by AJ Lancaster
She walked towards the wall. The black stone glistened in a strange pattern of overlapping diamonds. She laid her palm against it, planning to ignore the expected bit of static, but snatched it back immediately at the unexpected warmth. Cautiously, she tried again. The stone held a low, warm heat, as if it had absorbed a full day’s sun. Maybe it had; Hetta wasn’t sure what time it was, but it could’ve been dusk. One of the suns was near the horizon.
She cupped her hand and summoned a flicker of flame. It hovered above her palm obediently, and her magic swarmed up, eager to feed more power into it. The strength of it surprised her, since she didn’t stand on Stariel’s land; this was her own magic, unboosted by her faeland.
How thick, exactly, was this stone wall, and—more importantly—how hot did fire have to be to melt it? She looked up. Perhaps she could melt footholds and climb over it? The thought made her a little dizzy—the wall towered over her—but she had to get out of this place and find Wyn and the High King, wherever he was hiding. They’d completed his dashed task, hadn’t they? She let the knot of anger manifest, turning her flame from cheerful orange to a pale, almost translucent blue.
The fire hit the stone with a scorching smell, but the stone didn’t melt. Instead, it rippled and made a noise like the shriek of tortured glass.
And then it moved.
The wall peeled away from the ground, and Hetta could only stand and watch, horrified, as she realised it wasn’t a wall at all. It was the coiled body of a gargantuan serpent, the diamond pattern its scales. Beyond it grew a riotous forest in impossible colours.
Hetta darted underneath the rapidly rising ‘wall’ towards the forest, blind panic thundering her heartbeat in her ears. She was within a stone’s throw of the forest edge when black scales filled her vision, and she pulled to a screeching halt.
The serpent had curled its enormous head between her and her destination, its eyes glowing a bright, vivid green. It hissed from a mouth the size of a shepherd’s hut, showing alarmingly long fangs.
She took a step back, pouring energy into her hands until she held two towers of flame.
The serpent recoiled but not nearly far enough.
“I’m here to see the High King!” she told it desperately.
It spoke, although unfortunately what it said, in a voice like gravel, was: “Go away, Valsssstar.”
“No! He owes me a boon! I demand to see him!” She made the fire in her palms flare up even higher. Her heart pounded.
A sound came from behind her, or rather, a vast absence of sound that shaped the world around it. It formed syllables out of thunder: Henrietta Isadore Valstar.
A chill ran down her neck. She took a couple of steps backwards without turning, putting more distance between her and the serpent before she risked a glance behind her.
A tall figure stood amidst the fountains. Like Lamorkin, the figure wasn’t static, but unlike the maulkfae, the shifting wasn’t a fluid transition between forms but an aura of power that blurred whatever lay at its centre, making it difficult to see clearly what the High King looked like. She had no doubt this was the High King; the power of him burned, like standing too close to an open furnace.
She looked back to the serpent, feeling dizzy even from that single glance.
“Are you going to stop trying to eat me and let me talk to him?” she asked it. It didn’t reply, but it closed its jaws and began to settle its coils back against the ground. She took another step backwards towards the High King, then another. The serpent didn’t move, its eyes slitting as it watched her. She kept backing up through the maze of fountains, until she could see the High King out of the corner of her eye and the serpent was a good distance in front of her.
She let the fire snuff out. The serpent still hadn’t moved. All right then. Swallowing, she turned to face the High King, nervously keeping an eye on the serpent.
The second glance wasn’t any easier than the first. The High King’s hair—was it hair?—fluttered lazily all around him, as if he stood in the centre of his own personal updraft. A thousand colours caught and shifted in the strands as it wafted, from midnight blue to silver, crimson and gold, rose-petal pink and emerald. His horns, if he had them, were many-branched, like the antlers of a great deer. He had wings, or perhaps he didn’t. They flickered, one second great feathery expanses, the next dragonfly gossamer, the next batwing leather, the next insubstantial as fog. Similarly, he might’ve had a tail, at turns furry and scaled, though it too slipped in and out of focus the more Hetta tried to tell for sure.
His impossible beauty was only a minor footnote against the power radiating out of him like boiling thunderclouds. It made a part of her want to curl into a ball and gibber with fear, and that made a bigger part of her even more furious.
She closed her eyes to stop them from watering. How was she going to approach him when she couldn’t even look at him for any length of time? Wyn had said that if the High King favoured you, he’d tamp down his power and assume a single, static form of whatever took his fancy.
Clearly he doesn’t favour me. Well, if she had to do this with her eyes closed, she would.
“Good evening, Your Majesty,” she said, taking a stab at the time of day. It probably didn’t matter. “Where is Wyn? My fiancé.” Maybe she shouldn’t use that word, when the High King hadn’t yet given them his blessing, but she was damp, angry, somewhat nauseous, and couldn’t summon up any diplomacy.
There was a subtle feeling of something changing, and Hetta risked a quick look. The High King had chosen a shape, and she let out a breath of relief.
He was now a stormdancer, dark-skinned, dark-haired, green-eyed. His sharp-cut features held an uncomfortable echo of Wyn and his siblings’, and his wings were almost a perfect match for Wyn’s—was that some kind of threat?
“Why are you here, Henrietta Isadore Valstar?”
She didn’t like how he said her name; it gave her a sort of chill. Was this how Wyn felt about true names?
“You said you’d grant us a boon if we met your conditions. That you’d give Wyn your permission to marry.”
“And have you met my conditions?”
“Yes. DuskRose is coming to our wedding, and the new ruler of ThousandSpire has given us her approval too.”
The High King laughed, and the world shone brighter. “A very fae answer. Very well then, he may marry you, if he wishes.”
Hetta narrowed her eyes. This felt too easy, not that she was objecting to easy, but… “Where is he?”
“He is safe.” Voice and face expressionless; it was like having a staring contest with a statue.
“He’s not yours to keep safe,” she said. “He belongs to Stariel.”
“FallingStar is within my domain.”
“The human half isn’t. And I don’t see that the fae half gives you the right to kidnap its people, if that’s what you’ve done. I’m pretty sure none of my ancestors would’ve agreed to that, and I definitely haven’t.”
“And what would you give for his return?”
Had he kidnapped Wyn, then? “I don’t see why I should have to give anything to resolve a problem you’ve just now caused.” Honestly, Hetta couldn’t even be surprised at this treachery, but it did make her anger burn hotter. “Why are you playing games? We completed your tasks! What more do you want?”
“For you to choose: Mortal or Faerie.”
Well, that certainly sounded ominous. Hetta stared at the High King. “I don’t understand what you mean by choosing. Is this about the Iron Law?”
“It is about the child.”
He knew, then. Hetta put a hand to her abdomen and winced at another stray bit of static. Had the shock felt stronger this time? “Can you fix whatever is wrong?”
“I can. It’s a matter of balance.”
“And what, exactly, does that mean?” Honestly, he was worse than Irokoi.
He echoed her phrasing back at her. “And what price, exactly, would you pay, for this? Would you give up your ru
le of Stariel?”
She inhaled sharply. “To save the child? Or for you to give Wyn back?” It seemed best to be clear on this point, even if nothing else was making sense.
“Both.”
“I don’t see why any such sacrifice is necessary; if I marry Wyn, won’t that fix whatever is wrong?”
“Do you think you can find him in time, in my realm? How much time do you think you have?”
Hetta glared at him. “Do you want this child to die?”
His expression didn’t change. “What price, Henrietta Valstar?”
“I thought breaking my lordship wasn’t possible, that the bond was for life.”
The High King didn’t speak, but meaning bloomed in her mind. Bonds could be unmade, with sufficient intent and magic. Her land bond could go to another Valstar. Would that really be such a sacrifice, giving up her life there? One life for another; it was traditional.
Hetta crossed her arms. This was ridiculous! He couldn’t truly think he could railroad her into this, could he?
And yet, she couldn’t stop herself from thinking about it. Sometimes it felt like she’d always been the lord of Stariel, but actually it wasn’t even a whole year since she’d left Bradfield and the company in Meridon. She’d liked her old life; she’d been good at it. Was she good at lordship? Images flickered through her mind: the shocked faces of the Conclave, the newspaper articles, the sharp letter from the bank, the damaged roof at Penharrow. Jack had managed perfectly fine in her absence.
What would it mean to give it up? She’d be an individual again, without fear of losing that under the weight of either duty or land-sense. She and Wyn would be, well, not ordinary, but a couple of far less interest to the world at large. Maybe they could go to Meridon. She could return to working at the theatre.
“But Wyn would still be fae,” she murmured, almost to herself. “So would our child.”
“Do you wish that they were not?”
Again, possibilities bloomed in her mind without words being spoken. What if Faerie and Mortal were separated again? What if the High King could take the child’s fae nature and bring back the Iron Law?
She shook her head. “No, don’t.” That was an easy rejection. As for the other… Could she give up Stariel? She’d never gotten a choice in her lordship; Stariel had chosen her against all her wishes and plans for her own future.
Did she want Stariel, if the choice was hers?
Yes.
There it was, deep down, a truth she’d been ashamed to admit to herself. She liked being Stariel’s lord. She liked the magic, and the challenge, and the purpose of it. If she’d had the choice—well, maybe she wouldn’t have chosen it at the time, but now, with all that had passed? She didn’t want to give it up.
She also didn’t see why she should have to. Her fingernails curled into fists. “I don’t understand why you’re doing this. Is it something about my ancestors? Are you holding a grudge from what happened with Nymwen?”
The world went cold, and something large and reptilian and that she really shouldn’t have forgotten about whacked into her. She reached for fire, but she was already stumbling backwards, hitting the water in the fountain with a cold splash—
—She was back, impossibly, at Stariel, standing ankle-deep in Starwater. In the evening’s stillness, the waters lapped gently at the shore. Gravel shifted under her boots, and under that, Stariel. It was evening, and stars glimmered down and reflected in the lake as she stood there with soaking feet and a mess of furious emotions.
How dare the High King simply kick her out when she’d refused to take his false bargain? How dare he separate her from Wyn! Had his questions been a test? Had she failed it?
A shock ran through her—a literal one—and she scrabbled for balance, because this one hurt a lot more than any of the previous ones had. She panted, harsh breaths loud in the still evening, and knew, in a deep, visceral way, that her ticking clock was about to run out.
No! The High King had said it could be fixed. A matter of balance, he’d said. What did that mean? She hadn’t reached for Stariel, but the land was nonetheless there, a storm of agitation circling around her. What was wrong?
She didn’t answer, staring out across the lake, feeling the depth of the waters like the weight of an anchor.
A shining streak blazed across the sky, its path mirrored in the black waters below. The Court of Falling Stars—Valstar. This was the hub of Stariel’s magic, the heart of her faeland, groundwater and tributaries all draining into the lake. This was the lake she was named after. As a child, she’d swum in its shallows in summer and skated its surface in winter. Fish from its depths had fed her. She’d drunk from the rivers that fed into it. She thought she’d left it behind six years ago, sick of her father, her family, her roots. But the lake was in her bones, and she’d carried a part of it with her always.
She waded further into the lake, her boots heavy and water-logged. Her skirts were next, soaking in an ever-increasing strip and plastering around her legs, her stockings sodden. In the back of her mind, a small, practical voice suggested that it might’ve been sensible to remove some clothing beforehand. She ignored it, focused on a deeper, more primal part of her psyche.
Hip-deep, she stopped, swishing her fingers roughly through the cool water. Ripples expanded outwards. She stretched, out, out from the tips of her fingers, a metaphysical ripple in the still waters. The lake’s surface had been warmed by the sun, but as she plunged down to its heart, the waters grew cold and dark, until she brushed the bottom of the lake. She turned and arrowed across the bed, unfurling until she encompassed the entirety of Starwater, above and below, reaching up the streams that led to it, down the river that ran from it. Water was magic, in its way, tracing leylines as it moved beneath the earth, channelling power in its streams.
She’d only gone this deep into Stariel once before, when it had first claimed her. The fear of being lost in its vastness had kept her to shallower merges since—a fear confirmed by all the times she’d nearly lost herself.
But there was no fear in her now, even as Stariel wound itself around her and under her skin, even as she and it became less and less separate, one creature rather than two.
How did you hold your identity against the weight of something so old and vast? How did you stop it from swallowing everything you were, remaking you into something better suited to its own needs?
Lord Valstar or Hetta—which one was more important? She knew the answer now:
Both.
Neither.
A false dichotomy, because how could she be a good lord if she wasn’t herself? Stariel couldn’t remake her into what it needed, because what it needed was her. That was why it had chosen her.
She’d never understood that before, the essential ingredient of a faelord—not only an anchor, but a bridge. How else could something so vast and alien comprehend the lives within its borders? All of the lives, which for Stariel meant something it meant nowhere else in Faerie.
This was their home, their land, their family. They were human and fae. They were a thousand years old and twenty-five years young. Stariel had chosen her, but now, now she chose it back.
Before, it had always been Stariel supplying information at her request. Now it was Hetta’s turn; to say this, here, is what’s important, turning the might of a faeland to something even more fleeting than the lives of mortals; a life barely begun. To take Rakken and Lamorkin’s and the High King’s words and forge them into action. If they could all see the extra energy gathering within her, then logically, so ought she.
Where they’d been vast, they became now small, enclosed within a single body’s physicality. Smaller still. Distantly, cold shook their physical form, and they brushed it aside.
Stariel quivered—dangerous, to go so deep into their own body.
she told it.
Deeper. They were blood, and the beat of hearts, and magic, knotting where
it should flow, pooling where it should not.
Deeper still. They were leylines and streams and threads of life across this land, connected to them all. They moved hands that weren’t hands, delicate as thistledown.
Like aligning two magnets, slippery and fighting against natural forces. They’d thought only fae would be able to stabilise this, but Hetta was a little bit fae too. And Stariel was a lot fae. Abruptly, the energy fluxes snapped into place, as if they’d always been whole and perfectly aligned.
She opened her eyes with a gasp. It was done, and she was entirely herself.
And drowning. Her legs had gone out from under her, and water filled her mouth. Darkness above and below. Were those the stars or the bright sparks of leylines? Which way was up? But a powerful body pushed against hers and bore her upwards. She surfaced, the air a cold shock, and she coughed, water coming up in painful sputters. The same force that had hauled her upwards nudged her towards the beach.
“Thank you,” she said before the nessan’s glowing eyes disappeared back into the depths.
She dragged herself onto the gravel and collapsed, shivering. She put a hand over her baby. It was okay. They were okay. Triumph and delayed terror warmed her as she attempted to wring water out of her skirts. Her hands were shaking, and part of her couldn’t believe what she’d just done.
What had she done? Stariel hummed, but there was something different about the feel of the faeland, something that made her close her eyes and reach out again, more carefully this time.
Her eyes snapped open. She’d always been peripherally aware that there were two Stariels—fae and mortal, lying close but not quite together, one atop the other. There was only one now, and it was neither and both, entirely itself. The sparks of all her people—fae and human—flickered through her land-sense.
She blew out a long breath. Well, almost all her people. One was still missing. She curled her hands into fists. Now to get him back.