Tithe: A Modern Faerie Tale

The novel is set in a version of contemporary New Jersey where faerie courts operate in secret alongside human society. Sixteen-year-old Kaye Fierch has spent years drifting through Philadelphia with her mother, Ellen, a struggling rock vocalist. After Ellen's boyfriend Lloyd attacks her with a knife at a bar, Kaye and Ellen flee to Kaye's grandmother's house on the Jersey Shore. Kaye notices a man with cat-yellow eyes speaking to Lloyd just before the attack, but she has long learned to ignore the odd things she sometimes sees.

In New Jersey, Kaye reconnects with her childhood friend Janet and visits an abandoned merry-go-round building with Janet's group. Exploring alone upstairs, she finds a broken carousel horse and mounts it, daydreaming so vividly the horse seems to come alive. Janet's boyfriend, Kenny, witnesses this and makes an aggressive sexual advance; Kaye flees. Walking home through rain, she hears cries from the woods and discovers a faerie knight in the mud with an iron-tipped branch jutting from his chest. She pulls the projectile free and bandages his wound. He tells her his name is Roiben, an unusual show of trust among faeries, who guard their true names carefully. He owes her three questions and warns her to stay clear of the Folk, or faeries in general, calling them capricious. Following his instructions, Kaye summons a kelpie, a supernatural water horse, and Roiben rides it into the night.

Kaye receives a message hidden inside a hollow acorn from her childhood faerie companions Spike and Lutie-loo. They warn her not to speak with the knight, tell her their companion Gristle is dead, and ask for her help. She bonds with Janet's older brother, Cornelius (Corny) Stone, who works at a gas station and feels trapped in his life. At a diner outing, Kenny confesses he cannot stop thinking about Kaye and kisses her; Janet catches them and is furious. Kaye realizes she has somehow enchanted Kenny through uncontrolled magic. Roiben appears at the diner, returns her repaired shirt, and admits he killed Gristle on his mistress's orders. Enraged, Kaye uses her final question to demand his full name: Rath Roiben Rye. When she tells him to kiss her ass, he throws her to the floor and presses his mouth to her hip, demonstrating how literally faerie servitude works.

That night, Spike and Lutie-loo lead Kaye to a faerie diviner called the Thistlewitch, who reveals the political structure of Faerie. Two nearby courts, the Seelie (bright) and Unseelie (dark), maintain a truce requiring the solitary fey, those unaffiliated with either court, to bind themselves in service. Every seven years, this compact is renewed through the Tithe, a blood sacrifice of a mortal to the Unseelie Court. As part of the truce, each Queen exchanged her best knight; Roiben was sent from the Seelie Court to serve the Unseelie Queen, Nicnevin. The Thistlewitch also reveals that Kaye is not human but a changeling: a pixie disguised since infancy with a powerful glamour and left in place of a real human child. Spike explains the plan: Kaye will pose as the mortal sacrifice, and at the crucial moment a Seelie knight will strip her glamour, revealing her as fey, voiding the sacrifice and freeing the solitary fey from servitude.

Kaye agrees but rolls in clover on her grandmother's lawn, a folk method for seeing through glamour, and her human skin peels away to reveal green skin, black bead-like eyes, pointed ears, and iridescent wings. She runs to Corny, who helps her through the transformation and learns everything. They summon the kelpie, which teaches Kaye to use glamour in exchange for the broken carousel horse. That evening, Kaye enters the Unseelie Court beneath Cemetery Hill. She witnesses a decadent feast laced with casual cruelty and watches Nicnevin order Roiben to bring the human girl who saved him as the Tithe sacrifice. Roiben catches Kaye in her pixie form but does not recognize her and warns her to leave. She demands a kiss before going; his lips brush hers, and she escapes. Corny, who sneaked inside on his own, becomes enthralled by faerie wine and by Nephamael, a Seelie knight serving as envoy to the Unseelie Court.

Days later, Kenny's desperate adoration fills Kaye with a dark thrill before she abruptly removes the enchantment, leaving him humiliated. That evening, Nephamael replaces Kaye's crude glamour with a powerful one using a white stone amulet, and flying creatures seize her and carry her to Cemetery Hill for the Tithe.

Before Nicnevin, Kaye falls under an overpowering enchantment and agrees to participate in the sacrifice. Roiben prepares her for the ceremony; as the spell fades, they share an honest conversation and a kiss, though he pulls back, recognizing she may still be partly charmed. At the ritual, Kaye is chained to a platform with iron manacles. Nicnevin offers a riddle: Solve it and Kaye will be given to Roiben. Kaye answers correctly, unable to bear letting Roiben sacrifice more on her behalf, even though escaping is not part of the plan. The Queen gives Kaye to Roiben but immediately orders him to sacrifice her anyway. Kaye realizes the answer to a riddle Roiben whispered to her before the ceremony: a name. She shouts his true name and commands him to cut her bonds. He fights through several knights. Spike picks the locks on her iron cuffs. When Nicnevin steps on Kaye's throat, Roiben kills the Queen, and the glamour is stripped away, revealing Kaye as a winged pixie. She commands Roiben to flee, and they escape.

At her grandmother's house, Kaye explains she never planned to use his name and offers proof of her sincerity: She answered the Queen's riddle and could have walked free but chose to stay. Slowly, Roiben softens. But the voided Tithe unleashes chaos across New Jersey as the freed solitary fey run amok. Corny, who escaped the hill but remained enthralled by Faerie, has gone missing again. At a rave, the kelpie drowns Janet, and Kaye drags her friend's lifeless body from the ocean.

Grief-stricken, Kaye and Roiben visit the Seelie Court's encampment, where Queen Silarial, ruler of the Seelie Court, informs them that Nephamael has seized the Unseelie throne. Kaye spots the real human child she was swapped with among the Seelie fey. They infiltrate the Unseelie Court to rescue Corny, who has returned to Nephamael. Nephamael reveals he learned Roiben's true name from Spike, whom he killed, and commands Roiben to obey. He orders Roiben to kill Kaye with a golden knife. Kaye pries tiny steel tacks from her boots and drops them into Nephamael's wine. When he drinks, the iron takes effect and he collapses. Kaye commands Roiben by name to stop just as the knife cuts her arm.

The Seelie Court arrives, and Kaye publicly accuses Queen Silarial of orchestrating the entire conspiracy: placing Kaye as a changeling, assigning fey to watch her, and using Nephamael to void the Tithe and destabilize the Unseelie Court. Roiben declares himself before the assembled fey, offering a compact: Bind to him as King, and he will grant them freedom every Samhain (Halloween) night forevermore. No one challenges him. Silarial retreats, taking Roiben's sister Ethine under her cloak with a cruel smile. Roiben sinks into the Unseelie throne.

At Janet's funeral, Corny holds Kaye's hand and vows he will never be powerless again. Later, outside a supermarket, Roiben appears and says he has come to return the kiss he stole when she was enchanted. She asks him to take it back again. He kisses her, calling himself her servant.