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back.”
    Lorai squeezed her. “I don’t know when that is going to be.”
    “Take your time. We will be here when you return.” Juno leaned back and rubbed her hands on Lorai’s arms. “Be happy, and your place here will always be waiting for you. Congratulations on your handfasting, but I want you to have the actual wedding here.”
    Lorai looked at the woman who was younger than her dress. She smiled. “We will come here for the wedding and the honeymoon.”
    “I will take it as a promise. Have a good trip.” Juno smiled.
    Adam came over and took Lorai’s hand. “She will; when we have finished the spell, we will come back, no matter when that is.”
    Juno grinned, and Lorai saw her following Derix to Melwiss’s cottage while she and Adam headed for the portal. It was time to get back to the human world. She had to visit her mom.
     

Chapter Five
     
     
    The slip of the stones under her feet was familiar. Lorai had been coming to this cove for the last six hundred years. The day her father died, her mother gave up her contact with the mortal and magical world to stare at the home that had delivered her one true love. The grey-blue waves dashed and crashed against the shoreline in an endless symphony.
    Lorai wore a lined gown and a heavy cloak. Two kilometres of icy coastline led to her mother’s final resting place, so to speak. With the crunch of stone under her boots, she made it to the niche in the stone face that housed her mother.
    She stood for a minute, taking in the proud features that stared out to sea—half her body wrapped in the stone that surrounded her, and her torso was slowly being overtaken by her resting place. Giants never died, they simply became part of the rock that had birthed them.
    “Lorwella of the rock, your daughter requests audience.”
    Lorai stood still, getting her strength from the stone around her, just as her mother used to. The sun set and she waited. Days passed and she still waited.
    Lorai didn’t know if it had been days or weeks when her mother’s eyes slowly opened. A slight smile creased her translucent lips. “Lorai. You have come for a visit?”
    Lorai moved stiffly, her body the same temperature as the rock around her. She walked to her mother and pressed her hand to her parent’s cheek. “I have come to gain your blessing.”
    “Why? You have been an adult for eons. You need nothing from me.” Lorwella’s wise eyes were sombre.
    “I am handfasted to a shifter.”
    If her mother’s stone could have cracked in surprise, it would have.
    “A shifter? Oh, my dear, your heart will break when he passes.”
    “That is not what will happen. The mages, shifters and fey have made an arrangement. The feys’ birth rates have dropped so drastically that they were in favour of finding a way to bind them to the growing population of shifters. A magical balance is struck, and it binds fey and shifter for however long they live.”
    Her mother closed her eyes. “I must think on this.”
    “Yes, Mother.”
    This was the time-consuming part. Lorai stepped up to her mother and leaned against her while Lorwella thought it over.
    The season grew colder before Lorwella’s eyes opened again. “If you can be with him until an end claims you, do it. I would have wanted to go with Orai, but I could not. I did what was natural for me, though it broke my soul. Be with him and bring him to me. I want to see the man that you would give up eternity for.”
    “I will. We will be here within the year. If you hold off becoming one with the cliff a little longer, you may yet see grandchildren playing at your feet.”
    “I look forward to it. I will endeavour to be up to speed by then. Time does get away from me.” She smiled slightly. “Now, give your mother a kiss and go find your man. It has been months for you, judging by the waves and tides. You should be with him. I give you my blessing. Go and swim with your mate, Lorai.”
    “I love you, Mother.”
    “I love you,