by AJ Lancaster
But his own power had worked against him. Sometimes it leaked out, despite all attempts to suppress it. And sometimes he had had to leave, at times when the High King was needed badly enough that he was forced to remember who he was for a short while. He had charged the maulkfae Lamorkin with the ability to remind him of his duty if the need was great enough, in exchange for Lamorkin being the sole creature in Faerie to keep their true memories—even though they were bound not to speak of them.
To forget so much, and to keep forgetting whenever memory threatened, to lay down so much compulsion over such long periods—there had been side effects, greatest in those who’d been closest to Nymwen. Aeros. Irokoi. Aroset. It had warped his children in ways he’d never intended, warped his lover into something Aeros should never have become, caused a serious imbalance of power between fae courts.
He hadn’t wanted to know, hadn’t wanted to see the damage his own presence was causing, hadn’t wanted to give up his family nor return to his duties. But he had promised Lamorkin a powerful favour, in exchange for their service as his youngest’s godparent, and eventually Lamorkin had demanded the payment: that he remember both himself and his duty.
He’d thought it would be better if his family didn’t dwell on his absence, if their thoughts slid from him like water. That way they would not come seeking him.
“Except here you are, seeking me anyway,” the High King finished, speaking aloud after that flash of shared memories.
“That is…you cannot…” Wyn went silent, unable to express either his outrage or disbelief. The High King had been right; it hurt. He clung tightly to Hetta’s hand, unable to look at her. He couldn’t imagine what she must think of this. An urge to laugh took hold of him; even I didn’t realise quite what a complicated family I was inflicting on her.
“So you just meddled with your family’s minds until some of them turned into sadistic monsters and then left them to it?” Hetta said angrily. “You made me and Wyn run around Faerie trying to complete your tasks for no reason at all?”
“Not for no reason. You were righting imbalances, ripples of cause and effect. Besides, you wished me to grant a boon, and such things come with a price. I cannot show favour.”
“You’re his mother! You’re supposed to show favour!”
“That is only a small piece of me now I have reclaimed my proper self. In time, perhaps I will forget that piece too.”
Oberyn met Wyn’s eyes. “You did not answer my question, earlier. Would you be human, if you could?”
Hetta stepped forward, already sounding an objection, but Wyn stopped her with a hand on her arm. The answer came to him easily, a bit of knowledge slipping into place with strange peace.
“I already am a little bit human, just as Hetta is a little bit fae. I am both; I will not choose either.” He found Hetta’s hand again and squeezed it. “I am Hallowyn Tempestren of the Court of Falling Stars, and I do not seek your permission to marry my queen. If that breaks me, then so be it.”
Wyn didn’t look away as Oberyn’s wings fanned out with slow grace, each feather ticking into place as the world held its breath, as Wyn’s soul lay exposed beneath the hammer of that gaze.
“Both and neither,” Oberyn murmured, and the world began to breathe again. “Even if you do not seek my permission, I still owe a boon. Give me your hand, child.”
Wyn could no more have disobeyed than stopped his own heart, but he tried. The High King gave him a wry look as he took his hand. “I am giving you what you ask, Hallowyn, if you would truly be the waypoint between two realms. Though I don’t envy you the task you would take upon yourself.”
Power pulsed through Wyn in an arc, the smell of the sea flooding all his senses, his vision whiting out. The pulse went through him and…on, as if a deep gong had sounded not just here but everywhere, a thousand threads connecting him to a thousand different locations. When he came back to himself, he was kneeling in the sand, panting.
“What did you do?” Hetta demanded. She was holding fireballs in both her hands and looked ready to hurl them at the High King. “If you’ve hurt him…”
The High King canted his head. “Perhaps you are worthy, little Valstar. Ewan Valstar gave different answers. You have my blessing, even if you no longer wish it.” He gave Wyn a dry look.
Gratitude and anger twined together on Wyn’s lips. Thank you, he wanted to say, and I missed you, but I do not forgive you. The words fought with each other as he rose, his limbs trembling, a trembling that went out and out and out beyond the edges of his physical self.
“What have you done to me?” he settled for, in the end.
His mother smiled. Oh, Wyn knew that singularly charming smile, and he couldn’t fight the ache of familiarity it brought to his chest. The atmosphere softened, like the calm after the storm, like sunshine warming wet ground, like the gentle unfurling of wildflowers. It took him back to the steps of the summer palace, to a time and place when his mother was the person he loved most in the world.
“Both and neither, Hallowyn. I have made you my emissary. You have the power to negotiate treaties between Faerie and Mortal on my behalf. Binding ones. Be careful what you wish for.” He hesitated before reaching out. Wyn froze as his hand cupped his cheek, fleetingly. Oberyn’s smile widened, but his eyes remained deep and sad. “Let the others find me in their own time. Good luck tonight.”
The High King launched himself into the sky, losing his hold on his form as he did so, becoming a blurry storm of power.
Wyn stared up at the sky after the High King—after his mother.
“Wyn,” Hetta said.
His mother. He sat down, hard, on the gravel beach.
“Wyn.” Hetta was kneeling beside him.
“I...” He began to shake, a seizure that he couldn’t stop. It felt like bits of glass in his chest.
Hetta kissed him. He wrapped his arms tightly around her, encasing them both in the cocoon of his wings, holding onto the one true thing in the world.
“You’re soaking wet,” he realised slowly. It had taken abnormally long for mundane sensation to penetrate, but this was something he could focus on, a small thing he knew how to remedy. He hauled her into his arms, got slowly to his feet. “Let’s get back to the house.”
To his surprise, she didn’t object to being manhandled. He raised an eyebrow at her.
“I’m providing moral support,” she said in answer to his silent question. “You looked like you needed it. Also I hate walking in wet shoes.”
He chuckled and held her close, and they squelched their way up from the lake. Stariel hummed in quiet satisfaction around them. It felt different. He felt different. He plucked at the ‘gift’ his mother had given him and got a complicated jangle of magic in return.
“I can feel whatever you’re doing,” Hetta said thoughtfully in his arms.
“You are my Star,” he agreed. “We’re connected.” He considered the strange new dimension to Stariel, and the blazing brightness of her along the leylines. “Now more than ever, I think.”
“You called me your queen, before.”
“Would you prefer that address?”
She shook her head. “No. But…is that how you think of me?”
He looked down at her, surprised. “Of course. I thought you knew. I am yours; I always have been. And you are mine.” Usually he would have softened that a little, the possessiveness that sprang from the more primal side of his nature, but he’d been cut back to his bones tonight.
She made a half-fond, half-exasperated sound. “Oh, all right then, I suppose.” She went quiet for a bit then began tentatively, “Wyn, your mother…”
He shook his head. “I am glad he’s alive. But I cannot forgive him, even with this.” Wyn considered his hand, where the power had passed from the High King into him. It wasn’t dissimilar to his bond to Stariel, except this thread hummed in many voices rather than just one. He spread and unspread his wings, as if he could stretch his way into the shape of it. Awe
dawned as he explored it. It didn’t undo the betrayal, but…
“Well, we don’t have to invite him to the wedding. Or if you’re feeling magnanimous, we can seat him next to Aunt Sybil.”
He stopped. “Are you sure?” He wasn’t asking about seating arrangements.
“Yes, I’m still sure I want to marry you, ridiculous man.”
“You didn’t know just how complicated my family connections were before,” he pointed out.
“Well, I can’t say I appreciated the tests my future mother-in-law saw fit to put me through, but it hasn’t changed my mind.”
He laughed, because there was nothing else to do.
She put a hand over his heart. “It’s all right,” she told him. “We’re all right. Our child is all right. Stariel is all right. Everything else is secondary.” There was a fierceness in her expression. “But I agree with what you said about not choosing.”
“The waypoint between two realms,” he murmured. That was the difference he’d felt in Stariel; neither one thing nor the other.
She grinned. “Good thing I can make my own treaties with Faerie, isn’t it? If only I knew someone who could make treaties with me.”
He plucked at that strange connection and smiled. “If only.”
“Brother!”
They turned. Irokoi was perched on the edge of the balcony that ran along the terrace. He swung his legs back and forth, but his expression was uncharacteristically serious.
Irokoi canted his head. “You’re going to be late if you don’t hurry. You’re supposed to go to that ball tonight.”
Another three days lost, Wyn mused. It had only felt like a few hours, in the High King’s Realm.
“That ball is in Meridon,” Hetta pointed out. She let out a long breath. “We’re already too late.”
“I know that,” Irokoi said. “So I’ve been extremely helpful and found you a resonance point. You’re probably going to need to put in a permanent Gate to the city, sooner or later, given what Mother has given you.” The amulet Rakken had made him glowed in the hollow of his throat.
Wyn stiffened. “You knew,” he accused, the terrible anger rising up once more.
Hetta wriggled, and he reluctantly put her down. “How old are you, Irokoi?” she asked.
Irokoi smiled. “That’s not a polite question. But old enough.”
Ah, stormcrows. The anger in him went cold, cold and sick. “You knew Nymwen. Our…sister.”
Irokoi flexed a dark wing, in and out. “What I know…it’s all tangled up. Sometimes I remember and sometimes I don’t, though I think I always remembered more than the others. But even when I remembered, I could not speak it.” He looked to the night sky where Oberyn had disappeared. “He always found me hardest, I think. I am oldest now, after all, and I’ve always seen more than I ought. Such is my gift and curse. Tonight, I remember enough, and my tongue is less chained than it has ever been.”
The others… “Set knew her too. Nymwen.” Aroset was still at the Stones, frozen in time and crystal.
Irokoi nodded. “She was very young, but she loved her as I think perhaps she has no one else since. I’ve always wondered if that was why she focused on me so viciously, if she subconsciously sensed the mirror of what she’d lost but couldn’t recall.” He gave a crooked smile and spread his feathers in an echo of a shrug. “Or perhaps she was always destined to become a terrible person. I never resorted to violence to bring our mother back, subconscious reaction or not. That does give me some moral high ground, don’t you think? Though I think I always remembered more than Set and Father; perhaps that’s why I turned to madness rather than murder,” he added thoughtfully, touching his scars.
“Nymwen was your twin,” said Hetta, horrified.
Oh. Oh. The night was still, so still that the only sound was the faint chatter of the house’s occupants. There was a light on in the upper storeys where the sitting room was located. The amulet at Irokoi’s throat burned even brighter, and when he finally spoke it was with a slow clarity Wyn had never heard from him before.
“Yes,” Irokoi said. “Nymwen was my twin. Nymwen,” he repeated, lingering on the word. How long since he’d been prevented from speaking it?
“Koi—” Wyn began.
Irokoi shook his head and slid off the balcony. “It was a long time ago. You never lose the grief, but it gets…easier.” He looked between the two of them. “This is a second chance. Make it worth it. Bring us the world she would’ve wanted.”
54
The Meridon Ball
The resonance point Irokoi had found turned out to be between the Dower House and Malvern Place, the dilapidated townhouse the estate owned in Meridon. Wyn gave Irokoi a long look when he handed them conveniently already-prepared outfits suitable for tonight’s ball. Wyn’s own outfit, Spires fashion, could almost be explained as borrowed finery, but not Hetta’s.
Hetta’s dress was made of blue sea silk embroidered with tiny silver feathers and had long sleeves that attached via an intricate network of silver bands that ran up her arms to the knot at the back of her neck. The familiar line of the Indigoes was picked out on the bottom of each sleeve in star-shaped gems.
“Think of it as an engagement gift,” Irokoi said cheerfully when Hetta queried both the convenience and lavishness of the garment.
“He’s never quite as innocent as he appears, is he?” she said to Wyn in an undertone as she went to change.
“No.” We are going to have a long talk about exactly how his precognition works when we return, Wyn vowed.
It did odd things to him, the sight of Hetta in Spires fashion, the bare nape of her neck, and her lips painted with illusion rather than cosmetics. He took advantage of that last fact before they made their way to the Dower House. Something fierce and uncompromising burned in her expression when they pulled apart, something that resonated in his own chest.
The resonance point was on the ground floor, and the portal to Malvern Place emerged into a dingy room filled with battered furniture covered in dust cloths. He and Hetta’s entrance startled a flock of piskies, who streamed out a broken window and into the yellow-grey night of the city. Malvern Place was in a quieter part of the city, but there was still a background of noise not present at Stariel.
“A project for another day,” Hetta mused, taking in the state of the house. “At least we have some practice now, although still no money for it.”
Wyn made a vague sound of agreement, distracted by the leylines. They leapt towards his touch with disconcerting enthusiasm, despite the fact that the ambient magic of Meridon wasn’t high, warped as it was by all the iron.
Hetta shuffled her feet. “I can feel rather more Stariel than usual here.”
“The townhouse does belong to the estate. In theory at least, that means the faeland could claim it too, with enough power and resonance,” Wyn said, thinking aloud.
They picked their way carefully through the house, skirting rotting floorboards and jumbles of broken furniture. There was a small garden at the back of the townhouse, overgrown with weeds.
Hetta smoothed the sleeves of her ballgown. She looked up at the grey-washed sky, the stars hidden by the reflected lights of the city. Then she turned back and took him in, not just his finery but the fullness of his wings, unglamoured.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
He nodded and fanned out his wings. “Are you?”
She stepped into his arms. “Of course.”
He took off.
They flew to the palace, and he set them down outside, where the grand driveway curved around a statue of Pyrania and fancy carriages were still pulling up. Hetta’s eyes glowed, her cheeks flushed even though he’d carefully curved the air around them to save her appearance from the wind.
“I hope our child has wings,” she said softly, and he couldn’t do anything else but kiss her.
She was breathless when they pulled apart. “Well, we’re making an excellent start of scandalising everybody. Let’s
go make the Conclave even gladder to be rid of me,” she said with a grin.
Despite her words, he knew the rejection still hurt her. “They’re fools,” he said. “Let’s go make them realise it.”
The latecomers and palace staff stationed outside gaped at the pair of them as he fanned his wings in and out a few times deliberately. Well, it was either that or they’d seen the indiscreet kissing. He smiled at them.
Given their entrance and his form, he had to smile again when they were asked to produce their invitation. Hetta managed to turn her giggle into a cough as she handed it over, and they made their way to the ballroom entrance through a tunnel of hushed whispers. The herald gave them a wild look when they gave their names. Had Queen Matilda completely given up on them, then, to not have prepared her staff?
Perhaps she just hadn’t expected him to come winged.
They moved through the doors as the herald announced them, the pronunciation as correct as if he’d put sugar tongs around each syllable and carefully dropped them into place. The ballroom was enormous by mortal standards, large even by fae ones, hung with fabric so it resembled the inside of a vast jewellery case. The dance floor swirled with couples, its edges crowded with chattering aristocrats.
The herald’s announcement took a few moments to take effect, whispers beginning as those nearest the entry staircase looked up. A hush spooled outwards as hundreds of eyes turned towards them. The music died a slow, awkward death as the orchestra lost its focus, and all the dancers came to spinning halts. We are starting to make a bad habit of such entrances. Though at least none of these courtiers looked like they wished to murder him.
Wyn spread his wings to their full extent, holding the pose for several heartbeats before settling them back against his spine. There was something powerful in this, in laying the truth of himself bare for all to see. This is me, he thought. Melodramatic and winged fae prince. Consort to a mortal. I don’t apologise for any of it. Do what you will.