by Sarina Dorie
“As old as the sea and mountains.”
That didn’t sound like ideal material to work with.
“Do you exhibit any signs of . . . um . . . fertility?” This was an uber awkward conversation to have in front of her court, but then, it was her cycle, not mine, we were talking about. “Do you have a monthly cycle?”
“My moon cycle went dark in the Iron Age.”
Of course it did. Probably that meant she hadn’t had any children in three thousand years.
“Okay. So you probably aren’t the best candidate to conceive.” I had to shout over the peals of laughter coming from a two-headed bird dancing next to me. “Do you have any children who are a little less ‘mature’ than you are?”
“I have grandchildren and great-grandchildren.”
That was a starting point. Elric was one of the youngest pureblooded Fae out there. I suspected her grandchildren would have to be his age, plus or minus a few hundred years if we were lucky.
“So, here’s how it works. The only kind of magic that cuts through all the cold iron, Morty-made synthetic materials, and electricity that make Fae infertile is the Red affinity. But most Fae and Witchkin react poorly to electricity.”
Behind the queen, Odette shook her head, eyes wide with fear.
“Where’s Felix?” I asked. “When will I get to see him?”
She leaned on her scepter. “After you tell me how to defeat the paradox.”
A floating trumpet, playing music that didn’t match the other song, nudged me and blared into my ear. I shoved it away. “Is all this rowdiness necessary? It makes it hard to think.”
Queen Morgaine snapped her fingers, and the jubilee silenced. The court continued to dance around us. Instruments floated in the air. No one reacted as though the sound had been cut away. The only difference was that I couldn’t hear them. Unlike Thatch’s sound-barrier spell, I couldn’t see the line where sound began around us. Fae magic was subtle. It was difficult to detect.
I had to be mindful that the queen could draw out more information from me than I intended with enchantments if she didn’t believe I was telling the truth.
“As you were saying. . . .” she said.
I stared into the liquid blackness of her eyes, noticing the way they wanted to suck me into their void. “Alouette Loraline performed experiments to see whether she could help Fae have children with electricity. She could, but the parents usually died in the process. What she tried to do was figure out a way to inoculate her test subjects so that they could withstand electricity. That still didn’t work.”
“I know. I had her journal in my possession. I read it.” The black of her eyes regarded me with indifference. “Tell me what does work.”
“A Fae needs to conceive a child with a Witchkin who is a Red affinity. Like I said before, there are few left, and you’re going to have to make the world a safer place for them so they’re willing to use their magic.”
“That will take time. I’ve waited long enough. I will find someone willing.” The Raven Queen glided closer to Odette, still leaning against the tree.
The scarlet smears on Odette’s back were gone, but her fingers were stained crimson, probably from writing runes in blood. Thatch had told me her affinity was blood magic. She must have healed herself using her affinity. She looked stronger, and I sensed a red core of energy smoldering inside her.
Queen Morgaine stroked Odette’s hair. “You wish to assist me in carrying on the Raven Court bloodline, no?”
Odette’s shoulders slumped in resignation, showing off the sorry state of her wings more fully. “Of course, Your Majesty,” Odette said in a lackluster monotone.
I had never known whether Felix’s and Odette’s affinities were a secret from their queen, but apparently not. This made sense why she wanted to keep them in her service so badly, and why she gave them furnished rooms and allowances that allowed them to go to the ballet. Even if Queen Morgaine didn’t understand how the Red affinity drew out the powers in others and amplified them, she had enough reasons to want them for their ability to battle with any Fae or Witchkin using forbidden magic.
Odette had always come across as dignified and regal, a favorite pet of the Raven Queen. Only seeing her broken spirit like this did I realize how much of a sham it was. I didn’t want her to be raped and forced to bed men against her will in service of the queen. For all I knew, the queen had already tried to get Odette with child.
“There is more, no?” Queen Morgaine asked. “It cannot simply be a pairing of a Red affinity with another. If it were so simple, one of my grandchildren would have sired an heir by now.” She raised an eyebrow, looking me up and down. “If all it took for a Fae to sire a child was a Red affinity, you would have conceived with that prince of the Silver Court.”
Elric and I had never actually had intercourse. By the time I’d been ready, he’d been too impaired by a condom catching his genitals on fire, and he had used a glamour to make me think we had. It was Vega whom he’d gotten pregnant, proving it didn’t take one born as a Red affinity for the magic to work. Yet I didn’t want the Raven Queen to know about my sex life—or Vega’s affinity.
“Elric and I were careful not to have children,” I said. “He respected my wish not to get pregnant.”
She stared at me in disbelief. “That is a lie.”
“No. Elric just isn’t that kind of Fae. He believes in treating Witchkin with dignity. Didn’t Quenylda tell you?”
“Princess Quenylda,” Queen Morgaine corrected. “Oui, she did say he was a most unusual husband.”
I would have laughed at her pedantic insistence on using the royal title for a Fae—even for the frenemy who had tried to kill her—but I forced myself to focus. I was feeling more tired than ever.
I tried to help her see the moral of the story, what might make a difference in Odette’s life or Maddy’s or anyone else’s. “You catch more flies with honey than vinegar. I’m pretty sure Elric figured that one out a long time ago. He had several wives who were Red affinities. They had children together. He treated them well. They weren’t slaves.”
The Raven Queen stared off toward the dancers. “Princess Quenylda told me of his . . . unusual proclivities for Witchkin over Fae. No one could understand why he deigned to lower himself to marrying half-breeds. I can see now he was simply being pragmatic. Clever.” She gazed down at Odette. “I will find you a suitable husband of royal lineage and arrange a marriage immediately.”
Odette stared at the mulch where she kneeled. I couldn’t tear my eyes from the bruises on her shoulders that I had caused, the blood under her nails, and the broken wing. She had allowed me to beat her as if subservience was a role she knew too well.
The queen snapped her fingers at me. “There’s more. I can see you aren’t telling me everything.”
She was right. I spoke slowly, trying to think about what I’d read in the diary as I explained, hoping I wouldn’t make life worse for Odette or others. “There are other factors. A woman has to be at the right moment in her cycle. Her fertility has to be drawn out through her magic.” I thought about Vega and all her doses of electricity. One had been right before she and Elric had a sexcapade in our dorm room. I remembered those moments when Thatch and I had been intimate, and it had been a spiritual experience. If I had been ovulating, I would probably have conceived.
“There has to be electricity. I think the Red affinity has to use magic at the moment of orgasm or close to that moment.”
The queen grasped Odette by her hair, lifting her face to stare into her eyes. “Did you know that? Is that why you have never conceived with one of your suitors before?”
“I didn’t know.” Odette said through clenched teeth. Perhaps she didn’t. More likely she had hidden the truth so the queen wouldn’t know she was fertile.
“I don’t think you get it,” I said. “Prince Elric sired children because he loved his wives. He did everything he could to ensure thei
r pleasure and comfort. Because he cared about Witchkin—who most Fae can hardly tolerate—he was successful in producing a positive magical response when these women orgasmed. If he hadn’t, they might have accidentally struck him dead with lightning.”
Her eyes went wide with understanding.
At last I felt like I had reached her.
“Like Felix,” the queen said, her hand still gripping Odette by the hair. “His magic results in lightning that kills his partner. But he didn’t harm you. A first for him . . . because you’re both Red affinities.”
I glanced at Odette, wishing the queen would release her. “Do you understand now? Your Fae offspring aren’t going to be able to sire children with Witchkin they can barely tolerate touching. They don’t understand human anatomy and would just as soon kill a Red affinity accidentally, or torture her to death, not understanding the difference.” Felix Thatch had said so, but I didn’t know how much of that was an exaggeration.
The Raven Queen tightened her grip on Odette’s hair, yanking her head up once again. “Is this true about Fae men? Are they too incompetent to pleasure a Witchkin female?”
“Fae men are incompetent lovers.” Odette spat out the words, as if she’d had more than enough experiences to make her bitter about it. “Fae women aren’t much better. It amuses Fae too much to be cruel to entertain the idea of playing nicely.”
As if to emphasize her words, a procession of Fae danced between us, the woman at the end of the line with a bird beak kicking dirt at Odette.
Hesitantly, I scooted closer to Odette. I placed my hand on the queen’s where she gripped Odette’s hair. Her hand was as cold as winter. Fae were feral and unpredictable beasts wearing the masks of men and women. Anything I did might make her forget her civility and cause her to bite.
Carefully I pried her fingers out of Odette’s hair. “Are you unconscious of how you’re hurting your favorite pet, or do you just not care?”
The queen stared at my hand and yanked her fingers from mine, disgust in her eyes more than fear.
The irony of that didn’t escape my notice. She hadn’t wanted me to touch her? She was the evil one.
“This is why Fae get a bad rap,” I said. “This is why it isn’t going to work for your children or grandchildren to mate with a Red affinity. Your Fae kin are going to die in the process. This is why I said the world is going to need a different mindset for the Fae Fertility Paradox to work.”
“Felix said you would try to change the world,” Odette said, a smile flitting across her lips.
The Raven Queen backhanded her across the mouth without even looking at her. “I didn’t give you permission to speak.”
So much for the pragmatism of kindness and compassion. I was fighting a losing battle.
“It must be a Red affinity paired with another Witchkin of my lineage.” The queen tapped her long black fingernail against her chin. “One will be my lineage. The other will be my choosing. I am entitled to claim the firstborns of my heirs as my tithes.”
My heart was heavy thinking about Thatch’s horrible childhood after he’d run away from home. I could only imagine how he’d wanted to flee from this woman and her ways.
“How does one ensure the offspring will be a Red affinity?” Queen Morgaine demanded. “I want heirs who beget more heirs.”
She wanted her army to be fruitful and multiply. Not only would she use the Red affinities to destroy other Fae and enslave Witchkin, but most likely she would use them to destroy the Morty Realm. She would be able to stop the production of pesticides, herbicides, plastics, and other toxins poisoning their world. I didn’t know whether she would be able to stop the mining and production of cold iron, but it would make sense that she would try. Left unchecked, the Raven Queen would destroy Morty civilization.
I couldn’t allow her to build an army.
“You’re asking about genetics. Science. That’s considered a forbidden art.” I crossed my arms. “Maybe if you hadn’t seen to it that this was banned, you might understand how science works.”
She waved me off dismissively. “I will see to it our school boards remove the ban on science immediately. Explain how it works.”
“It’s about dominant genes. Haven’t you ever crossbred plants? Or dogs?” Humans had figured this out hundreds of years ago, maybe thousands. It wasn’t a secret. “You need more Red affinities in the bloodline to beget more Reds.”
“A male and female Red affinity?” she asked incredulously. “And they’re out there in hiding because we’ve banned their magic?”
Maybe pragmatism would win the day. Elric might not have been able to spread the idea of equality and alliance with Witchkin out of altruism, but the Raven Queen might inadvertently do so in order to get what she wanted.
“Yep,” I said. “Now you know my dirty little secrets and what I uncovered that Alouette Loraline didn’t want you to know. It’s your turn to uphold your end of the bargain. I want you to release Felix Thatch from your service so he can come home with me.”
“No. I require proof.”
One of the dancers jostled into me. I scooted back. “Sure. Let’s just have ourselves some scientific experiments and write a research paper about it afterward.” As if she would agree to that.
“I never said an ‘experiment.’ I want a demonstration. You agreed to give me a demonstration of what you said was possible.” She waved her scepter at me as she spoke.
I didn’t like the way she said “demonstration.”
“No. I’m not waiting around nine months for someone to get pregnant and have a baby.” Nor did I want to watch Odette or anyone else be forced to serve their queen. I didn’t want to be forced to serve her.
She jabbed a talon at my chest, the sharp tip snagging on the black lace of the gown. “You will provide an adequate demonstration. Otherwise I will not release Felix from my service. What do you choose? Him or your secrets?”
CHAPTER THREE
Join the Dark Side. They Have Cookies. And Evil. Lots and Lots of Evil.
Did I have a choice or only the illusion of one? I couldn’t leave Thatch.
I wondered whether what I was allowed to choose could be for me to leave and for the Raven Queen to test out what I said on her own with her subjects. Then Thatch could join me at Womby’s, and we would live happily ever after.
Only I didn’t trust Queen Morgaine to uphold her end of the bargain. She might say it hadn’t worked just so she wouldn’t have to bring me Thatch. Worry wormed its way into my heart. Probably if I stayed, I would regret it. Everything would go wrong. She would still find a way to trick me, and I would be in her clutches, popping out her army of Red affinities until the end of my days.
Odette shook her head behind the Raven Queen. I didn’t doubt she feared her fate as well.
“I’ll stay and give you a demonstration with two consensual volunteers,” I said. “But you have to follow the rules of what I outlined. You can’t mistreat Witchkin. You can’t force someone to mate with someone they don’t want to, or else the electrical magic isn’t going to work. The partner will die.”
She ran her tongue across her pointed teeth. “I am a queen. Given the right incentive, I can make anyone want to do anything.” The queen turned away.
Already I feared I’d made the wrong decision.
I raised my voice. “No. That isn’t how—”
The queen waved a hand, and the soundproof spell dissipated. Sound came crashing back in on us. I tried to shout over the commotion, but I couldn’t even hear myself.
The queen’s voice boomed like thunder. “Guards, bring me my great-grandson. I have a task for him.” She leered at me.
I was not going to be part of this demonstration.
She strode through the party, poking her scepter at servants and commanding creatures to do her bidding.
I stepped away from her and stumbled over a gaggle of imps that reminded me of Chucky dolls, only naked and dirty,
each with a ram horn instead of male genitalia. They were way creepier than the movies I hadn’t been allowed to watch as a child.
“Go,” Odette mouthed to me. “Before it’s too late.”
I was pretty sure it already was too late.
“Felix wouldn’t want you here for this,” Odette said. “You don’t need to be part of this.”
I could see where this was heading. I didn’t want to be volun-told to show the queen an up-close and personal demonstration on how to conceive a child.
I backed away from the queen. The train of my dress caught on something and snagged. I yanked it free, fabric tearing at my ankles. I made it a few steps before the Fae queen grasped me by the arm, her talons pricking against my flesh. Her touch reminded me of the bitter cold of winter needling under my skin to my very bones. “Did you think you could get away so easily?”
“Get away? Well, yeah. I followed the rules,” I said. “I didn’t eat or drink in your realm. I didn’t accept any gifts. My soul is my own to keep. I made my bargain and kept my half of it. I told you I expected my freedom.” I searched my brain for where I had gone wrong in my bargain.
“Rules? Silly human. You still have no concept of the way rules work in this world.” She waved a hand lazily at a tree. Not the oak tree that had once been my fairy godmother, but another.
Spindly limbs reached out for me. I leapt back. Another tree snatched up my arm and yanked me in the other direction so that I stumbled backward.
My back slammed into the tree, and the air whooshed out of my lungs. Vines curled around my ankles. I tried to pull away, but more vines curled around my wrists and yanked them back against the trunk. Rough edges of bark bit into my arms. If only I had brought my cell phone or iPod.
Or a belly full of magic.
I tried to focus on my affinity, churning it so that I became my own electrical generator as I had before.
The Fae queen laughed, the sound full of bitter mirth. “Did you think you could best me, Witchkin?” She stepped forward. Her subjects closed in tighter, hunger in their eyes. She raised a talon-tipped finger.