Empty Hearts - Ellie Robinson

Ellie sits at the table and twists her silver wedding band around her finger, then pulls it off and spins it on the table, watching it catch the light.
Hunters prize silver more than gold, and since their traditional vows include a protection of their spouse, it’s traditional to give them a band made of the most protective thing in their world.
She thinks it’s the cruelest kind of irony that in order to save herself, she’s being asked to give this up.
Fae are made to bear the pain of loss. To grieve and let go, to surrender those they love to the endless cycles of change. What they are not made to do is live in a limbo.
She’s gone home to Hamish’s because she’s afraid that if Adam has been turned, he will need no permission to enter their own home. The magic of Rowan House will at least alert them to the danger of a vampire crossing the wards. Her own magic is too weak to hold that kind of protective barrier alone any longer.
She sleeps, or at least tries to, with a stake under her pillow and her dreams haunted by hungry eyes and fangs. And in the dream, when she tries to raise a hand against what used to be the man she loved, her limbs are as heavy as lead and she’s helpless to stop him as he tears out their son’s throat and turns to her.
She can’t keep living like this. It’s killing her slowly, draining away her life like the vampire of her nightmares. More slowly, but no less surely.
And she knows it hurts Da to watch her. She’s known that since she walked back through his door, cheeks streaked with tears and Robin curled up in her arms like he was only a toddler instead of almost nine.
But it’s still a shock he went to the colony. He’d spurned the other fae when he married Mama; defying their laws against consorting with humans. She’d once heard him swear he’d never speak to any of them again for their smallmindedness.
And yet, he’d gone. For her, to try and find a way to save her life.
Surprisingly, they didn’t send him home empty handed. But what they did offer was arguably worse.
It’s the memories that are killing her. And fae have the power to make those memories vanish. At least from the minds of humans, or part humans like herself. Glamouring memories is a serious thing, and only a few fae have the permission or power to do so. It’s how colonies are protected from humans who wander past the wards in error. And it’s the one way she’s been offered to survive.
But it’s a fae bargain. Which means it carries a bitter sting below the apparent honeyed sweetness of the offer.
If she’s permitted to forget Adam’s loss, she will also be required to forget his life. He’ll be wiped from her mind as if he never was. Which means everything that reminds her of him will have to be taken from her too.
The ring, she could part with.
Her son, she cannot.
The verdict is unchangeable. For the glamour to work, for the magic to protect her mind from the agony of its loss and uncertainty, Ellie will have to leave Robin behind.
She’ll be given a fresh start, a new life. But a life that doesn’t include the family she cherishes.
She can’t let the cycle continue. Can’t vanish from her son’s life the way Adam vanished from hers. If it kills her, so be it. At least Robin will have closure about her. As she knows all too well, the never knowing is so much worse.