The Changeling

by Jennifer Lyndon

  “I’d love to dance with you, M’Tek,” was my reply. “Maybe this isn’t the time, though. Certainly there must be a more suitable partner for you. After all, I don’t know this song, or how to dance to it,” I added with a self-deprecating laugh. I was lying. Pet had schooled me on every song I might possibly hear. I knew the piece was Noge, and likely chosen in my honor. I even knew the composer and period in which the piece was written, as well as the major influences. That information seemed useless, however, as I tried to avoid whatever disaster was looming.

  M’Tek hesitated for only a moment before she took me in her arms. “Then you won’t mind if I lead,” she whispered in Noge, close to my ear, as we began to move to the music. I didn’t reply, but followed her movements.

  She glided with me around the floor, making me appear a far better dancer than I actually was, gathering me close to her after every turn and spin. Once I forgot about being self-conscious, the music seemed to flow through us. She moved me easily, her hands shifting lower over my back as the music reached its crescendo. From there we slowed, as her body led mine through the final chords. When the song concluded the entire room began to buzz with conversation. M’Tek was watching me, along with everyone else in the room. I offered a precise Fae bow to M’Tek and the room burst into applause.

  “Nice touch,” M’Tek commented under her breath as she gently took my elbow and led me away from the center of the ballroom. Conversation around us was buzzing, as every eye followed us.

  Again I wanted to ask her what was wrong. Her people were behaving strangely, and she was being too attentive, which was exactly the opposite manner from that which I expected. She had promised to ignore me all evening. She led me over to the beverages and selected glasses of torppa for the both of us.

  “You’re going to need this,” she whispered, handing me the glass before taking a generous swallow from her own.

  “Will you walk with me outside?” I asked quietly after sipping the torppa. “I’d like to see the cliff’s at night again. It’s such a spectacular sight.” M’Tek smiled, trying to conceal the obvious anxiety she was experiencing.

  “Dance with someone else first,” she suggested before downing the rest of her torppa and selecting another glass. “Why don’t I summon Pet for you.”

  “No. I’d rather take a walk with you, away from all of this,” I said firmly. “I don’t understand what’s happening. Are you in danger?” M’Tek pleaded with her eyes, and I gave in. I turned to find Pet hanging about at the fringes. I raised my hand to call her.

  “Dance with me, Grand Duchess,” I commanded sharply.

  Pet glanced at M’Tek a moment, hesitating until M’Tek nodded once, sharply. Pet appeared alarmed, possibly even frightened. Still, she placed her glass of berrywine down and hurried to my side, as if her life depended on her swiftness. As we started dancing she began explaining in clipped Vilken, “I didn’t know, Lore. I swear.”

  “What didn’t you know?” I asked, confused.

  “I didn’t know my cousin had fallen in love with you,” she clarified. I laughed unconvincingly, my gaze shifting back to M’Tek. The Fae Queen had her back to the room, an empty glass in her hand. As I watched she placed her glass down and selected another.

  “What makes you think she’s in love with me?” I asked, diverting my gaze, working to remain calm.

  “I don’t think anything. I know she’s in love with you. Everyone in the palace knows. There are some aspects of the Fae, and Lemu in particular, which I failed to make known to you. Honestly, it seemed irrelevant,” Pet explained. “Our senses are different from yours,” she added.

  “I know. M’Tek explained. Your hearing is highly acute,” I supplied. “Is there something else I should be aware of?”

  “Well, we have superior vision, especially in darkness,” Pet said softly. “But the problem in this current situation is our sense of smell. The Queen smells as though she’s entered a mating bond,” Pet whispered. “It’s never happened before, so it’s quite exciting to the gossips in the room.”

  “What do you mean a mating bond?” I asked. “What do you smell?”

  “Sort of sweet and tangy, and…”

  “She smells of citrus fruit,” I interrupted. Pet nodded.

  “Even you can smell it, with your Noge senses,” Pet replied nervously. “If you can smell it, every Fae within a day’s ride of Lareem Palace probably can,” Pet observed, not very helpfully. “I mean, possibly, if she’d been more careful, for example, if she hadn’t danced with you in the center of the room, with everyone watching, maybe, it wouldn’t have been so obvious,” Pet continued. “At some point, everyone would have realized she had chosen a mate, but the connection to you might not have been made so quickly. I might have managed it.”

  “She specifically tried to avoid dancing with me,” I pointed out.

  “Deus! I shouldn’t even be touching you right now,” Pet rambled on in Vilken. “Will you calm her down? She’ll give you anything now. Will you tell her I didn’t know?” she asked, pleading. “If I try to talk to her, she might remove me to one of the cells below the palace for the remainder of the season, or worse, send me back to Vilkerdam Palace immediately. If she’d only told me she was in love with you, I would have kept this from happening,” she stammered. “I mean, how was I to know? You’re not at all the sort she usually chooses, and she’s certainly never smelled like this before.”

  “Pet, you’ve said enough!” I snapped.

  My friend stared at me, her golden green eyes wide as if she might cry. “Truly, Lore, I had no idea,” she assured me again. “This is not the way it should have been handled. Unless. Are her feelings returned?”

  “Pet’Wyn!” I snapped. “Stop speaking! M’Tek wouldn’t want you to expose her in this way.”

  “Of course you’re not in love with her. After all these years she finally falls in love and it’s with someone who can’t possibly return her feelings. You could never join with a Fae, especially my cousin, not if you want to keep your throne,” she observed, upsetting me further.

  The music finally ended and I turned away from Pet. I needed to speak to M’Tek. My gaze went instinctively to her. She was standing by the doorway to the garden. As I watched, she turned and walked out the door. Pet bowed to me when I turned back to her, and I moved off in the opposite direction from the one taken by M’Tek. I had told her I wanted to see the cliffs again, and so I headed in that direction, hoping she had done the same.

  When I reached the cliffs she was standing precariously close to the edge. I walked up behind her and slipped an arm across her shoulders. She leaned into my weight and sighed.

  “Well, that was not exactly how I wanted this evening to go,” M’Tek observed, understating the obvious.

  “I love you,” I said. M’Tek laughed and shook her head.

  “You already know how I feel about you,” she said quietly. “My Lemu blood has betrayed me.”

  “I’d still like to hear you say it,” I replied.

  “I love you, Lore, with all my heart,” she said softly. “I want nothing more than to spend what remains of my life in your arms. My body has recognized you as my mate, and so has my soul.”

  “Pet told me everyone knows,” I pointed out. “What now?”

  “Now, you spurn my advances publicly, and begin your quest for an appropriate consort,” she replied in a curt tone.

  “What?” I snapped. “I’ve already told you, I’m not taking a consort.”

  “I’m only thinking of you, Lore,” she said softly.

  “I don’t think you are,” I said evenly.

  “Your people will learn of what happened tonight,” she observed. “They will always see me as their enemy. They’ll see you as weak for allowing yourself to be seduced by me,” she pointed out.

  “I don’t care,” I snapped.

  “How can I make you see reason?” she asked. “What do you care about if not your throne?”

  “You. I w
ant you,” I said calmly. “Whatever it takes, I’ll do it.”

  “Whatever it takes?” she asked, matching my even tone. “I told you this was a risk for me, letting us happen,” she replied. “We both know I’m dying, but I won’t even live out the year without Sim’Nu’s help,” she said. “I want more than a few months with you. I need those five years in your arms.”

  “And it depends on whether or not I take a consort?” I asked. M’Tek nodded.

  “If you’re to be joined, Sim’Nu might not realize I seduced you, or at least she might not care,” she explained.

  “You didn’t seduce me,” I said defensively.

  “Of course I did, Lore,” she said emphatically. “No, it’s worse than that. I forced you to feel this way about me. The first time I met you, I put this need inside of you in the same way I covered you with your shield. And now, you’re twenty years old, hardly more than a child, and have all of these powerful feelings you’ve never felt before. You have no experience, and no defenses against someone like me,” she added.

  “Are you trying to insult me?” I asked. She shook her head.

  “No, my love, I’m trying to be honest.” Her arm tightened across my back. “After what I’ve done to you, I owe you that.”

  “You want to be honest? All right. Were you in love with Sarane?” I asked, finally, what had troubled me all along. “Am I simply her proxy?”

  M’Tek turned to face me, stepping away from the edge of the cliff. Slowly she shook her head. She then reached around her neck with both hands and lifted off the sapphire encrusted locket she always wore. She held it in front of me and opened it. A lock of pale blond hair, the color of mine, lifted in the wind rising over the cliffs. M’Tek seized the lock of hair between her thumb and forefinger.

  “This is the hair Sim’Nu used to bring you into this world,” M’Tek said softly. “Sarane was burned in the Vilken way, so there was nothing left of her. Sim’Nu needed this hair, and she worked on me for over two hundred years trying to get it. I refused more times than I can count. Finally, when she said you were to be my gift, I gave in,” M’Tek said softly, before dropping the lock of hair over the edge of the cliff. “You are a gift I was never meant to unwrap.” She then lifted the locket so I could see the image of Sarane staring back at me. “Sarane was exquisite. You’ll note the look of virtue about her gentle features. She had a talent for appearing to be precisely what she was not.” M’Tek stared at the image, the side of her mouth lifting in a contemptuous smile. “Sarane wore one of me as well, painted at the same time. She was eighteen when she commissioned these.”

  “I’m nothing more than her shadow,” I said under my breath.

  M’Tek closed the locket in the palm of her hand and threw it away from her over the side of the cliff. “I won’t lie to you. I loved her once. I had no choice,” she replied. “What I feel for you is very different,” she added. “I want to love you. I choose you as my mate. You could not be more different from her.”

  “I don’t understand,” I admitted.

  “Sarane was cruel, and controlling, manipulating every situation for the sake of either amusement or personal gain. She used me to kill her brother because she wanted the throne,” M’Tek said. “I loved her because I couldn’t help myself. For that same reason, I hated her,” she said softly.

  “But she loved you,” I replied. “That’s why she killed her brother, to protect you.” M’Tek shook her head slowly.

  “Clearly, she wanted me, but I’m convinced she never loved me. When I was a child, I was her favorite toy, a living doll for her to play with. When I was older, she found more mature games to play with me,” M’Tek said. “If she had been capable of loving anyone, she might have loved me, but that only made her enjoy hurting me more.”

  “All this time you’ve worn her locket,” I pointed out.

  “As a reminder of…” her hand went to the empty place the locket had rested on her chest and she stopped.

  “Go on,” I urged. “Tell me.”

  “As a reminder of that pain,” she said, her hand falling away. “It’s a warning of the risk of vulnerability. I was a child with Sarane. Children have no real power. They’re always helpless, always dependent,” she acknowledged. “I’ve spent my life wielding power, unwilling to be that weak, defenseless, creature again. I refused to ever allow myself to love anyone after Sarane.”

  “Until me,” I whispered.

  “With you, I’m helpless again,” she admitted, smiling gently. “I’ll do anything you ask of me,” she said simply. “The difference is that you love me in return. How much do you love me, Lore? Is it enough to make you protect me?”

  “Would you join with me if I asked you?” I asked, testing her.

  “The Vilken people are less accepting than the Fae,” she replied. “They expect you to chose a male consort, my love. Even if they didn’t abhor me in particular, and if I weren’t Fae, you’d likely lose your throne for choosing a woman as your mate. Please, don’t destroy yourself over me.”

  “You haven’t answered my question, M’Tek,” I replied. “Will you join with me if I ask you?”

  “I will,” she said softly, her voice barely audible over the wind. “Even knowing the consequences, I will.”

  Her admission set my mind spinning over possibilities, and obstacles. I listened to the wind, waiting for an answer to come to me, but none did. The light glowing over M’Tek from the water beneath us gave her hair a silver, metallic sheen. I ran my hand along her jaw and she tilted her head into the cradle of my palm. I stepped forward and brushed my lips against hers, as the wind whipped her hair against my face and shoulders, tickling me. When I shivered she drew me closer, rubbing her hands briskly up and down my arms as if trying to warm me.

  “Then I won’t ask it of you,” I promised her, my heart sinking. “We’ll have this time together, though. I’ll begin my search for a consort, but only after the Fae season ends,” I continued. “Pet has already begun compiling a list of potential candidates. With any luck I’ll have a consort within the next year,” I added. “I’ll do whatever it takes to keep you safe, even if it means joining with someone else.”

  ****

  By the following morning the palace was buzzing with gossip about M’Tek and me. We’d spent the night out by the cliffs, but she insisted on returning to the palace early and on her own, in an attempt to head off some of the rumors. She planned to be in her office all day working. After informing me she would be in the banquet hall at midday for lunch, yet clearly not inviting me to join her, she hurried away. I was at a loss about what to do with myself for a few minutes, so stunned was I by her offhanded treatment of me after the passionate night we’d shared.

  A few hours later, I wandered back to the palace. I went directly to my rooms, and then into my bedchamber. While scanning the room for some purpose, my gaze settled on my trunk. It had been waiting, in my room, untouched, since my arrival. When I opened it, the scent of Vilkerdam Palace, wood, glycerin oil, and pine, permeated the air. I grudgingly surveyed the crumpled dress resting at the top of my clothes. As I considered the ornate brocade fabric, I decided I loathed the dress. In fact, I loathed all of my dresses. I slammed down the lid of my trunk and went back out into the sitting room. I wanted M’Tek, but she was busy working. My presence was unwanted, and my interruption would be seen as confirmation of the rumors of our affair. Instead of going to find her, I went in search of her library.

  I found it not far from her office, around the corner in fact, and took some comfort in the idea that, though we weren’t together, she was only a couple of rooms away. The section of Noge books was large, nearly the size of my entire library. I started scanning titles, breezing past books that would easily have captured my interest and held it for hours if not for my quest. Finally, I found what I was looking for, a section of Old Noge books devoted to the subject of healing. I picked up as many as I could carry, and lugged them over to a table with a nice window facing the h
eadlands.

  I spent the next several hours pouring over the books, one by one, searching for any mention of a process for blood purification. I had a hunch I would find what I was seeking in that field. I worked through lunch and late into the afternoon, and was still in the library as the light was fading outside. Still, I worked on, until I heard someone clearing her throat not far from me. I looked up to find M’Tek watching me from the doorway.

  “I missed you in the dining hall, my love,” she said softly. “Were you not hungry?” I marked the page in the book I was checking, and turned in my chair to face her. She appeared tired, which was unsettling, since I’d never noticed her looking tired before. She walked over to the table where I was working and picked up one of the books I’d already checked. “What’s this?” she asked, showing me the title, letting me know I was caught.

  “I agreed to take a consort,” I replied. “That doesn’t mean I’ve given up on you,” I said defensively. M’Tek nodded slowly, her gaze fixed on the books I had selected.

  “You must realize I’ve been through all of these books,” she observed. “This is, after all, my library,” she pointed out, clipping her words for emphasis.

  “You might not have been looking for what I’m trying to find,” I said.

  “Which is?” she asked.

  “I want something on blood purification,” I explained. M’Tek stepped closer to me, her gaze shifting over the stack of books as her hand rested on the table. “If we can remove the healing properties from your blood, and make you like everyone else, the plague won’t kill you.”

  “That never occurred to me,” she admitted.

  “Do you think there’s something here that might help?” I asked. I was feeling vaguely encouraged by her response. She shrugged, still focusing on the books.