?"

"What?"

"Okay, now you're just being coy. Which is so not a good look on you."

Sabrina finally glanced away from the screen. "Puck, I'm not saying I don't know what this Queen of Faerie thing means. I'm saying you can't just spring it on my family like it's a done deal. Or . . . on me, for that matter."

"It's not a done deal?" His face was the picture of bewilderment.

In retrospect, Sabrina would've pointed out how, with that one question, Puck had perfectly - if unwittingly - captured the essence of who they were. His timing, however, was beyond abysmal. It was the last night of the Christmas break; they were huddled together on the trampoline, they had snacks, and they were about to spend the next two hours lost in a gloriously pointless movie before she returned to the drudgery of school. The last thing she wanted right then was an existential discussion on fate and a friendship she couldn't even figure out, let alone explain to someone who'd probably turn it into a huge joke.

Deflection, then; it'd always served her well in the past.

"Do you really want to talk about this now?" She made herself sound bored.

"Yes," Puck immediately replied, his mouth set in a hard line, and Sabrina deflated. The movie would have to wait.

"Okay," she gave in and shut the laptop. "You first. Build your case."

"Why me?"

"Um, you brought it up."

"Fine." Puck took a slow, exaggerated breath, as if steeling himself for a battle, and scrutinized her like she were the enemy.

'Well?"

"I'm working on it! Don't you know anything about strategy? Okay. Look, I know I'm not King . . . yet, but soon I will be. When that happens, I want . . . I would like . . ." he rolled his eyes and inhaled deeply once more, "if I have to have a queen, I'd rather it be you than anyone else."

"I never would've have guessed," Sabrina muttered with mounting frustration. "C'mon Puck, tell me something new already."

"I don't have anything new!" Puck started to unravel. "We're supposed to get married in the future! At first, I thought it was the most horrible kind of torture, but you've . . . well, you turned out to be not totally horrible, so okay, now I'm in. You, however, don't seem to be getting with the program!"

"Argh. Going in circles! And what exactly is this program?"

"It's . . . " Puck frowned. "We're . . . "

Sabrina took up the slack after watching Puck flounder. "So much for strategy, huh? Alright, let's recap: ten years ago, we met. Ten years ago, we absolutely hated each other's guts. We were in each other's faces all. The. Time. Couldn't even walk from our rooms to use the bathroom without bumping into each other. And we did a lot of stuff together. Like fought a war. You helped save my family. I helped save yours. Well, my mom did. You grew up for me. Fighting and kicking, may I add."

Puck smiled faintly at the memory, and Sabrina continued, "After the war, you left to see the world, and I went to school. We kept in touch - sorta. But mostly, you did your thing and I did mine, and I figured we were moving on, living the lives we were always meant to live, maybe even the lives we should've already been living if not for the barrier and the war. But out of the blue, you came back and - voila! You're in magazines, playing fancy dress, being all famous not just in your world, but mine, too. And I -" she paused for effect, "- am still in school, living my normal, unfamous life. As far removed from yours as it's ever been."

She fell silent, their history hanging between them as she watched Puck process the blanks, as he tried - and once more failed - to fill them in.

"How," Sabrina prompted quietly, "did I get from that -" she held out her palms as if they were the weighing pans of an imaginary scale, "- to 'I'm Going to Be Queen Of Faerie Someday'? It's a heckuva leap, Puck."

Put squeezed his eyes shut as realization hit him. "I have to ask you. To propose." He felt like he was stuck on repeat. "Um, you know what? I thought I just did. And if you weren't hell-bent on staying in school for . . . forever, I would've earlier."

Sabrina let out the breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. It was odd that she no longer felt bashful hearing the word or even discussing it, like it had become a thing they dealt with so often, in so many iterations, that it was like talking about the flavor of coffee to buy, or whose car to drive.

"No," she began, "well yes. . . and . . . no. That . . . comes later. And yeah, you're right, I do want to finish college, and then go to law school and . . . look - all I know is we were always fighting when we were children and somehow that changed."

"Really. Coulda sworn this is us still fighting."

Sabrina allowed herself a few seconds to rein in the urge to smash the laptop on Puck's head. "Somehow that changed," she repeated with forced calm, "even though we were miles and years apart. Honestly, I'm still trying to figure out how that happened. So don't make it harder by missing the point. Please."

Maybe it was the please that did it. Or the restraint she'd shown by not volleying the ball back into his court the way she'd done in so many of their past arguments. Or perhaps it was the look of utter loss she leveled at him when she finally asked, "When did you know? That you wanted us to be . . . like what we saw in the future?"

Because Puck instantly sobered. His brow, already furrowed in thought, crinkled even more deeply as he stared unseeingly at the mat beneath them, scratching at the fabric with a fingernail.

"When your parents woke up," he answered uncertainly, as if it had only then dawned on him. "I watched you. Before that, you were so miserable. But after, you were this completely different person. More smiley. Less angry. Kinder to Marshmallow, to everyone. Mind you, I mostly thought it was stupid - why would anyone care about their parents? Point is, suddenly I wanted to do stuff to make you happy. Just 'coz. That was when I knew. It was the single most frightening moment of my life. I've fought dragons and entire armies and I've never turned a hair, but that - that made me want to wet myself. So. . . what about you?"

Sabrina repressed her own smile at Puck's obvious distress. "There wasn't just one moment. And maybe that was why it was so hard - because I didn't see it coming. It was when you had a bath and didn't smell as bad as usual. And when you were kind about not being able to rescue my parents. And when I thought I'd never see you again. Remember that? You were King at last and you were going to stay on in Faerie and I wanted to be glad for you and I was, yet it felt like I was missing an arm. Or a leg. Or some part of me that belonged."

"Sappy."

"No more than your story!"

"What about my dashing good looks?"

Sabrina gawked at him, then shook her head in surrender. "A minor distraction."

"Distraction from what?"

"From the fact that you'd been growing on me like an extra appendage. Didn't you hear a word I said? Let's get this straight - when you left, I missed you but it had nothing to do with how good you looked in a suit. I missed you because you were part of my life."

"So you admit I look good in a suit."

"So do your several million fans. Why should my opinion matter?"

"Because the next time I wear one, it will be in front of a church and you're the one I want standing beside me."

"To marry you?" Sabrina tossed out in exasperation. This was getting so old.

"No, to stop me from misbehaving during the sermon. What do you think?"

"With you, it's likely both."

"Right on. Aaand we're back to you being my Queen."

Sabrina rolled her eyes. And here she thought she was doing so well evading that particular discussion. "That's years down the road. The thing is, if we want any chance of that happening, we can't skip all the steps between here and there. Right now, we're just us - if we're even that yet. How about we get used to just being that for now?"

Puck considered. "Does us mean no one else?"

"Well, I don't know how many people you're romancing at the moment, but I haven't dated anyone for a while." Sabrina glared at Puck. "And don't ask me why."

"Why?" He obliged, looking angelic.

"Most likely because I'm naturally antisocial," she snarled at him, annoyed at the way his mouth was curving in his trademark smirk. "But maybe, possibly, y'know, to give us a chance. Daphne's words, not mine."

"Smart kid."

"Also very pushy. So . . . are we good? Can we watch the movie now? Like sometime before the sun rises?"

Puck studied her as if devising a myriad of ways to prolong Sabrina's discomfort. Finally, he shrugged. "Only if it isn't a chick flick."

"Well, I don't care for horror."

"Action it is, then."

"If there's intelligent dialog. I refuse to put up with lame dialog just for the stunts."

"You'll love this one then: villain turned superhero, talks non-stop, extremely loose morals, decent fighting skills and impossible to kill."

"Sounds suspiciously like you."

"Excuse me? I have extraordinary fighting skills! And this guy wears a fancyschmancy suit so no one recognizes him and then preens in front of the camera!"

Sabrina snickered. "Like I said."

Then, before Puck could hijack the conversation further, she turned up the volume on the laptop. "Shush, the movie's starting. Do you wanna watch or not?"

"I can't believe the battery died just at the exciting part!" Puck whined. "All that bodycount and explosives for nothing!"

Sabrina scrubbed at her eyes. "Well, we could get off the trampoline, plug the thing in and finish watching next to the ice cream truck."

"Or not. I'm too lazy to move."

"Anyway, you know how it all ends. It's always the same: the hero saves the day, gets the girl and kills the bad guys."

"Yeah," Puck fake-gagged in agreement. "They need to make one in which the villain saves the day, the girl saves herself and the heroes realize they're no longer trending."

"Um, that would be the story of your life. And no one in their right mind would make a movie about that."

"Fools; it'd be a box office smash. And I'd be on every billboard in the city." He stretched and yawned. "Oh wait, I already am."

"Show-off."

"You have no idea," Puck laughed, sleep slurring his speech as he turned to wink at her.

"That salve is incredible," Sabrina pointed to his eye. "It looks good as new."

"Oh, I never used it," Puck said airily. "Healed all by myself. You don't need help with genes this good. Which reminds me: it's time for that selfie."

He pulled out his phone, shoved his head next to hers and took a picture.

"Let me see." Sabrina tried to grab his phone as he held it out of her reach and tapped on the keypad. "What are you doing? You're not drawing a mustache on me, are you?"

"Hey! Good idea!"

"Give it here!"

At last Puck finished and let Sabrina have the phone. On the screen was the image of their faces, hair splayed out around their heads. Puck had tagged it #doesntneedmakeup.

"Narcissistic much?" Sabrina wondered aloud, and Puck rolled his eyes in disbelief.

"No, dummy. I meant you."

And instantly, Sabrina was eleven again, lying on the trampoline with her wrist handcuffed to his as he'd said those same words.

She blinked in surprise. "You . . . remember that?"

"And it's still true." He nudged her shoulder. "What - did I strike you dumb?"

"Shut up," she sputtered, just to prove him wrong.

Puck took back the phone and typed something else before showing it to Sabrina again. The caption now read #doesntneedmakeup #partnerincrime #futuregoals.

"I'm posting it." He watched her intently. "Violent objections?"

Sabrina gaped, still trying to wrap her mind around the fact that he hadn't forgotten their conversation from more than a decade ago.

"That's tantamount to saying you're off the market," she ventured cautiously. "Like, for real. Isn't that publicity suicide for you celebrity types?"

Puck grinned like it was his favorite prank. "Then let the market mourn."

She continued staring, her lip between her teeth, wondering if this were somehow a disaster in the making.

"They'll hate me," she groaned, imagining the fallout, the social media circus she'd likely be facing for the indefinite future.

"They'll want to be you," he corrected.

A thousand more considerations and arguments stampeded through Sabrina's mind before Well, What They Hey won out. Still locked in his gaze, she nodded, strangely embarrassed, flushing even more deeply as Puck's smile practically split his face. It took only a tap to send the announcement to the world, after which he raised the phone over his head like a trophy.

"Shut up," she said again, as if her brain had lost its capacity for alternatives.

"Didn't say anything," he returned smugly.

Sabrina leaned into him to peer over his shoulder. "Tag me, too. If Celine hears it second-hand, she's never going to forgive me."

"Done," Puck thumbed the screen again and in Sabrina's hand, her own phone let out a quiet chirp as it registered the notification. "And now you have a photo of me on your phone, so no more excuses. Gaze and swoon all you want; I won't tell anyone. Well, that tweet's gonna hit the world in less than two seconds so unless we wanna be pinged to death, I'd say we zip our phones for the next few hours."

Sabrina retweeted Puck's message, adding #wildride #bringiton to the caption, allowed herself just a second to contemplate what she was about to do, then hit the power button.

"We're cheesier than Doritos," she said as the screen winked off.

"Tip of the iceberg, babe."

There was that nickname again. Sabrina felt a protest about to launch off her tongue when she realized that they'd just crossed a line, and on the other side of that line lay a whole lot more than just nicknames.

Then again, there'd already been nicknames - rude, insulting, slanderous things they'd called each other and no one else. The truth hit her in the face like a wrecking ball: there'd never been a line. They'd blurred it years ago and danced around its murky shadows as if it were a monument to the fools they used to be.

And now, lying on that trampoline under that old, familiar sky, she wasn't sure if she should laugh or cry, or simply smash her own forehead repeatedly with the palm of her hand. Beside her, Puck, seemingly oblivious, was lying quietly with his hands behind his head, no doubt paying homage to the stars for giving him exactly what he'd always believed they'd foretold.

Sabrina chafed at the irony: for something to which the universe itself was witness, it sure felt like she was the last to have caught on.

"I guess it's out now," she murmured, more to herself than anyone else. "I still don't know what we are, but it's funny how it doesn't matter anymore."

"We're very complicated," Puck agreed. "It's what makes it fun. So . . . what's next?"

"Well, I go back to school. And you, from what I've heard, get to be King. Which we all hope the rest of the Everafter World is okay with, because otherwise, we're looking at war, right?"

"I'd rather die on the battlefield than in a classroom."

"And I'd rather you not die at all."

"Aw. Barely minutes after our happy announcement and we're getting mushy already. Control yourself, Grimm! Besides, I can take care of myself. I have for centuries, y'know - in my world and yours."

Sabrina didn't respond, staring distractedly at the sky and gnawing on her lip. Puck turned, about to tease her again, when she spoke, her voice hushed.

"After the exile. . . what happened to you, y'know, before Ferryport, before you found us?"

"Adventures. Why?"

He'd said it in his usual devil-may-care manner, but Sabrina detected a guardedness beneath. The last time she'd heard it in his voice, they'd been on the banks of the Hudson River the day of his father's funeral.

"But not like the kind you and Uncle Jake had," she prompted him.

His expression clouded, his silence saying more than words might have. As he turned away, Sabrina reached over and touched the scar on the back of his neck. "Where did you get this?"

"Why d'ya wanna know?"

Just four words, but they were a wall, the barrier all over again, keeping her guessing, shutting her out. For the span of a breath, Sabrina was tempted to default to sarcasm and the off-color needling that had so easily kept them from the conversations that really mattered. Then she remembered Mustardseed's words: he's not sure where he stands with you.

"Your eye healed within a day, even without the salve," she began carefully, hardening her heart around the wound his words had opened. "Hours. And you're magical, so you always heal perfectly, without a mark. But this scar - you still have it. And the other one, on your arm."

Puck's eyes narrowed, any trace of his earlier ease vanished as if it had never been. He hissed, "Is that what they teach you at school? To badger people on the witness stand?"

Even ignoring his barb, Sabrina knew she had to tread carefully. "You know where I came from, you saw what I was like straight out of the system, how hard it was for me to trust anyone. And you know me well enough now to call me out in the car yesterday, about my parents and how mad I still was. I have no secrets from you, Puck. But I . . . you . . . all I know about you is what you let me see - after you've healed over, when you're just sailing along without a care in the world. If, someday, I get to be part of Faerie, to stand beside you and all the crazy things in it, where there's a chance you could even get murdered at your own coronation, I'd like to know what I'm saying yes to. Like . . . who are you really? What's with you always laughing things off and pranking and strong-arming everybody? Why are you always on your guard, as if there's a war at your back door?"

Puck lay very still, the only movement the blinking of his lashes and the bobbing of his throat as he continued to study the constellations. Second dragged into minutes but Sabrina made herself wait. It was his move after all, the story his to offer, not hers to cajole out of him, one unwilling nugget at a time.

When at last he spoke, his voice was dead of emotion as if reciting a script only he could see. "Nothing. For years, nothing. I just . . . wandered. For centuries, Faerie was the only world I knew, ever since we stepped off that ship. So when I was cast out, I didn't know where to go, the first thing to even do. Oberon threw me out with just the clothes I was wearing. In the beginning, when I was still strong and very angry, I wanted to get as far away as possible, far away from Faerie, from Oberon, from the rules and the expectations. It was so strange, the idea of traveling anywhere, the freedom, never needing to look back. I didn't realize, of course, till after weeks, months, that it didn't matter how far I went because there was no need to turn back. There was nothing to return to."

He smiled, but the glimmer of it was anything but happiness. "And only years later that I understood that it wasn't only because I was banished."

"What -?" Sabrina's voice was a whisper.

"I didn't miss it - Faerie. Not a bit."

"But . . . it was your home."

Puck's eyes abruptly clenched shut, squeezed, bracing against something. Pain, perhaps. Or - worse - the lack of it.

"Was it? I wondered at first, you know, what it'd be like to miss something. You're supposed to miss something you've lost, right? I lost Faerie, but I didn't miss it. Then I thought maybe you missed something you wish you had. But that's not missing is, it, if you've never had it? So if I wasn't missing what I'd lost, it couldn't have been home, could it? And if not, what was home, and where was mine?"

Sabrina stayed quiet, stunned at this side of Puck she'd never seen before, afraid that if she answered, if she even breathed, she might break the spell and turn him back into the irrepressible, flighty trickster he'd been.

"Eventually," Puck continued after a moment, and his tone was once more matter-of-fact, "I stopped thinking. Pointless, you know - thinking. Much better to be doing. So I just kept going - wherever I heard a rumor of food, maybe shelter. It became a hunt. And that's when things got exciting. One night, I was foraging in some woods near a town - I couldn't even tell you where, all towns looked the same to me then - I was ambushed by a bunch of trappers. One of them had seen me fly, had apparently been watching me for some days. The others didn't believe him, so he caught me to prove he'd really seen a boy with wings."

"Caught you?" Sabrina echoed, incredulous that anyone, let alone a human, could have gotten the better of Puck. He turned to her, misunderstanding her question, and she was astonished to see what she could've sworn was shame on his face.

"I was starving, okay? Weak. It made me careless, and I . . . let my guard down."

Sabrina put her hand on his arm. "I didn't mean . . . hey, I know that much about you. Please, go on."

Puck relaxed, then continued, "I'll say this much about humans - they're puny and powerless but can be very resourceful when they want to be. These guys chained my ankles to a tree so I couldn't fly away. And they starved me, then used food to make me show my wings. When that didn't work, they tortured me - sliced open my back, tossed me off high places. They did . . . other things, too. I couldn't fight back, not in that state. And I couldn't morph into anything because they'd tied me up. They finally gave up, decided I was one of those awful human experiments you guys make in a lab. After that, it was a free-for-all, just entertainment for them. They forced water down my throat, and twigs and leaves, wrapped my neck with barbed wire and strung me upside down from a tree to see how long I'd last. I put up a good fight, as you can imagine. I guess that's how I got the scar. I didn't actually take the time to look in a mirror."

"Oh, Puck." Sabrina was almost in tears.

"But that turned out to be the best thing that'd happened," Puck pressed on, sounding a little more like his old self. "Because it all started to ferment after a day or so, and there was all this gas building up inside me. I belched out a fireball, burned up the rope, cut myself down, and turned into a wolf. Then I called for reinforcements. Very effective, howling - summoned all the hungry neighbors to the party in record time. We were all ready and waiting when those guys turned up again."

"What happened then?"

"I'll spare you the grisly details. Let's just say that I made sure the rest of the pack disposed of the remains. Poor bastards never saw it coming. As far as they were concerned, it was a random animal feeding frenzy. They never guessed I was one of them." Puck paused and ground his last sentence out, "And even at the end, they never saw my wings."

Sabrina shut her eyes at his words. A part of her understood that it had been a fight for his life, but her mind still recoiled at the images it'd conjured.

"So you still won," she spoke quietly.

Puck's lip curled. "Sure - in a way. But so did they."

At Sabrina's confused frown, he explained, "Those turds took something from me. Before the exile, I'd been in fights, in wars, even been tortured, but if I couldn't bust my way out, help would come. Usually it was Mustardseed, or one of my soldiers, but there was always someone who'd hear me yelling, would know to search for me, would have my back. Those nights in the woods, I realized that for the first time in my life, no one would hear even if I screamed myself sick. And if I died on that tree, no one would come looking for me. Why would they? Who would care? No one even knew I existed. I was completely alone. From then on, I couldn't ever depend on anyone; it had to be me for myself. For survival, for everything. Maybe that's why I still have the scar - so I wouldn't forget."

"What about your minions? Why didn't you call them?"

Puck blinked at her. "I didn't have them. We only found each other years after the exile. They live in the greenwoods. In your world. I learned their language, earned their trust, did them a couple favors - like once, I did some extermination for them - particularly annoying pests that refused to leave their territory. Anyway, now they serve me and - as of tonight - they'll serve you, too."

Sabrina slowly registered all this - the idea of Puck being vulnerable, being alone, being hunted. And of the significance of his gift to her - she'd thought, as did the rest of her family, that his minions were the indentured servants of the Fae court, never realizing that neither Titania, Oberon nor Mustardseed commanded any of the little folk the way Puck did.

She slipped her fingers through his. "I'm sorry."

"What for?" Puck asked, bewildered.

"For what my people … humans did to you."

"Those were definitely not your people. I've lived in your world long enough to know that humans aren't all the same; some are no different than beasts. Baser, even. Makes 'em easy to kill when they come at you."

"Did you ever feel guilty?"

"For defending myself? No."

Puck's answer had been easy, nonchalant, even. But right after he spoke, he fell into an uneasy silence.

There's something he's not saying, Sabrina thought. He's pushing me away again. Not this time, buster.

She pushed back. "You're not like . . . that now, though."

"Aren't I?" Puck shifted himself onto his elbow, his gaze intense, challenging.

Sabrina reached for his face. "Are you?"

For a long moment, there was anger in his stare, wild and desperate.

Then he leaned into her palm and closed his eyes. "You want me tame. Normal. I'm not that person, Sabrina."

"I don't want you tame, Puck. I just want you. All of you. Bad and good. No secrets. No armor."

When he didn't respond, she kissed him. On his cheek, the edge of his jaw, the corner of his mouth, and then his lips. Her heart pinched a little - a jolt that startled her, reminding her of the tacky descriptions of sparks that ignited between two people locking lips after an eternity of yearning. This felt more like electrocution, she thought with amusement, which meant we must've been pining away to almost shadows of ourselves.

Then she noticed that Puck hadn't responded, had merely remained frozen against her. She pulled back, questioning and a little hurt. For a few awkward seconds, she struggled to say something, anything, just to distract herself from the mounting panic that she'd ruined everything.

With his eyes still closed, he mumbled, "You did that because you feel sorry for me. Because I told you that story."

"I did that because I'm finally seeing you," Sabrina murmured, relief washing over her that he'd spoken first, that she could respond with the truth. "Because you told me that story."

Puck swallowed, still refusing to look at her, so Sabrina asked quietly, "The question is, King of Faerie, do you want me?"

At this, Puck's eyes flew open and he laughed, an incredulous chuckle that made her relive every one of the insecurities she'd spent years shooting down. But his next words held no mirth. "How can you even ask me that? Haven't I made it nauseatingly obvious?"

"Yes, but do you want me enough . . . to stay?"

There, she'd said it. And let her voice rise on the last word, as if it'd taken all her energy to force it out because for the longest time, she'd been terrified to even think it.

A pause. "So you do want it." He sighed, understanding. "A courtship. Guarantees."

"That's not what I -"

"It's a little different in Faerie," Puck interrupted her. "In my world, a match is a match. There's no courtship or . . . friendzone. One day we're free, the next we're betrothed. Which, come to think of it, is exactly the direction my life took after your trip to the future."

Sabrina sat up fully. "Free? Is that what you think? That being together means losing your freedom?"

Puck faltered. "I - don't know. All my life I've fought it, so I figured there must be something worth defending in all of it. Maybe it is freedom. Maybe it's sanity. Maybe it's my childhood. I don't know if there even is a name for it."

"Are you afraid?"

"Afraid? Me? The King of Faerie is not -!"

Sabrina stopped him mid-rant with her hand on his chest. "Well, I am. Because you were right - what you said about me. I'm afraid that if you know what I'm really like, that I'm not as interesting or brave or strong as the other Faerie maidens, or the millions of fans who'd just as easily throw themselves at you, you'll leave. And I don't know which scares me more - that you've spoiled me for every other guy, or that if we're not . . . together, there isn't any other way to be in each other's lives."

"Leave?" Puck's brow creased in consternation. "Why you gotta make this so complicated? Look, I'll spell it out for you." He held out his fingers and began counting off on them. "Before I met you, I was eternally eleven years old. Then I met you, and now I'm mysteriously growing older alongside you. You've gone out with other human males and found them to be losers. I've had no inclination to hook up with anyone in Faerie or your world, in spite of being gloriously beautiful and receiving all kinds of propositions like you wouldn't believe. At my birthday revel, you kissed me like you meant it, and I know you knew how much I wanted you when I kissed you back. And we each know the things the other's done in our lives -" he swallowed before continuing, "- and neither of us is backing out. If this were Faerie in the old days, we'd have about a dozen offspring by now. I don't know any clearer way to say it."

"In my world, we usually default to 'I love you'," Sabrina noted dryly.

Puck ran his fingers wildly through his hair. "We don't say that in my world! We say - we say . . ."

"You say, 'Ungh! Me drag you to cave!' "

Puck's exasperation melted into a sudden smile. "Something like that."

"Well, you're going to have to get used to it." Sabrina told him. "Because somehow, against my better instincts, mind you, I think . . . I might finally be falling in love with you, Robin Goodfellow. And boy has it taken me forever to get to this point, but. . . well."

She looked helplessly at him.

"When?" Puck whispered.

"It might've been sometime between the boxing match in the blizzard and the army of personal genies -"

"Cohort," Puck corrected tiredly, but his eyes shone.

" - or maybe I've always suspected it, but anyway. . . I think I've finally figured it out."

"Yeah? Actually, how you were eating my face earlier kinda clued me in."

"Hey! You were more than welcome to participate, too! Usually, these things are a cooperative effort." Sabrina slitted her eyes at him, then groaned in frustration. "Just once, y'know, it'd be nice to kiss you . . . for no reason other than I . . . want to. Not because there's mistletoe, or because you're famous or royal or on your deathbed or to break a spell or to prove anything, or - or -"

"Like how humans do it, in other words - boringly."

"Huh? I . . . guess. I . . . never thought of it that way. You know what ? Forget it. Forget I said anything."

Puck, however, pretended to consider.

"Okay," he decided, looking mischievous.

Sabrina eyed him suspiciously. "Huh?"

"I said okay."

"No violent objections?" She repeated his earlier challenge.

Puck smirked lazily at her. "To a kiss? Nope. To the fact that you even had to ask? Heck, yes."

For a moment, they regarded each other with almost-hostility.

"Well, then," Sabrina growled and fisted his shirt, "and this time, kiss back."

The smirk was still on his lips when she took them with hers. For a second, it was almost as if they were eleven again, hesitant and reckless on a roundabout of firsts and whatifs and come-what-mays. Except that now there were years behind the kiss, and Sabrina closed her eyes and relished the idea of this wild boy, for all his wanderings, somehow finding his way back to her over and over again. There was that spark once more, stronger this time, and that feeling of lightheadness and floating away, but she kissed him and thought of waiting and guessing, of postcards and parcels from places she hadn't even heard of, of photos where he was a stranger and photos in which his face was a promise, of his scent and the warmth of his cheek against her hand. When she finally pulled away, it felt like free falling into a bright abyss with the wind around her heart.

Puck's eyes slowly focused on hers as he croaked, "No barfing then? Kick between the legs? Sock to the eye? Uh . . the other eye, I mean."

Sabrina could only shake her head. For years, she'd imagined this moment, and while it'd been every bit as exhilarating in reality, nothing had prepared her for the sense of abandon that had taken hold of her as she'd finally given herself to him. She might still nurse the remnants of that childhood crush, but it had nothing on the way she felt now that he was madly, deeply hers.

"Merry Christmas, Puck," she managed to blurt out.

Then with tremendous restraint, she rolled to the edge of the trampoline and flipped herself over the edge. Her legs crumpled under her as she landed.

Yikes, I'm actually weak-kneed. From a kiss. I'm farther gone than I thought.

"Hey!" Puck said, sitting up abruptly and staring at her stupidly. "Where are - what's wrong with your legs?"

"Nothing," Sabrina lied, reddening.

"You can barely stand up. Wait, was that a swoon? Ha! It was, wasn't it? It's about time; you've been fighting it for years. Just admit it, cupcake, you totally waaant - woah, where're you going?"

"To bed. It's way past midnight." Sabrina stretched for her laptop and its various accessories.

"To bed?" Puck sounded utterly perplexed. "Where?"

"My room. Down the hall. You remember that, surely, from all the times you snuck in to prank me."

"Why?" The confusion had escalated to panic. "What's wrong with sleeping here? And don't say you're shy. When you were in Faerie, you spent two nights in my bed."

"All the more reason not to make this a third."

"Wha - but - you can't just kiss a person and walk out! Is this a breakup? Are you breaking up with me?"

Sabrina chuckled, glad for the excuse to laugh away some of the tension. "To break up, we'd have to be actually dating first, Your Royal Impatience. And that we can figure out tomorrow. Or next week, or month, or whenever. And speaking of tomorrow, we need to be up early to drive back to the city. Safely. Which means that tonight, I'd like to get some sleep -" she gave him a look that set his pulse thundering in his ears, " - and you and I both know that won't happen if I stay. So . . . catch ya in the morning, Stinkpot."

Puck made several sputtering attempts at a comeback before settling on an unconvincing, "Oh, so you can just up and leave me but not the other way around?"

"Not playing this game, Gashead," she responded, but less than her usual snark; even she could hear that he agreed with her. She turned and walked unsteadily away.

Puck sighed in defeat - a long, shuddering exhale - and then Sabrina heard him mumble, "Wicked. Vile and cruel and wicked." For an instant, she half-expected him to launch himself into an ambush the way he had in the blizzard. But there was no rush of wind, no flap of wings, only the silence of surrender underneath the night sounds of the forest.

Then she heard him guffaw, as if he'd had a sudden epiphany, and his voice rang out, "Vile and cruel and wicked. Oh, babe, you're gonna be a perfect Queen."

A/N: Happy new year, y'alls! This chapter. I don't know what to say. It was written months ago but turned out to be one of the hardest to edit. Okay, maybe being 7K+ words long had something to do with it. But also the fact that almost all of those 7K+ words were dialog. Dialog which wasn't just banter but also trying to advance the plot and drive important character development (one hopes). So many times during the editing process I asked myself: "could this-or-that chunk of conversation show real people in real time genuinely working through not just relational issues but also personal hangups?" Because that was always something I've loved reading in books - when a chunk of words Says Something without actually saying it, y'know? Especially when it's dialogue: all those layers - the subconscious and unconscious ones that hide under the physical words in conversations. And then we have P and S who are such multilayered characters, particularly as they get older: writing them is so, so fun (and so, so hard). But that was my goal. And that's why it took that long.

Anyway, I hope you forgive me for sitting on this for yonks. Thanks for the reviews and checkings-in to see if I was still planning to continue this story. Yes, of course I am! I work a little on it every day when I have the time to. I even have later chapters written out already (some not even in sequence). But this one - this one haunted me.

Moving forward now: I may disappear for a while as I build the rest of the story, but please keep writing to me and leaving reviews and comments! I love hearing from you all. See you all back here as soon as I can.

~qas