by Ella Fields
Fine hairs began to stand upon my bare arms, the warm breeze no longer. The air had grown thick, frozen, yet I could still feel each breath enter and leave my body. One foot moved before the other, carrying me toward the first corner of the maze.
In that corner sat a garden gnome, and as I wound deeper inside the maze, another and another, all dressed in differing painted clothing of red, yellow, green, and blue. Some wore top hats, others bonnets, and upon each of their faces were tiny secretive smiles. They guided the way, and I found myself eager to discover what the next one might look like with each new corner.
The sun didn’t leave me, but its warmth was no longer, and the shade with each passing turn caused my skin to prick and pebble with gooseflesh. Roses, in deeper blacks and reds, hung from many a thorny branch in the hedge, all in perfect bloom.
On my sixth turn, I gave in to the urge to reach out and touch one. Silken petals firmed and yielded beneath my fingertips, and then the ground shook, and I clutched my hand to my chest as roots slithered out from beneath the hedge.
I scrambled back, but it didn’t matter. Like snakes in a feeding frenzy, the roots raced after me, and I fell flat on my back, bones rattling. A scream was trapped inside my throat, unable to be released as I rose to my bruised backside and frantically tried to pluck at the roots that’d circled around my ankles.
Dade would say this was a perfect example of how carrying a weapon could save my life. Yet I had none, knowing I’d probably not be permitted a tool in which to slay him.
Groaning, I tugged and pulled to no avail. Panic scored through me, my heart kicking at my sternum when the vines didn’t budge. They climbed higher, nearing my knees, thorns ripping and trapping my skirts.
Shift, I told myself. I had no choice but to shift.
I closed my eyes, swallowed thickly as my legs began to grow numb, and then rational thinking reentered, and I leaned forward to wrap both hands around the vines. Thorns cut into my palms, my blood only aiding my intentions as I compelled the plant to calm, to stop moving.
My breath, a long-forgotten thing, burned as I watched the serpentine vines slowly still, then gently unravel themselves from my body.
I didn’t wait, wasn’t willing to believe I could afford to. I climbed to my feet, urging feeling to return, and spun around to head back. To head back to the enemy I was growing uncomfortably familiar with. I’d much rather finish what he’d started than waste my people’s chance out here by getting maimed by plants or some other creature.
I reached the end of the hedge-lined path when they moved. Closing in, they slid together in a patch of greenery and roses so thick, I wasn’t sure my meager powers could convince them to do otherwise.
Cursing, I turned, the vines now slithering back under the hedges, and raced across the soft trimmed grass to the other end. If the maze wanted me to earn my way out, then that was what I’d do.
Rounding the bend, a line of garden gnomes blocked my path, and I blinked, swearing I had seen a few of those gnomes already when there was a blinding flare of light.
My arm shot up to shield my eyes, and when I lowered it, I found small faces with determined expressions and weapons bigger than they were in their hands.
Little Folk.
“What do we have here?” asked the white-bearded elf.
“A trespasser,” hissed a tiny thing beside him—a youngling wearing a pair of overalls smaller than my palm.
It didn’t matter that they were little. I shifted without thought, without thinking of the risk, wings flapping and taking me high above the giant walls of the hedge. The gnomes, Little Folk, became nothing but colorful dots below me as I climbed higher, my wings spreading wide with the gathering breeze.
I caught it, soaring over the hedge. At my back, Shadow Keep blocked my ascent from view, but not from those in the vegetable gardens to the west of the hedge, nor the workers in the orchards and wheat fields that stretched for a mile or more toward the east behind a large building with a horse-dotted training yard before it.
Greenhouses sat in three clustered rows beside the fields, and as I breached the never-ending hedge—trees. Dense woods spread from the west to wrap around the northernmost corner, crawling toward the east.
Toward the ravine, the place I’d once found solitude, and had since handed me chaos.
Lost to my musings, the melancholy for all the darkness that lay behind and ahead of me, I banked and dropped beneath the thick foliage of trees and entered the woods. I had to return. I knew that even with the king gone, he could still be alerted to my absence, and if this singular plan of mine was to work, then the last thing I needed was to make him too distrustful of—
A net swallowed me, pulling me toward the ground.
Feathers ripped and splayed, and I shifted back right as I hit the earth, my teeth singing, ankle groaning as I slipped on the netting and rolled to my side. Pushing up and peering through the mesh, I found myself surrounded by Little Folk.
They gawked, weapons slack at their sides or forgotten on the ground.
A white-haired female came forward, her dark blue eyes seeming too large for her small head. “A black swan.”
Another female hurried by her, snatching the knife from her lax hand and snapped, “Well, don’t just stand there, free her.” Clucking her tongue, she approached me, slicing at the net, and then hollered, “Rosanne! Put the kettle on.” She looked back at me, her huge eyes smiling bright. “We have ourselves a special guest.”
Shock held me immobile as the rough netting slid down my arms, and I gazed around the small clearing I’d wound up in. Gingerly, I pushed to my feet, absorbing the tiny creatures that rushed out of their homes inside of fat toadstools, thick tree trunks, and the flower beds surrounding both.
Burrows emerged, rock thrown aside and more of them scrambling and spilling onto the grass. “You truly are the Little Folk.”
We hadn’t any in Sinshell for some decades, many fearing they’d been extinct or moved on after the first war.
“We prefer the term Elf.” The white-bearded male drifted closer, his cheeks ruddy and shifting as he smiled. “But you may call us as you see fit.”
“Elves,” I breathed, blinking hard, still taking them all in.
“How do you like your tea?” asked the female, head tilted.
Tea? I stepped out from the netting, walking back a couple of steps toward what I hoped was the entry to the forest. “Just moments ago, you were ready to kill me.”
“Kill you?” The female balked. “Oh, my dear, no. We merely teach trespassers a lesson, and then we let them go.” I froze at that, thinking perhaps it was time to take flight again when she continued, “They might be missing some hair and shoes, but that’s to be expected.”
“Shoes?” I couldn’t help but ask as two teeny tiny younglings hurried through the circular throng of Elves and into the clearing with a tea tray.
The bearded male stepped aside, and sketching his hand behind him, he peeled back some of the foliage. “The young ones enjoy them.”
Indeed, behind him amongst the tall grass and wildflowers, a few of them clambered over what appeared to be a castle fashioned out of slippers and boots and leather dress shoes. The latter were few, and they would be, being that they were worn mostly by human males in Errin.
Ignoring the impulse to walk closer and inspect the laughing children, the windows cut out of soles, and the battlement made from the rubbery base of a rainboot, I asked, “And hair?”
“Oh,” the female said, dragging my eyes back to her as she prepared the tray of tea, “that is merely to cast misfortune on the darker souls, the rotten ones who wished harm to befall us.”
I found myself following her request to sit when she gestured to the empty grass behind me and smoothed out my tattered skirts over my knees as I did. “How does one do that?”
A tinny voice, likely undetectable to human ears, came from below my knee. “We boil and weave their hairs, then make lovely soft blankets with
them.” I shifted my leg, peering down at the young female who wore a gap-toothed smile and her brown hair in pigtail braids.
“Fink,” hissed who I guessed was her mother. “Give the princess her space.”
But I found myself returning the youngling’s smile and offering my hand.
Her mother gasped when her daughter, delighted, climbed on, latching onto my fingers as I lifted her to my leg. There, she sat, watching me receive the tea I was sure to finish in two sips from the white-haired female. “And what’s your name?”
“My mama’s name is Beshal,” informed Fink, who then pointed at the white-bearded male and said, “and that is my papa, Harro, and that is my uncle and aunt, Gretz and Pilon.”
I nodded their way, still smiling as Fink introduced me to more of those gathered nearby. Most returned it, some of the young scuttled behind their parents’ legs, peeking out from behind them every so often with shy smiles.
The tea, although barely there, was divine—a mixture of bergamot and sunshine that warmed my chest and relaxed my shoulders. I was offered more and found I could not refuse when Beshal scowled.
“No one tells that female no,” Harro, who I’d guessed was her spouse, laughed jovially.
“Why are you here?” asked Fink. “You belong in storybooks, in tales told before sleep.”
I raised a brow at that. “I’m not that old.”
Fink laughed, but Beshal said, “The black swan has not been seen for many a year and has long thought to have been bled from your bloodline forevermore.”
I nodded. “I know.” Unsure of what else to say, I shrugged, laughing weakly. “Well, here I am. Another one.”
“And in the king’s clutches, no less,” griped Harro, his bushy brows covering his beady chocolate eyes. “So yes, what brings you here?”
“He stole me,” I said simply, for it was true and the last thing I’d ever do was protect the likes of Dade Volkahn.
No one spoke for a minute, the only sound the trilling of birds and the sea in the distance, crashing below the cliffs.
“But you are outside the keep. You could fly home at any moment.”
“Don’t be foolish.” Beshal glowered at her spouse. “The king of wolves would find her, hunt her until her final days.” She looked back at me, her eyes twinkling with knowing. “No, she is exactly where she ought to be.”
I smiled and sipped my tea.
Dade
A fucking tea party.
I’d been flying across the southern farmlands of Vordane when something began to crawl beneath my skin. Landing in a paddock, I startled the shit out of some cattle, then shifted back and opted for faster travel when the feeling didn’t abate.
Warping inside the Keep, I knew instantly that something was amiss, so I interrogated Fang until I feared I’d rip his head clean off, and there she was…
Sitting amongst the fucking toadstools and flowers, drinking tea with the elves.
Fang had nearly pissed in his trousers when I’d appeared before him on the terrace after finding Opal’s rooms empty, her scent leading outside. “Where is she?” I’d growled.
Collecting himself with a curse, he’d straightened from where he’d been taking a nice little nap against the pillar. “She wanted to explore the maze.”
“And you just let her?” I glowered. “Alone?”
“They won’t harm her, I’m sure.”
I’d snarled, rippling into shadow inside the maze, only to discover her scent led up into the sky, trailing toward the woods beyond the maze, and then vanished suddenly. I’d landed and traced it again upon the breeze, following it into the trees.
To find her smiling, drinking tea as though she hadn’t skirted danger and made my stomach churn and twist in such a disgustingly foreign way. Elves surrounded her, sitting in the grass, standing before her with enraptured faces, and one even perched on her leg.
“My king.” One of them finally noticed I was in their midst, standing by a tree, and my swan… oh yes, that was panic in her eyes as she lowered her thumbprint-sized teacup and glanced my way.
I tilted my head, eyeing her. What have you been up to?
She looked away, helping the tiny creature off her leg and setting her onto the grass. “Thank you for the tea,” she said to Beshal, whose eyes bounced back and forth between us as she carefully placed the teacup upon the tray. “It was the most delicious I’ve ever had.”
Beaming, Beshal forgot all about my presence and curtsied. “Please do come back.”
“I’d love to.”
I withheld a grumble and waded over, snatching my swan by the arm. The elves took note but wisely didn’t say a word as they scrambled back toward their homes, and I took my swan back to her rooms.
Inside them, a shadowed breeze still fading from our arrival, Opal whirled on me. “That was so rude.”
“Rude?” I kicked the door closed, perplexed to the point of near-laughter.
“You just… just”—with a groan, the swan flung her arms out—“took me, and you didn’t even offer them a greeting.”
“What do the elves care for greetings?”
Her eyes widened, gold jewels catching on mine. “You mean to tell me you do not even know them?”
“What’s to know?” I eyed the bookshelves, tiring of this conversation. “They are Little Folk and of no importance or use to me.”
Anger lit her eyes, and I found myself struck stupid by the glow of them, the way the high rise of her cheekbones reddened. Her mouth, the perfect pink bow, spread, but then her lips closed. I couldn’t look away as I watched that ire rapidly melt, replaced with a deceptive calm. “Why?” she said at last.
I could hardly stand to blink and did so quickly so as not to miss a moment of staring. “Why what?”
“Why do you want me here? What use am I to you, especially given what the stars have foretold.”
She went there, straight there, and I should’ve known she’d muster up the courage to eventually. Why, watching as she was forced to grow into herself, to adjust to her ever-changing surroundings, adapting to things that happened to her while she hoped to control and reverse it all… stunning and fascinating.
I placed one foot in front of the other, my leathered armor still reeking of blood and terror, and took note of the way her heart pounded harder, her skin flushed deeper, and her entire body locked.
But those eyes, they didn’t waver from mine.
A sheltered princess, most certainly, yet one who’d made it her mission to absorb everything in the world around her, searching for things others couldn’t afford to waste time looking for. She ignited intrigue and study like nothing else ever had, and I knew, even without the stars meddlesome intervening, it would be so regardless.
Opal didn’t move even though the rational part of her, the part that thought me nothing more than a savage beast, longed to. Her scent infiltrated, flooding deep, and I groaned lightly as my head swam with it, and my blood heated and bubbled with desire.
Fingers coated in dried blood slid under her delicate chin, and her eyes closed when my head lowered. “Because my troublesome swan, I prefer to keep my most worthy adversaries right where I can see them,” I whispered, her eyes reopening as my nose bumped gently into the side of hers. “Right under my snout.”
I tore myself away at her sharp intake of breath, the air between us growing taut enough to snap with leashed need, and forced myself to the door.
“Wait,” she rasped.
My eyes closed briefly, and then I peered over my shoulder.
She wrung her hands before her, her mettle shrinking with her shoulders, and then she turned for the window. “Never mind.”
Her torment should have satisfied me, but instead, it worsened that pit of foreign feeling inside my stomach, causing it to crawl into my chest.
“You could just take her,” Scythe suggested, tearing a chunk from a glossy red apple and grinning around the fruit. “We are nothing but savages after all.”
The t
hought alone, of her struggling and wailing beneath me, as I’d seen happen to some females before during attacks, disgusted me now as it had then.
“No,” I barked. “Savages we may be, but we are not thieves.” Scythe raised a brow in question, knowing I was indeed a hypocrite. I didn’t care. He knew. He’d been there when I’d made it extremely clear that I would not tolerate such abuse. “Only vermin take what is not offered willingly.”
He nodded once, returning to his apple. “Wine then. She is sure to forget how much she loathes you with some wine in her soft belly.”
I gnashed my teeth at him, and he laughed, flinging his middle finger in the air as he bowed and left the war room.
It was now empty, save for Fang and myself. He and Scythe had stayed back after the meeting with my uncle about the human royals’ clever deception in the cove. It would seem the golden thread had indeed left our shores, but we hadn’t the desire, nor the worry, to seek it out.
Let the humans barter with it.
No one would come to their aid, no matter how much gold they accrued and sold. Those across the sea had to know it would be suicide to involve themselves in a war that did not concern them.
They’d take their gold, make their faulty promises, spill lies easily as humans so often did, and meanwhile, we would continue. We were close now. Only the queen remained, and those in her court who could not be trusted once we took their land for our own.
“Scythe wouldn’t know what to do with a female unless they landed in his lap,” Fang said, snatching my attention from the coordinates on the map of Nodoya.
The red stakes indicated the landmarks already destroyed. They covered lovely fat little chunks, like blood trickling through a snow bed. The black indicated the three remaining strongholds to be taken.
Castle Gracewood, the city of Sinshell, and Castle Errin.
The latter was a little optimistic and possibly unnecessary. Though the idea of sharing a realm with humans did not bother me as much as it did some of my brethren, it still irked. Mainly due to their dubious attitudes and cunning assertion of power.