by AJ Lancaster
She felt the pressure drop, unnaturally swift. Thunder rumbled nearby, the storm that had been fading abruptly renewing in energy. Vortexes formed over the Indigoes, the wind speeds increasing to gale force.
“Wyn,” she chided, mentally taking hold of the vortexes and smoothing them out. Wyn had gone outwardly as unreadable as stone, but the fae edge to his features would’ve been a tell even if she hadn’t just had to save her inhabitants from surprise emotional flooding.
“What if we had sengra?” Wyn asked suddenly.
“Perhaps. Perhaps a sufficiently strong bond between you would allow your magic to stabilise the child’s. But if so, it would need to be done swiftly,” Rakken said.
“How long?”
“I’m not an expert, brother. I do not know. A week? A month? The power levels are already growing alarmingly.”
Hetta didn’t appreciate being left out of a conversation that was about her, ultimately. “What are sengra?”
Rakken answered. “The physical manifestation of a successful marriage bond between fae. In your case, one approved by the High King.” To her surprise, he flared out a wing, brushing Wyn’s shoulder softly. “I am sorry.”
He left, in a rare show of tact.
“Well,” Hetta said, getting off the floor. “We shall simply have to find the High King on a slightly more urgent timetable than we thought. Or perhaps Stariel can help stabilise these ‘energy fluxes’, given enough time to explain the concept.” She tried suggesting it to the land and received only confusion in response, but sometimes that only meant she needed to reframe the question. Sometimes.
Wyn still hadn’t moved. Rain pelted against the windows, and a flash of lightning lit up his features, stretched taut and skull-like. When he spoke, his voice sounded like it came from far away. “I won’t blame you if you don’t want to continue with this, Hetta.”
She blinked, not following his thoughts. And then she did follow them, all at once and horribly, and anger rose in her, hot and sharp. “What exactly are you suggesting?”
He wouldn’t meet her eyes. “I know you didn’t choose this. I know it has forced matters between us to fall a certain way. And now, if this…‘unstable combination’…” The air spiked with the scent of thunder, but he exhaled carefully, keeping it from further fuelling the storm outside. “I will not blame you if you choose to let this end.”
“‘This’ being our child,” she said. He flinched. “Is that what you want?”
His eyes snapped to hers, a hint of iron in them. “This is—storms above—this is one thing that is not about what I want, Hetta.”
“Oh, sometimes I just want to shake you!”
A crease formed between his brows, uncertainty creeping into him as he scanned her expression. “I—I mean, if you want—that is…” He put a hand on the back of a chair, as if for support, and trailed off inarticulately.
How dare Wyn be too flustered to string coherent sentences together? It softened the white-hot edges of her anger, and she wanted to be angry at him for putting this on her. Because if there was one thing she knew for certain, it was that Wyn was already attached to their baby, even if it wasn’t quite a baby yet. She strode angrily to the curio cabinet and began pulling open drawers.
“It’s in the bottom right,” he said, correctly guessing her intent.
She located the bottle of whiskey her father had secreted—she was still finding them even so many months after his death—and clonked it down on top of the cabinet. The amber liquid rebuked her. Bitterly, she fished out a crystal glass in the shape of a mushroom from amongst the curios, but when she un-stoppered the bottle, the smell made her stomach turn. She re-stoppered the bottle angrily and thrust it back into hiding.
“Dash it!” She went to the window and threw up the sash. Cold, rain-drenched air poured in, erasing the sharp scent of the whiskey. She closed her eyes and drew several deep breaths. “Dash it all.”
When she turned back, Wyn was watching her the way one does snakes and explosives.
“Hetta—” He made as if to move towards her.
“Sit down!” He obeyed, sinking down onto the chesterfield without losing any tension, as if he feared any move might be the wrong one.
She began to pace. “Yes, of course I didn’t choose this! Of course I’ve wished it hadn’t happened, or at least, not right now! Of course I’ve thought how much easier it would be if it just went away! Of course I’ve thought of ending it! And of course I’m not going to!” Her voice wobbled and she blinked rapidly. “Lamorkin is going to come back and tell us what the High King wants, and we’re going to do whatever we need to do, and our baby is going to be fine.” The fury was receding under an alarming urge to burst into tears. She glared down at him.
He held out an arm, and she sank onto the couch beside him, curling against his side with something between a laugh and a sob.
“Tell me you don’t want this child, that you’re not already attached to it.”
He held her so tightly she could feel his heart racing.
“Tell me!” Why was she being so unreasonable?
A long sigh. “I can’t, Hetta.”
The wind from the open window sent the curtains furling and unfurling like great wings. Neither of them moved, even though she knew Wyn would be itching to close it.
“You were right, though,” she said quietly. It was her turn to avoid his eyes. “I—I’d thought about it. Ending it.” He didn’t say anything, rubbing small circles on her shoulders, his cheek resting against her hair. It made it somehow easier to speak. “One of my friends, when I worked at the theatre. She—well, you don’t need magic to end such things, if you know who to go to. But I…don’t want this to end. I didn’t realise quite how much until now. Even though it would make everything easier.” She swallowed and made herself look up at him, trying to read his expression. “Are you angry?”
A faint crease formed between Wyn’s pale brows. “Ah, forgive me, but I don’t follow?”
“That I thought about not keeping it?” All her guiltiest thoughts swam to the surface. “That I told you to leave, that I chose Stariel over you. How can you not be angry about that? How can you possibly not mind?” To her disgust, she felt tears welling. What was wrong with her?
“Ah.” Comprehension replaced bewilderment. He squeezed her more tightly. “Your first duty is and should be to Stariel, love; it would be unfair to hold that against you. Though I admit it’s some consolation that Stariel has since attached itself to me so emphatically.” She felt him pluck at his land-sense. “As for the other, I meant what I said before; I wouldn’t blame you for not wanting this child. Stormwinds know I struggle with things outside my control—I have no high ground from which to judge you for feeling the same.”
“Stop being reasonable! I want you to be angry!” She sniffed. “Dash it, why am I being so weepy?”
“You’re allowed to be weepy,” he soothed.
“Don’t treat me like I’m not being irrational!”
“You’re not being—”
“I am being irrational!” She wiped the tears away, annoyed at herself. “Stop not minding!”
“Ah—all right?” he said cautiously. “What do you want me to say?” She could tell he was trying not to laugh, and she wanted both to strangle and kiss him.
“Go and close the window—I can feel you fretting,” she grumbled.
He did so, slipping back to the couch before she could really mourn the absence of him. “Hetta, my love…” He paused, and his eyes burned. “I’m glad you want this.” He kissed her, slow and intense.
The grandfather clock chimed midnight, and they listened to the day turn over, the gongs settling into the fragile intimacy between them. She drew her legs up and settled against him, drawing in the warmth and familiar spice of his scent. Breaking the hush, she asked softly, “Tell me about sengra?” She tried out the shape of it.
His answer was equally quiet. “Fae marriage is not quite like the human sort. I
t’s more…official.”
Hetta frowned. “Human marriage is very official—especially for me. You do remember that little trip we made to Meridon to get Queen Matilda’s permission?”
Wyn grinned, a sensuous note flaring in his irises. “Certain highlights do come to mind.”
She prodded him. “That’s exactly the sort of attitude that got us into this situation.”
“Well…that’s not exactly an argument against it, given the circumstances. It’s not as if you can get more pregnant.” She prodded him again, and he gave a soft huff of laughter. “Official isn’t quite the right term, then. It is more…fae take marriage very seriously. Fae, especially greater fae, hardly ever marry. It isn’t tied up with inheritance and children the way it is here. My parents were not married, and there was nothing unusual in that. As far as I know, there are no married monarchs amongst the upper courts, though there are many small courts in Faerie I did not keep track of. I know of a small handful of political alliances between courts cemented by marriages.”
“It’s about oaths,” she guessed. Without really trying, she was aware of the throb of the dusken rose, all the way out in the greenhouse, buried even as it was under wards.
“Yes, and tying oneself deeply—and magically—to another. For royalfae, almost the only reason to do so is for important alliances.”
“Your engagement to Princess Sunnika.” She’d known that was supposed to end a war between two warring courts, but she hadn’t appreciated the full magnitude of the commitment until now.
“Yes.”
Gwendelfear had called him ‘oathbreaker’, she remembered. “Did the High King specify you in particular had to marry Princess Sunnika, or was it more of a general ‘go and make peace by marrying two important people from each court’ instruction?”
“I don’t know.” He wrapped his arms around her. “I seem to be saying that a lot lately. I wasn’t directly involved in the negotiations; Father simply summoned me and told me what was required of me. I caught only a glimpse of the High King.” Awe coloured his tone. “He was… They say if he favours you, he will assume the form of a greater fae of your court.”
“He looked like a stormdancer then?” But it wasn’t the High King that rose in her mind’s eye; it was Wyn as she’d still so rarely seen him, blue-hued wings edged with silver, horns dark against his moon-white hair. Would their child have wings and horns?
Will they feel they have to hide their feathers too?
Wyn was shaking his head. “I saw him for only a second as he left; I don’t know if he was aware of my presence. It was like looking into the heart of a star.”
And this was the person they were going to try to negotiate with. She tried to rally her spirits. “A star with a fondness for sheep trading, I hope?”
His laugh trilled out, silvery and delighted, and nearly disguised his despair. She turned her face up to him. “We will figure this out,” she told him firmly. She refused to consider any other possibility.
9
Angsting in the Night
After Hetta had fallen asleep, Wyn prowled the house. If he kept moving, perhaps he could keep from thinking, from feeling. He padded across the cold courtyard and climbed the tower, the dregs of the storm beating against the shield of air magic he formed out of habit.
He leapt atop the parapets, the winds singing to his blood, the urge to change and unfurl his wings nearly unbearable. But he’d been so close to losing control earlier, when he’d strengthened the storm without meaning to. Stormwinds knew how much worse it would’ve been had he been in his fae form, with consequently more power to draw on. The Heathcote was far from the only vulnerable location on the estate—who might be hurt, if he rained down out-of-season flooding simply because he couldn’t control his anguish?
This isn’t a normal level of power, even for a full-blooded stormdancer child.
The hair on his neck stood on end. Hadn’t Gwendelfear said something similar, when he’d been chained beneath Meridon, about all of King Aeros’s brood being unnatural?
“Oberyn!” he called into the night. The name shivered out, and he felt Stariel’s leylines spin in eddies around it. To speak the High King’s name, to try to summon him…it was madness. “Oberyn!” He balled his hands into fists. “OBERYN!”
There was no answer. Of course shouting into the darkness was unlikely to fix matters. Yet bitter disappointment filled him as he stood there, staring blindly into the night.
He dropped his air shield and bared his teeth, daring the storm to lash him. But the storm was nearly spent and refused to cooperate with his mood, the rain a light hiss that merely dampened him in slow, unsatisfying degrees. Mortal weather; so rarely narratively sympathetic.
The tower door opened behind him with a protest of hinges, and he made an absent note to see it oiled.
“I wish Cat were here.” Wyn flung the words without turning, half-hoping they might make Rakken strike at him.
A soft pad of footsteps.
“We both wish that. I certainly would rather she dealt with your wallowing than I; she always had more patience for it.”
“You know for sure she’s alive?” He needed to hear the words aloud.
Rakken moved to stand next to him, looking out over the dark countryside. “She’s alive. I cannot locate Koi, but I don’t think he’s still in ThousandSpire. He knew what Cat planned. She planned it, Hallowyn. And she didn’t tell me.”
Wyn wished for his wings, to return Rakken’s earlier gesture of reassurance. Wing touches were intimate, for stormdancers, reserved only for family and close friends. “We’ll find a way to free her.”
Rakken gave himself a shake. “She would feel the same as I, if she were here. A child, Hallowyn.”
Something splintered in Wyn’s chest. Rake understood, understood in a way no one else here did, mortal as they were.
“Yes,” he said, throat tight.
Rakken held out an unstoppered bottle that Wyn recognised as one containing the potent sloe gin that was Stariel’s homebrewed specialty.
“I don’t remember giving you permission to raid the cellars.”
“And I don’t remember asking for it. Mortal alcohol has a certain kick, doesn’t it?”
Wyn took it anyway, drinking straight from the bottle. The bitter-sweet taste burned its way down his throat.
The rain eased off, the sudden cease of sound making the darkness larger. Rakken raised an eyebrow at Wyn’s dampness; his own shield of air had kept him perfectly dry.
Wyn handed him back the bottle. Rakken laughed, low and bitter, but accepted it. “How long are human pregnancies?”
“Nine months.”
“And how long has this one been going on?”
Resignedly, Wyn told him.
Rakken did the same mental calculation as Jack, threw back his head, and laughed. “Oh, Hallowyn, how very precocious of you. And how nice to have a token to remember your first time by.”
Wyn couldn’t help the growl that started in his throat, even though he knew Rake was baiting him.
“Your time with the mortals has made you prudish,” Rakken observed, eyes gleaming.
“Perhaps you’re simply not as amusing as you think.”
Rakken didn’t dignify this with a response, and silence fell between them. In the distance, an optimistic owl hooted in the soggy leavings of the storm.
Wyn spoke reluctantly, because there was no one else he could ask, and he needed to know. He missed Cat with a sharp, piercing ache. Cat was blunt, but he’d always been closer to her than Rake, and it would’ve been so much less humiliating to admit this weakness to her. Something about Rakken always made him feel as if he were still a fledgling.
“The Maelstrom changed us, you said. My power is still growing. And my instincts are more…aggressive. Being in my mortal form blunts the effect.” Had Rakken experienced anything similar, as he aged, or after the Maelstrom? But Rakken merely raised an eyebrow at him until Wyn grudgingly added, �
�I’d like your advice.”
“Twice in one night, you seek the wisdom of your elders? Wonders never cease.”
Lightning flickered irritably in Wyn’s veins, and he quickly smothered it.
Rakken took another swig of the gin and grinned. “Very well then, little brother. You do know you’re a storm prince, don’t you? It’s our nature to feel the turn of the world and seasons, to ring with the primal call of blood to blood. You treat what you are as an awkward costume, to don when necessary and tuck away the rest of the time. The only thing that surprises me is that you got away with such behaviour for so long, and that your instincts have only now begun rebelling.”
“If you’re trying to be reassuring, you’re failing.”
Rakken slid him a look, the glow of his eyes an eerie green. “How you lived in mortal form for ten years, I do not understand.”
“I couldn’t have done it if my power hadn’t been fractured by my broken oath.” A truth he’d come to realise in the time since he’d been made whole.
Rakken turned and hoisted himself up on the parapet so that his ruined wings draped over the edge. Wyn echoed him, though remaining wingless. How often had they sat in a similar way atop the rocky towers of the Spires?
Not that often, admittedly; he and Rake had never been that close. But with Cat, and Irokoi, often enough.
Rakken’s mind had clearly taken a similar turn. “If it lives, the child will belong to FallingStar,” he mused.
“Yes. If it lives.” How he hated that if and the fact that he was the cause of it.
To his astonishment, Rakken once again fanned out a wing to brush Wyn’s shoulder. If Wyn had been in fae form, their feathers would have slid over each other. Rakken didn’t acknowledge the gesture of reassurance, merely folding his wings back along his spine.
“Half-human and not bound to the Spires. Oh, you are fortunate you killed Father, Hallowyn. I’m not sure whether his triumph at a child would trump those two facts.”