by Emma Hamm
Elva wasn’t certain where the story was going. What did this have to do with the bear? What did that have to do with asking Elva to leave the only place that felt like home?
“Scáthach—”
“I’m not finished yet.” She waited until Elva fell silent before continuing. “These women show up on my door, battered, bruised, wanting to learn how to take revenge. Such teachings are not in my way. I will teach them to defend themselves, but I’m not going to help them destroy the thing that had nearly destroyed them.
“You arrived here as one of my most difficult protégés. You had a chip on your shoulder that even I had a hard time knocking out of you. But I succeeded. I gave you your life back. The one you wanted more than anything else in this world. Now, I’m asking you for something in return.”
Elva had known there had to be a catch to this place. The first time she’d walked in and Scáthach had offered to help, she was certain this had to be some kind of faerie trick. But Scáthach wasn’t a faerie. She was human. And, therefore, Elva had been tricked.
Her hackles rose. This was something she knew how to deal with. She’d grown up with women like this taking advantage of her. It still stung that someone she’d trusted with her entire being would betray her like this.
Setting down her fork, she cleared her throat. “Understood. I’m very familiar with favors.”
“Not like this one.” Scáthach glanced her way finally, her hand curling around the knife she held. “This bear asked for almost an exact description of you. Care to tell me why?”
“I don’t know anyone who’s cursed like that.”
“Your family?”
“Also doesn’t know anyone cursed. If they did, then they wouldn’t be using that curse to get to me.” Elva reached with her free hand and grabbed the goblet. The other, she slipped underneath the table, still clutching the knife.
“Are you certain of that?”
“I haven’t talked to them in years, Scáthach. If they wanted to speak with me, they would have reached out. They could have reached out to my sister, to Bran, to the Seelie King. There are far more people who know more about me than you do. They wouldn’t use a cursed bear to get me to come home.”
Scáthach grunted and lifted her own goblet to her lips. “Then perhaps this is merely fate.”
Elva didn’t believe in fate. She believed in cause and effect. The bear asking for her in particular was troubling. Not a single person in her past would have stooped so low to ask one of the cursed to drag her back to the Seelie Court.
Who else could it be?
“Why was he asking for me?” Elva questioned.
“I couldn’t get that out of him. I was hoping you would know.” Scáthach shrugged. “I don’t think it really matters in the end. You’re going, whether you want to or not.”
“To save a cursed bear? I could think of a few other things I’d rather be doing with my time.”
“Saving? Whoever said anything about saving?”
Elva turned slowly toward her mentor and tried to figure out what the woman was getting at. Why else would she send Elva? She was the only person here who had firsthand experience with faerie curses. And it had to be a faerie who had cursed the bear.
She drew down her brows. “Why else would you send me? That curse reeks of fae magic, of which you know I have much experience with. You, of all people, know that I’m not just fae.”
“Yes, your gift for the magical arts will likely help you with this, but I don’t want you to save him. That bear… Well, I won’t tell you who he is because that will only make this more difficult for you. Let’s just say that his existence is not good for the faerie courts. Wandering fae without allegiance are dangerous, especially in the human realms.”
“Scáthach,” Elva said, her tones mocking in their surprise. “I didn’t know you were involved in faerie politics.”
“We’re all involved in faerie politics, whether we want to be or not. This is the first opportunity in years that I have someone at my disposal who can actually be around one of the cursed faeries. Someone who knows the limitations of such a curse.” She lifted her goblet into the air between them. “I want you to survey him. To learn what he knows, who he is, and how he came to be cursed. If he’s a threat, I want you to destroy him.”
“Why?”
“He shares land with my people. I don’t trust men. More than that, I don’t trust people who waltz into my keep and demand that I assist them. Find out what you can and then return here to me. If he gives you any reason to think he’s dangerous to us or to this land, destroy him.”
“How do you want me to destroy a bear?” There were a few ways she could think of, and none of them that Scáthach would support. She hated magic and everything it promised.
“With whatever means necessary. I think you’ll find I’m far more generous with those who play by my games, Elva, than those who don’t. You’ve had a home here, and we welcomed you back even after you saved your sister. I don’t like faeries. I don’t like magic. And I really don’t like liars. You have taken an oath to serve me. Now serve.”
The order shouldn’t have smarted as much as it did. Elva had been born into a high-ranking faerie family. They were the ones who gave orders, not some human who thought she was high and mighty.
But that was the old Elva, the one who valued people on the age of their blood and how much they could offer her. Now, she understood how much hard work went into the lives of the commoners. She valued them for what they could do, not for who they were.
Elva reminded herself she wasn’t the same person she had been. She wasn’t some spoiled princess who thought the world should bow at her feet.
She couldn’t be. Not anymore.
Arguing at this point was ridiculous. Instead, she watched her fellow warriors feast at the table. Their lives were better because Scáthach existed. This woman had taken in so many people out of the goodness of her heart. She’d taught women how to take care of themselves, and how to fight if necessary.
In a way, Elva did owe her. The binds of that realization tightened around her chest. A faerie didn’t like owing anyone anything. It was a physical restraint that made it nearly impossible for her to do anything or be anyone other than the little slave girl Scáthach wanted her to be. Whatever the human asked, Elva would do.
Her lip curled. “Fine, I’ll do it. But once this is over, our bonds are severed for good.”
“You want to go home?”
No, of course she didn’t want to go home. Back at her parents’ house, she would become some flowering, simpering thing who didn’t have a real bone in her body. She had been a fluid creature who became whatever anyone else wanted her to be.
The idea of becoming that again made her sick to her stomach. And Elva didn’t question that she would turn right back down that same path.
She’d tried returning home, right after Fionn had been banished. It hadn’t gone well. Her mother had brought out all her old dresses, the ones that made her feel like a doll. They’d thrown party after party, trying to get the old suitors to look her over again.
All they had managed to do was make her feel like a prized cow. When the newest suitor tried to kiss her without permission, Elva had headbutted him so hard she’d nearly knocked herself out.
The snapping of the man’s nose, however, was an accomplishment she’d wear forever as a badge of pride. That had been the moment she realized she didn’t want to be Elva, the pretty noble who needed a man to be her husband. She wanted to be feared. To be a woman who could take care of herself without someone standing between her and life.
So she’d come here, to Scáthach’s island where they made women warriors. Where she could be someone else because no one knew she was faerie royalty.
Other than Scáthach. This woman knew she was a faerie, knew her entire story, and it seemed she might use that knowledge against her.
Elva blew out a breath. Did she want to leave this life behind? No. She didn�
��t want to go home and she didn’t want to return to the faerie courts where everyone knew her as a prideful woman who wanted a husband. She wanted to stay on this isle where everyone else understood the pain in her chest.
But she couldn’t stay here and continue to owe this woman an arm and a leg. She had to make her own way in life. And that was that.
“I won’t return home,” she replied. “There are other places I can go.”
“Like where?” Scáthach speared a radish with her knife and popped it in her mouth. Talking over the food, she asked, “Your sister’s kingdom?”
She didn’t want to go to Underhill with all its monstrous creatures, although Bran was there and she considered him her oldest friend. Her sister had reasons to not want her in the kingdom, however. Bran and Elva had been engaged and…well, it was best to avoid that conflict.
Elva shrugged. “There are places in the faerie courts who would be interested in having me.”
“Believe that if you want to. I think you’ll find it’s harder to get them to accept you once you leave this place.” Scáthach toasted her and drank the ale down, then slammed the goblet onto the table. “To new adventures and a debt repaid.”
Elva flinched. “To debts repaid.”
4
The journey home was far shorter than he would have liked. Donnacha enjoyed his time away from the icy castle of his home. At least he wasn’t within the clutches of the Troll Queen.
Shaking his great head, he stared up at the monolith she’d given him. Pillars of ice stretched up into the sky like giant swords. The entire castle glimmered in the sunlight, shining like diamonds. Even the windows were made of stained glass, a testament to the wealth of whomever built it.
She’d created it thinking he would thank her for such a ridiculous home. Dwarves liked wealth, she had told him. He should appreciate the gift she’d given him.
But he didn’t. All Donnacha wanted was a normal life. One where he could be mining away with the rest of his family. Instead of kidnapped and cursed by a Troll Queen.
The memory of his curse burned in the back of his mind, always trying to draw his attention away from anything else. He’d been wandering in the forest, a place he shouldn’t have been, when the Troll Queen and her entourage first saw him.
The dwarves had known the trolls were coming. All others had hidden themselves away, but Donnacha liked to think himself brave. The troll princess had set her eyes on him and decided he was all she wanted. She would have him and no one else. And so, the Troll Queen had offered him a choice.
Marry her daughter that instant, or be cursed as a bear until he gave in.
He didn’t want to marry her daughter. He didn’t want to be cursed in this form because of some game she thought was entertaining. Most of all, he wanted to go home. Back under the ground where the dwarves didn’t care about shiny things. They cared only for each other and the families they had built.
Shaking his great head, he started up the icy stairs. Human feet would have had a hard time with the trek. Though beautiful, the stairs weren’t created with ease in mind. They were far too slippery for booted feet. Even Donnacha, with his claws that dug into the ice, had a difficult time getting up to the castle doors.
Or maybe that was his gut telling him to slow down just a little bit. He wasn’t in any rush to return to the cold castle with its empty halls. The wind whistled through the castle at night, whipping through the nooks and crannies until it sounded like the building itself was screaming.
The double doors, carved with hunters and the beasts they killed, opened at his approach. The Troll Queen had been thorough in her curse and his new home. Everything in it was spelled to have a mind of its own. The castle frequently did what he wanted without being asked.
If only it could break the curse as well.
He snarled at the doors as he went through. The first few times they’d opened on their own, he had broken them in a fit of rage. The next day, they were exactly the same way as they had been before. Not a crack or a change in the carvings at all. As if his anger hadn’t happened.
Donnacha desperately wanted something in this place to change. But it never did. No matter how many times his claws dug into the ice floors, the marks were gone the next day. It was as if he didn’t exist at all.
Perhaps he didn’t anymore. No one else could hear the ghosts whispering in his lungs, the old voices and songs of his people that he couldn’t sing while his body was trapped as a beast.
His memories were his only solace. The old times when he had gathered with his dwarven brothers and sisters, singing the old songs, in caverns where their voices had lifted to the ceiling and bounced from stone to stone.
He could still hear them if he listened closely enough. He could hear their voices that sounded like angels, the cascade of emotion that would rain down upon them as they sang of ancestors who had dug deep into the earth and found treasures of legend.
“You’ve returned.” The voice fluttered through the blue halls and sent a shiver down his spine. “You’re late.”
He didn’t want to respond. Gods, what he would give if he could just go back to his room with its comfortable pile of furs and hide from what he had to do.
But he couldn’t. The curse made certain of that.
Donnacha padded through the halls, avoiding snow drifts as he made his way toward the one room that he hated more than anything else. At the farthest western point of the castle, a door opened for him.
This was the only door not made of glimmering ice. All the others revealed the insides of the rooms, wavering lines of what was beyond, not quite enough to make out who or what was hiding within the castle, but enough to see something moving when he passed. There was never anything moving.
Instead, this door was made of black stone. The obsidian reflected his own image as he approached the smooth surface. It swung open silently.
He knew what this meant, why that gravel-toned voice was calling for him. The queen wanted to know whether or not he was successful. Lip curling in anger and defeat, he stepped into the shadowy room beyond.
There was nothing but a single mirror in the room. Tall as three men, it was an impressive sight to most. The ornate frame was made of more black stone. The carved swirls had been made by the most talented of dwarven hands.
She thought it entertaining to visit him in something his own ancestors had created.
The smooth mirror surface swirled with magic, sickly green light pouring out until it stilled into something that looked more like a window. He didn’t want to look. He didn’t want to see the creature who awaited him.
Donnacha remembered her appearance as though he had seen her just yesterday. He didn’t need to gaze upon her monstrous form again. The curse tightened around his throat, making him stare up at the mirror.
The Troll Queen stood before him. Her skin was a disgusting blueish gray, the same as the slate he’d mined when he was just a child learning how to use a pickaxe. Her eyes were too large for her face and entirely black. Her flattened nose made her look more animal-like than the others. Her overly large mouth curved into a smile, revealing sharpened teeth he knew she had filed long ago. Her ears were pressed flat against her skull, set too high for a human face, and twig-like hair was severely pulled back from her face.
He wished he could say her body was at least mildly attractive, but it wasn’t. She looked like a skeletal mix between a wraith and a banshee. Too thin for health, but somehow still clinging to life.
She wore nothing more than a white gown. It hung from her frame like someone had forgotten a coat on a hanger, and it had aged beyond recognition. Although, she didn’t care what she looked like. The Troll Queen cared for nothing other than her own daughter, a creature even more monstrous than she was.
Her smile split wider as she watched his disgusted reaction. “You aren’t happy to see me, dwarven noble? I’m insulted.”
“Good. I wouldn’t want you to believe for even a moment I was pleased
to see you.”
“Oh, little dwarf. Are you angry at me?”
“Of course, I’m angry at you. It’s a permanent state of being,” Donnacha growled in response.
She knew this already, but liked to poke at him. Quite literally poking the bear. She wanted to see him angry, and she wanted to know he was suffering in this life she’d created for him. This prison made of glorious ice and stone.
If Donnacha could have killed her, he would have. But the Troll Queen was smarter than to let that happen, something he couldn’t say for her daughter. While the offspring was dumb and slow, the mother knew how to work a curse. She’d never let either of them get close enough for him to touch. Always a barrier of glass stood between them.
He lifted a lip in anger. “What do you want?”
“You met with the warrior women?”
“I did. You already know this, Queen.”
She lifted a hand and touched her hair. The straw strands shifted under her touch as she moved a single one back into place. It was so brittle it rattled when she touched it. “Were they angry at you? Did they threaten to kill you like I thought they would?”
“If I die, the curse is broken.”
“I wouldn’t let you die. I have bigger plans for you, Donnacha. You know that. So? Did they threaten you?”
He dug his claws into the ice. “Is that what your plan was? Do you desire some reason to end them? To attack them?”
“I have no interest in mortal women.”
“Then why ask me to bring one here?”
She looked down at her nails, holding them in front of her as if admiring the ragged ends. “I didn’t ask you to bring a mortal woman here. I asked you bring one with hair like sunlight, whose anger rivals the sun itself. A warrior woman better than all the mortal women in that camp.”
“They’re all mortal women.”
“Except one.” The Troll Queen laughed. “You already saw her, didn’t you? I doubt you could miss the pretty thing.”