by C. L. Wilson
Your Elvish blood awakens.
The memory of Hawksheart’s words echoed in her mind. Since the moment she’d drunk the Elves’ liquid sunlight and placed her hand on the Elf king’s Mirror, her dreams had not stopped or grown less frightening. Instead, they hummed with a sense of veracity she could not shake, no matter how much she wished to.
The dream she’d just had, and several others before it, were no Mage-spawned nightmares sent to torment her. They were potential verses of her Song, brutal, vivid visions of the dread future that awaited her if she did not find a way to complete her truemate bond with Rain and defeat the High Mages’ evil plans for her.
Ellysetta pressed the heel of her palm to her heart. The walls felt like they were closing in, as if the weight of the world were pressing down upon her, oppressive and suffocating.
“I need some air,” she said, and bolted for the door.
Except for the guards standing at their posts and the occasional footstep of a watchman going about his night duties, all of Kreppes lay silent and still beneath the starry, moonlit winter sky.
After rushing from her suite in the west wing, Ellysetta climbed the stairs to the ramparts, where the cool air and open sky made her feel less closed in. She walked along the northern battlement in the company of her quintet and looked out over the river into Eld. She didn’t know what she was expecting to see. Some sign of malevolence, perhaps, or approaching evil, but all she saw was the unbroken darkness of Eld’s great forests, stretching across the horizon, and the silvery shine of moonlight reflecting on the swirling confluence of the mighty Heras and the Elden river Azar.
“Doesn’t look like such a threat, does it?”
She turned to see King Dorian step from the shadows of the wizard’s wall, the raised walkway spiked with high, open-roofed towers set back from the main battlements.
“Your Majesty.” She inclined her head. “Forgive me. I didn’t see you there. I did not mean to intrude.”
“Your presence could never be an intrusion, Feyreisa.”
The compliment flowed off his tongue with both courtly ease and surprising sincerity. How strange it seemed. She’d grown up all her life seeing this man’s image on the coins that passed from one Celierian hand to another in commerce, and now, here he was, standing beside her on a silent night on the eve of war, offering the pretty charm of a courtly Grace. Master Fellows, the Queen’s Master of Graces who had taught a woodcarver’s daughter the ways of Celieria’s royal court, would have beamed with pride.
“It is strange, how peaceful it looks.” The king continued, nodding towards the vast, shadowy forest to the north. “I have fought in three wars before this. Always, I could see my enemy approaching. I never realized what a comfort that was.” Hands braced on the flat surface of the stone crenel, he scanned the dark horizon. “I keep looking for the campfires, the ships, the troops that experience tells me must be there, yet, my reports say this enemy can simply appear, with no warning, and in great strength. This… nothingness… is very unsettling.”
“Perhaps the waiting is actually the first part of the attack.” A chill breeze blew through the fortress’s night shields. She drew her velvet robes tighter and plumped the fur collar higher about her neck. “To constantly be on your guard, knowing your enemy is stalking you, but not knowing how or when the next blow will come… such torments are one of this Mage’s favorite weapons.”
“No doubt because it is so scorching effective.” Dorian pushed back from the wall and turned to face her. “Is that what it’s like to be Mage-Marked? To feel as if you’re constantly waiting for an attack? “
The question took Ellysetta by surprise. No one had ever asked her what it was like, to be Mage-Marked, and though Dorian had always treated her with impeccable courtesy, he’d never invited personal confidences.
“I suppose it is, in a way,” she answered. “The pressure is always there, but it doesn’t just come from without. It also comes from within.”
“How so?”
“Well, he doesn’t just attack you. He also tries to trick you into betraying yourself. Sometimes, the tricks are very persuasive.” All her life, she’d battled the Mage and the nightmares he sent to torment her. Since coming into her power, that torment had only grown worse. “I doubt I could have lasted this long if not for Rain. He is my strength.”
Dorian looked away. “You are very lucky to have a love so selfless and steadfast.”
His glum tones made her empathy flare. The sense of loss—even despair—that had surrounded him these last days, spurring his temper, fanning his anger, suddenly made sense.
“I know how blessed I am to have Rain,” she agreed. “All my life, I dreamed of a Fey-tale love. My mother always tried to discourage me. I was an unattractive child.” She smiled a little, remembering. “She no doubt meant to spare me the pain of lost hopes, but I didn’t realize that at the time. So when she’d tell me to set aside my dreams of Fey-tale love, that such great loves weren’t meant for mortals, I’d remind her that she had found such a love with my papa—” She hesitated, then admitted softly, “—and that you had found such a love with the queen.”
When he said nothing, she added, “I’m sure that whatever difficulties may lie between you now, they will not last. I have seen the great love you bear her.”
He glanced at her with sudden suspicion. “Are you reading my thoughts, Feyreisa?”
“Nei, King Dorian. I and every Fey in Kreppes have done all we can these last days to shield ourselves from mortal thoughts and emotions. But not all thoughts require magic to detect.”
He grimaced. “I suppose not. Especially when one isn’t being particularly subtle.”
“If you need to talk, I would be glad to listen. About anything.” She started to reach for his hands, but drew back before she touched him. The moment her skin touched his, her promise to leave him the privacy of his thoughts and emotions would be broken.
“You have never much cared for the queen.”
“I—” His statement caught her off guard and left her scrambling for an appropriate response. She wanted to deny his remark, for his sake, but Fey did not lie.
“No.” He smiled. “You haven’t. It’s all right. Most people don’t. She is not an easy woman to like…” He looked back towards Eld, “… or to love.”
“But you do. Love her, I mean.”
“More than life.” He rubbed his face, weariness apparent in every line of his body. “So much that the break between us weighs on me more heavily than this war.”
Ellysetta had to fight to keep herself from touching him, from weaving peace upon him. His emotions had opened up so much she could not hope to block them. The ragged, aching hole, the emptiness, as if part of his soul was missing. The fear that his wife’s love might be lost forever.
“Your Majesty… Dorian…”
“Some people believe I don’t see her flaws,” he continued as if he hadn’t heard her, “but I do. I simply love her in spite of them. Or perhaps because of them. She is a princess of Cappellas. There’s not a more deceitful, conniving, heartless land in all the mortal world. Intrigue, betrayal, murder: They’re a way of life there. No one trusts anyone—not even their own family. And she grew up in that. Can you imagine?
A child, a beautiful, innocent little girl, raised in that… that darrokken pit of a Hells hole. Ah, gods.”
He leaned back and shook himself, as if trying to shake off the overwhelming emotion. “She didn’t let it break her, though. She was too strong. So strong she could live through all of that and still allow herself to be vulnerable enough to love me.”
The words kept tumbling out, as if he needed to say them, to hear them. As if he needed to remind himself.
“She is vain, I know. And she plays her game of Trumps with the members of the court, making them dance to her tune so she can control them. She constantly schemes for ways to increase Celieria’s power and might. But all that is part of her armor. She learned from a young a
ge the best way to protect vulnerabilities was through power, and that power comes from being the most beautiful, the wealthiest, the wiliest, the most controlling. That is how she defends herself and the few people she will ever let herself love. In a way, she is like a tairen. Fierce. Territorial. Willing to destroy anything or anyone who trespasses on her lair or threatens the members of her pride.”
Ellysetta would never have drawn that comparison herself, but a look at Annoura through her husband’s eyes put a different perspective on Celieria’s beautiful, scheming queen. “I never understood that about her.”
“Few do.” He gave a melancholy smile. “She doesn’t want people to understand her.”
“Because that would make her vulnerable.”
He nodded. “There’s nothing she fears more than that.”
Fear and vulnerability were concepts Ellysetta understood all too well. She didn’t like Queen Annoura. The woman had never been more than grudgingly gracious, and sometimes not even that. But King Dorian was a good man with a kind heart, and Ellysetta could tell he loved his wife deeply—perhaps as much, in his own way, as she loved Rain. There must be something worthy inside the prickly queen—some goodness Ellysetta had never seen.
“I have faith you will find a way to set things right,” she said. “Hold fast to your hope. She loved you once enough to overcome what she feared most. A love that strong does not wither easily.”
Dorian closed his eyes, rubbing his face in a weary gesture. “So I have always believed. We have had our arguments before, some of them quite fearsome. How could any man not, with such a strong, stubborn woman for a wife? But this time…” He shook his head. “This time feels different.” Bleak shadows filled his eyes. “I chose the Fey side over hers one too many times. She says I have betrayed her. And the way she said it… the look on her face…” He shook his head. “I don’t know that this breach can be mended.”
Ellysetta winced. He had trusted the Fey, the way Annoura had trusted him, chosen to support them at deep, personal cost. No wonder he’d been so devastated to discover how they’d deceived him.
“I’m so sorry, Your Majesty.”
“As am I, My Lady Feyreisa. As am I.” Dorian heaved a sigh and rubbed his neck, rolled his head in a slow circle to loosen the tight muscles. “It’s late. Both of us should be to bed. Tomorrow will be another long day.”
“Of course.” She started to leave him to his solitude, then paused. “Before you go, King Dorian, may I ask you a question? “
He inclined his head. “Of course.”
When he turned around, a dark brow raised in patient inquiry, she said, “I know you feel that we betrayed you by letting Adrial remain in Celieria without your knowledge. But if you had to make the decision to come here again—even knowing that we hid the truth about Adrial’s presence from you—would you still come?”
He bowed his head, and his chest expanded on a long inhale as he considered the question. “Yes,” he admitted softly. His sober gaze lifted, met and held hers, and he reconfirmed in a firmer voice, “Yes, I would. I would command that Talisa Barrial remain in Celieria City,” he clarified, “but the rest, I would do again.”
Ellysetta nodded. “Beylah vo.” She hesitated. Five months ago, she’d been a peasant, a woodcarver’s graceless gawk of a daughter who never could have dreamed she would be standing here on the battlements of a northern castle, garbed in velvets and sharing a midnight conversation with a king. And she had definitely never dreamed that she would be bold enough to offer that king her advice. And yet, that was exactly what she was going to do.
She had vowed not to weave magic on him, but she could not stand by and let him continue to suffer, as he clearly was. Her empathic nature would not allow it.
“You should write your queen. Tonight, before you sleep.” She said it quickly, before her courage failed. “Tell her you love her. Tell her all the things you shared with me, about the many ways you admire and value her. Tell her… tell her that if you had your life to live all over again, you would still choose her above all others to be your queen and the mother of your children. Sometimes women need such reassurances.”
For a moment, she thought she had offended him by offering such personal advice. He stood so still, watching her with such an indecipherable expression on his face. But then he bowed—not just the restrained, regal half nod shared between kings, but a deep, courtly bow, a sign of great respect.
“You are as wise as you are kind, Feyreisa,” he said when he straightened. “The Tairen Soul is a lucky Fey.” He nodded to Gaelen and the rest of her quintet, and continued down the stairs.
“That was well done, what you did back there with Dorian,” Bel said, as Ellysetta and her quintet walked back to the suite.
“I didn’t do much,” Ellysetta denied.
“You got Celieria’s king to acknowledge that he still trusts the Fey military advice,” Gaelen said. “That, even knowing how we misled him about Adrial, he still trusts us to have his kingdom’s best interests at heart. That’s more than anyone else has accomplished.”
“And you put his mind at ease about his queen,” Bel said. “No man, Fey or mortal, does his best when his heart aches and regret weighs heavy on his mind. Even if he cannot mend what is broken between them, for now he has hope that he can.”
“It’s most likely a false hope, you know. Queen Annoura never struck me as a forgiving woman.”
“Perhaps,” Bel acknowledged. “But to a man standing on the eve of battle, even false hope is better than none.”
Several bells after his walk on the ramparts, with the letter to his queen lying on his desk, written, sanded, and sealed, Dorian paced the chamber in restless thought. Pouring his heart out in the letter to his wife had brought back vivid memories of how utterly he’d fallen in love with her, how deeply and completely she had loved him back. Theirs had been a Fey-tale love, just as the Feyreisa said. He’d known it. His entire kingdom had known it… So what had happened? And why? For the first time, he began to examine the events of the past, attempting to understand how a love so true could have gone so wrong.
Lady Ellysetta’s remark about how the Mages constantly pushed at her mind, trying to trick her into betraying herself, had started him thinking about the possibility that Dorian and Annoura’s troubles had not been of their own making. He knew for certain that at least one Mage had infiltrated his court, masquerading as the newly entitled Lord Bolor. That Mage had stood in the presence of Dorian’s queen and could easily have Mage-claimed Dorian’s subjects. He’d only been discovered thanks to the diligent efforts of Gaspare Fellows, the Queen’s own Master of Graces. But what if Lord Bolor had not been the first Mage to hide in Dorian’s court? What if there had been others? What if those others had been working their evil on Celieria’s queen?
Annoura had changed these last years—especially the last six months or so. At first, the changes had been so subtle, taking place over a period of time so that they had not raised his suspicions. A hint of disquiet here. A small jealousy there. A fear amplified. His brave, strong, beloved queen had begun to doubt him, to see rivals for his affections, enemies among friends. It was almost as if she were back in Cappellas again, fighting a bitter, brutal shadowy war for survival and power.
Looking back, he could see it clearly, and the change no longer seemed at all natural.
Annoura wasn’t Marked. He took what comfort he could from that, but someone had been playing on her fears. Undermining the love and trust Dorian and Annoura had shared for decades. Rousing all the suspicions bred into her by her Cappellan upbringing. Tricking her into betraying herself, just as the Lady Ellysetta said the Mages tried to do with her. And he, so used to her changeable nature, her manipulations, and the small ways she’d always tested his love, had thought nothing of it.
The more he thought about it, the more he realized that Mage influence was the only explanation that made sense. And since the changes in Annoura had begun before Lord Bolor came to
court, that meant Lord Bolor wasn’t the only Mage who’d been influencing her.
So who was it? Who had been closest to her? Who could have had the time and opportunity to play on his queen’s suspicious nature and amplify her fears?
Jiarine, Lady Montevero, was an obvious candidate—considering that she’d been the one to befriend Lord Bolor at court—but she’d been taken to Old Castle for questioning after Bolor’s unmasking. Tortured by some too-zealous prison guard, too, according to his Prime Minister Lord Corrias’s report. And she’d known nothing. She was, apparently, as big a dupe as the rest of them.
Annoura’s other Favorites were possibilities, including, of course, the oh-so-charming Ser Vale, a handsome, minor noble sponsored to the court years ago by Jiarine Montevero. He’d wormed his way into Annoura’s inner circle quickly enough. If Dorian didn’t trust Annoura so much, he might have suspected the relationship between her and Vale had become deeper than mere friendship and flirtation.
He scrubbed his scalp in frustration. Did he really think Lady Montevero and that silky-smooth lordling, Ser Vale, were agents of Eld, or was he just an angry, jealous husband trying to blame someone else for the disintegration of his marriage to a complicated and temperamental queen?
Dorian spun away from the window and stalked across the room to his desk. Maybe he was angry and jealous. But maybe he was also right. He needed someone he could trust to conduct an investigation. If there really were still Mages at work in Celieria City, his queen and his entire kingdom lay at risk.
Dorian sat down, pulled a fresh sheet of blank vellum from his paper box, and uncapped the inkwell.
CHAPTER FOUR
Eyes filled with cold blood-fed
seeking, enjoying their amusement’s dread
Eyes that look forward to bloodsfied
anxious, desperate to taste the dead.
Shadow’s Eyes, a Fey poem
Celieria ~ Celieria City