by Emma Hamm
She laid her palm on his offered arm and felt the broidered edges pull at her calloused touch.
“The Duchess has something planned,” he murmured, glancing away from her face. “I can feel it.”
“Maybe she simply wants to enjoy her last few nights alive.”
“Unlikely.”
He wouldn’t look at her. Aisling bit her lip and stilled her expression, reminding herself that people could see her now. She couldn’t hide behind a curse where no one could see her mocking faces. They could see her just as well as humans now.
Their footsteps echoed as they walked down the empty hallways. Stone crumbled beneath their heels, and enchanted roots pulled back into the ancient walls. Every inch of this place screamed that it was not a home for humans.
She wasn’t human. Aisling needed to accept her faerie roots, and yet she couldn’t. Every inch of her rebelled that this was more her home than the small hut where her humble beginnings had taken shape.
Every fiber of her being longed for that place. She wanted to see all four walls of the building within easy reach, her beloved spell books lining a small shelf, a fire crackling nearby, and Lorcan weighing down her feet. It was a simple life, but she now knew that the simple lives were the best.
Bran shifted his arm, letting hers drop and laying his hand on her shoulder. “Not long,” he murmured. “We’ll discover their secrets, and then we’ll leave.”
She glanced up and caught his gaze. Something softened there, a small spark she had seen before. And then it was gone in the wake of disappointment.
He looked away from her, and every broken shard of her heart screamed.
“Just a little while then,” she confirmed. “Then we’ll return to my room and plan our next move.”
“You go left, and I’ll go right?”
They paused before double doors painted with the heroics of Nuada.
Aisling nodded in agreement, pushed her hand against the door, and plunged into the waiting crowd. She tried not to think about the troubled look he gave her.
He couldn’t know.
Silvery moonlight filtered through the shards of stained glass windows. It cast the grand hall in gray shadows. Surely, the entirety of the Duchesses court must have been there. Pressed shoulder to shoulder with each other, hundreds of bodies milled around the large, shattered columns.
A man nodded his head as he gently moved aside. A mantle of bones decorated his shoulders, tiny skulls hanging on strings, laughing as he moved.
She stepped over a fallen pillar, the stone bone white and glowing in the light. Her skirts puffed around her. The fabric moved with a mind of its own. Every time she touched it, waves of fabric rippled down her sides.
“There you are!” a bubbling voice called out. “Witch! Come and entertain us.”
The duchess was ever demanding, but if Bran wanted to know if there were secrets, she really should go directly to the source. Aisling turned and plastered a smile on her new face. “I am pleased to do so, but my magic is no different than yours.”
“Witches have long been able to tap into magic that is different than the Fae.” The duchess lifted a delicate hand and gestured Aisling to her side.
She looked particularly lovely tonight. A pale green dress hugged her curves so tightly that Aisling could make out the indent of her navel. The glowing heart pulsed through the velvet fabric.
Simplicity seemed to be the duchess’s style, which perhaps explained Aisling’s own dress. She dipped into a curtsey. “It would be my pleasure to showcase any witch talent you desire. I’ve been trained since I was very young.”
“Yes, yes. We all know the changeling child who took her own fate in her hands.”
Aisling glanced up sharply.
“Easy, little one. Your beloved has no idea.”
“He’s not my beloved.”
“If he isn’t yet, he will be.” The duchess lifted a delicate brow. “I know the look of a woman in love. I stare at such a face in the mirror every day. I would have to be a fool not to recognize it in another of my kind.”
Aisling gritted her teeth and changed the subject. “What would you have me do?”
“Read the leaves.”
“What?”
The duchess pointed behind them at a dainty table set upon the backs of three men missing their eyes. “We’ve had our tea while waiting for you and that raven-headed fellow. Now we would like very much to know our fate.”
“You want me to read tea leaves?” Aisling tried to keep her jaw from dropping. “That’s peddler magic. It’s nothing interesting.”
“And yet, we would like to be entertained.”
She couldn’t refuse the woman who also threatened their safety. Ducking her head, she stepped up to the table and reached for the first cup that called her name.
Fine porcelain burned her fingertips. It was lovely, although the very edge was chipped. She turned it round and round in her hand until she felt the lingering spark where the person’s hands had held the cup.
“Whose is this?” she asked.
“Mine.” The voice was lovely, quiet like a song, and yet powerful like the heralding of a storm. Aisling looked up quickly to find herself lost in the gaze of a strange woman. Her skin was blue as the morning sky and her head was covered with dark snakes. One lifted its head and hissed at her.
“What kind of tea was it?”
“Nothing special,” the snake-haired woman replied.
Aisling nodded and tilted her head while looking at the remaining leaves. There was a trick to it, although she didn’t really need to look at them. The sparkle of magic lingered even where the leaves had shifted.
“I see a bear in your past,” she began, “an untrustworthy person who dogs your steps. I see a bull in the current time, an omen of misfortune and an insult from your enemies. It is a warning you should heed.”
The blue-skinned woman leaned forward. “And my future?”
Aisling’s lip twitched. “An arrow, surrounded by storm clouds.”
“What does that mean?”
Anger vibrated through Aisling’s hand, and the cup whined as she closed her fist around it. She met the duchess’s smug gaze. “It’s a bad omen, and it points directly to you.”
The duchess at least attempted to look surprised. She pressed a hand against her chest and feigned shock. “Whatever could that mean? Surely you pointed the cup wrong, my little witch. The arrow couldn’t point at me.”
“It points directly at you, Duchess. And I do not appreciate being used for sport.”
“Well then, I suppose my entertainment is finished.”
The duchess snapped her fingers, and the blue-skinned woman tried to run. She spun on her heel, hitting the chest of a one-armed guard who appeared behind her. Aisling didn’t even hear a squeak as the large man wrapped his arm around her head and twisted violently. The thud of a body hitting the ground was hidden by the symphony of a hundred voices rising in laughter.
She turned towards the Duchess, forcing herself to remain unphased. “Was that necessary?”
“I don’t like liars.” The duchess poured another cup of tea. “Shall I read your leaves?”
“I thought you said witches had magic the Fae don’t?”
“They do. But reading tea leaves is really quite easy, don’t you think?”
Aisling took the offered cup with a small shake of her head. “What are the chances you’ve poisoned this?”
“If I wanted to kill you, I wouldn’t do so in the middle of my ballroom.”
Aisling looked at the guard dragging away the blue woman’s body. “Is that so?”
“Killing someone in such a simple way is an insult. You’re a worthier conquest.” The duchess raised her own teacup and clinked the chipped edge against Aisling’s.
“I couldn’t agree more.” Aisling lifted the cup to her lips and arched a brow.
The tea tasted faintly of fruit, but mostly of rot. Overwhelmingly sweet, it burned the roof of her mo
uth and sent tendrils of ache through her teeth. They anchored in her skull like the thorns of the vine wrapped around her neck.
She didn’t detect any poison, and for that she was grateful. Aisling hated the bitterness of nightshade on her tongue.
When the duchess didn’t seem interested in speaking, Aisling followed the other woman’s gaze.
Bran made his way through the crowd, quietly speaking with all who would lend him an ear. He paused near a man made entirely of bark and grinned. Aisling felt it deep in her gut.
What kind of man could find joy in a place like this? The tree-like man lifted a gnarled hand and placed it on Bran’s shoulder, and he didn’t even flinch. These were more his people than any other creature they had seen thus far. He was completely at home with the strange, macabre, and even grotesque.
Perhaps that was why she felt him deep inside her soul. He saw the beauty in broken things, but never tried to put them back together. Broken wasn’t useless.
The duchess chuckled. “He’s beautiful, isn’t he?”
“Whatever are you talking about?” Aisling sipped at her tea.
“You know who I’m talking about, child. It’s perfectly acceptable to admire things like him, but only from afar.”
“And why is that?”
“Men like him weren’t made to be touched by women with scars on their hands. He’s one of the black-eyed beauties, creatures hiding within pools of decay. You’ve seen the celestial bodies hidden in the depths of his gaze. A woman is easily lost while stargazing.”
Aisling lost her breath. Her chest caught in a heave, holding the air as if the pain in her ribs might overpower the pain in her heart.
Pity radiated from the faerie next to her who reached out and placed a hand atop hers. “Tell me more about yourself, little witch. We shall watch this dark man as he tries to ply my subjects for a way to kill me. As payment for not killing him now, I shall hear more of your story.”
Aisling pulled her hand away and pressed the teacup to her lips. “All my life I have been afraid of fire.”
“A strange thing to be sure. Witch magic is elemental at best.”
“I used to wake up drenched in sweat, thinking that flames were licking at my legs in the middle of the night. I saw people in the shadows holding tinder and flint with wicked grins on their faces. Every night, I walked through the forest and wondered when someone was going to finally find me.
“They tell little girls to be wary of the woods. They say it is filled with creatures dark, powerful, and cursed. What they don’t tell little girls is that monsters live on street corners, in warm houses, and that they carry rosy-red candles to banish all that darkness that is supposed to frighten the children.
“Humans fear the dark because it is filled with things they cannot understand.” Aisling shook her head. “I have never felt fear while languishing in the darkness. But I’ve felt fear with a blazing fire burning all around me until even my shadow fled the light.”
The duchess hummed. “So it is true—they still burn witches.”
“They prefer to hang us.” She thought of the hanging tree, the hundreds of souls crying out that she would never be one of them because she already belonged to the Fae. “But a fire will always suffice.”
“Then why him?” The duchess nodded at Bran. “Why the Unseelie prince who has never cared for a thing in the world?”
“He saved me from the fire.”
“Please. Spare me the theatrics. That is not why you are interested in him at all. Anyone could have saved you from burning. Even that damned familiar who’s wandering my halls, shouting at my guards as if he owns the place.”
Aisling gently set her cup onto the table and rearranged her legs so she wouldn’t kick one of the kneeling men in the face. They held the table up silently and without complaint. Their sightless faces reminded her far too much of herself.
Why was she so interested in Bran? Because of his foolish nature, how he never failed to argue with her, his bravery, his desire to do good, his hatred for anything that was structured. It was all there and more.
“It was the fire,” she said with a shaking voice. “Not the physical one which tried to claim my life, but the fear of fire itself. Somehow, he wiped away the remaining pieces of me that desired the light. He understood my fear and welcomed me into the darkness without judgement. He desires the rot and the ruin. The moth-eaten fabric of our being is one and the same.”
And it made her heart hurt to think of it. He had already admitted he couldn’t look at her face, and she couldn’t curse herself again. Aisling refused to become less of a person for him. She couldn’t imagine him ever letting go of ancient heartbreak, so where did that leave them?
In a place between places. A world between worlds. They hovered at a standstill, and neither of them knew how to fix it.
He glanced up, as if he felt her gaze upon him. She saw the instant flash of heat, the darkening edges of his eyes, and the flare of the feathers on his skull. Then it all faded away, a mask of disinterest in its place.
“Do you think he’s not interested in you because you have a face?” the duchess asked.
“I think you know why he’s no longer interested in me, and that is something you hid on purpose.”
“Even I don’t know the history of every faerie that walks my halls.”
Aisling glared.
“Perhaps I knew there was history between him and another, but I didn’t know you would look so much like her. It is a striking resemblance.”
“You know my sister?”
“I know your entirely family, Illumina. That is your given name, isn’t it?”
Power flared in her hip bones, spreading down her legs, and cementing her to the ground. The use of her true name burned.
“That name has not been uttered since I was a child,” Aisling growled. “It is not one I consider to be my own.”
“Yet it still holds a little bit of power.” The duchess reached for her cup, swirled it three times, and turned it upside down. The dregs of tea leaked onto the saucer, stretching like tentacles.
Aisling didn’t want to remember the dreaded name. It wasn’t attached to her anymore, other than the fleeting memory of a pale woman who had once stroked her hair during a nightmare. “Illumina,” the woman had whispered, pressing lips against her forehead. “It was just a nightmare, sweet.”
But Aisling had known even as a child it wasn’t a nightmare. Her desires and thoughts weren’t normal. She wanted desperately to be something more than just a pretty daughter of the Seelie Fae. Her sister played in golden fields filled with pretty blue flowers and never stared at the darkened forest beyond.
Her family had named her Illumina, the daughter of light. And her entire life she had dreamed of beasts in the forest howling her name. But she didn’t fear the monsters.
She wanted to become one.
“I’ve never seen leaves like this,” the duchess murmured. She reached in a single delicate finger and touched it to the bottom of the cup. “Not a one out of place, and each resting in the quadrant of your future.”
“Is that so?” She tried to stop her voice from shaking.
“I see a war crow,” the duchess continued, “returning from battle, blood dripping from its wings. I see nightshade, bitter and poisonous, wrapped around a heart. I see a crown, a blood-drenched land, and feathers falling from the sky like rain.”
Aisling’s quiet gasp seemed to echo as all sound fell away from them.
The duchess looked up and met her gaze, fear glowing in the depths of her emerald eyes. “Perhaps you shall be the one to kill me after all.”
“Where is your husband?”
“He prefers to remain away from such revelries.”
“Then you are in grave danger,” Aisling whispered. “I don’t want to kill you.”
“Because you see something of yourself in me?”
“No,” a choked sob burst from her lips, “because I see myself becoming you.”
<
br /> They stared at each other. Two dark women with souls stained from the blood of innocents. Magic sang in their bones, lamenting the deaths but celebrating the power that came with such a loss. They both had suffered at the careless hands of those who had tried to strip them of their power, and both had shown their enemies what happened when they tried to burn a woman who carried fire in her breast.
She feared losing the piece of herself that made her warm to others. Aisling had always been withdrawn, but she felt deeply. Every stone, every cut, every threat—they stung her soul. But she could see a time when such things would no longer bother her.
And this cold woman in front of her was the outcome.
The duchess reached forward and skated a tea-stained finger over the back of Aisling’s hand. “You are here for my entertainment, little girl. Don’t forget that.”
Hidden meaning slipped underneath the words.
If I die, it will be an adventure.
Aisling nodded, then dashed the tears from her cheeks. “Then by all means, how might I entertain you tonight?”
There was a healthy amount of respect in the duchess’s eyes as she rose from her seat. Aisling realized she’d been seated on another of the kneeling men. His back immediately curved, as if he had been stuck in the same position for so long his muscles spasmed.
The duchess lifted her hands over her head and clapped loudly. “My family! We have a rare treat to entertain us. The Unseelie Prince and his witchling have graced our court with their presence. I call upon them to dance!”
“Dance?” Aisling choked out. “I don’t dance.”
“You’ll learn.”
Hands pressed her forward, shoving her through the crowd past all manner of Unseelie creatures. They were missing eyes, ears, arms, lips. Each grotesque face gnashed at her, jeering and pushing her forward until she was turned around in the center of the ballroom.
She slammed against another person, shoulder blades pressed against his heat, and immediately knew who it was. She heaved a sigh while telling herself to ready herself. He’d look at her again as if she was something horrible. And she would have to endure.
He turned, his breath fluttered against the nape of her neck, and Aisling forgot how to breathe. It was so easy to remain detached when she had held herself away from him. But now she felt naked, bared entirely to him, and she didn’t know how to act.