A Crown of Echoes

by Brindi Quinn

  Smirking, he studied my eyes, but then his gaze fell on my lips and lingered there. The lion in me bit them. Windley noticed and tensed his jaw. Rafe made a noise in his sleep. Outside, the fire cracked.

  “Can I ask you an unusual question?” I said.

  “You can do anything you want. You’re a queen, aren’t you?”

  I may have said ‘unusual,’ but what I meant was indulgent. I didn’t care about the answer so much as what it might lead to.

  “Do people ‘taste’ different from one another?” I asked. “I mean, when you do your thing?”

  His smirk grew. “They do.”

  “And… what do I taste like?”

  “Is that an invitation?” he said, twiddling with his blackstone ring while his eyes probed me.

  “I…”

  “You can say no.”

  No, I couldn’t. Because the monster wouldn’t let me sleep until I fed it, and this is what I had been hoping for ever since Windley crawled over here. My heightened pulse was a testament.

  I nodded to show my consent, feeling sinful but secretly loving it.

  Windley took my hand, curling down all but my pointer finger, and brought it to his mouth. “Yes, people taste different.” Eyes to mine, he pressed his lips, slightly ajar, to the side of my finger. Instantly, my skin fell numb as a wave of tingles reverberated from that spot up my arm, like the aftermath of a seismic quake. “You taste like…” He paused. “That’s hard. Try imagining a color you’ve never seen before.”

  “Cute,” I said.

  “Well, you taste good, if that’s what you’re wondering. It isn’t like the taste of food. It’s more like a sensation. Yours is the sensation of standing at the top of a knoll during the best weather of summer with warm wind all around. And there are flowers. It’s clean and flowery and warm and freeing.” He put his mouth to the nape of my hand, where my thumb and pointer met, and closed his eyes. “And now that I’ve had a taste, I won’t ever be able to forget it.”

  “Is that the way it works?” I breathed, as waves of elation coursed through me.

  “Oh, no,” he said. “I’ve tasted plenty that I’ve forgotten.” When he opened his eyes again, they contained a hint of emerald glimmer. “Maybe it’s because you’re royal. Or maybe that’s just you.”

  Was that his power, making me want to curl into him?

  “Do I taste different now that I have the echoes?” I said, thinking of the thick, milky taste of the other world. “I don’t taste shadowy or anything, do I?”

  “Not one bit.”

  He kissed my palm and then my wrist, and as I sank deeper into safe, comfy sleep, I felt my fingers weave through his, though I wasn’t sure if it was his doing or mine.

  These were some of my favorite times. Before things became… complicated.

  But keep going, captive ones. We’ll get through it together.

  Chapter 19

  The Other Side of the Wood

  “Come along, cuddle buns.” Thank goddess Albie was talking about Rafe and Windley and not Windley and me. The plan had worked a little too well, leaving Albie with ample teasing fodder and Rafe in the foulest mood I had ever seen him.

  Last night was yet another lapse of judgement on my part, but I didn’t care because it felt both right and wrong, good and evil, forbidden and inevitable. Windley and I rode side-by-side, up to our old antics, conversing and bantering, through the remainder of the Emerald Wood. By mid-morning, the terrain began to change, thinning of moss and mammoth trees, until we reached a single signpost in a language none of us could read, marking the end of the forest.

  Tied to the post, flapping in the wind, was one scarlet strip of hope. Albie had been right in his calculations. The Clearing’s cavalry had already passed through, leaving behind one of their ribbons. Below it, Albie tied an emerald one as if to unite us.

  We weren’t alone. Beau would be rescued. Maybe she already had been.

  The other side of the sign was an expanse of plains and rock formations as far as the eye could see. Tall golden grass swished in the wind, dotted with boulders, caves, and other rock rubble. In the distance, large animals roamed while other smaller ones grazed.

  “Wallops,” Windley said, holding his temple. “And gazelles.” He concentrated hard. “There are cities to the south,” he said, pointing. “A sea to the east. Giant’s Necropolis should be west… I think.”

  “What does your map show, Albie?” I said.

  “Not anything worth a lick,” he said, holding it up to show a few random X’s and some circles with messy handwriting. “The Cove’s royal guard hasn’t come down this far, so their intel is based on the tales of other travelers. However—” He crouched to the ground. “The cavalry did travel west. See how the grass is pushed in? It looks like they came through here from the east, but they must have stopped to place markers on every signpost they passed.”

  “That means they took a different path through the forest,” said Rafe. “They must have exited from the far coast and traveled all the way along the edge.”

  That made sense. Poppy was aware of Giant’s Necropolis, but in her story, she only said it was on the other side of a thick forest. Likely, the Clearing had similar records. What better way to find it than to search the entire stretch of forest’s threshold.

  Rafe yearned toward the west, wondering as I was, whether Beau had already been found.

  “It’s lonely out here,” I said, tucking myself from the chill of wind sweeping the golden prairie. “I expected more.”

  “Just as your world has an end, so does this world,” said Windley. “There’s no need for people from the south to come up this far.”

  Unless running away from something, it would turn out.

  Albie patted the Spirite’s back. “Let me know if you need a break, lad. Can’t imagine it’s easy being back down here.”

  South-ish. Where Windley had gotten those scars.

  “Are there whole cities of your kind down here, Windley?” I said.

  “There are whole cities of many kinds down here, Queen Merrin.”

  “Will we be out of place if we encounter other people?” said Rafe.

  “Your accents may be an issue, but humans are relatively common,” said Windley, “though I can’t speak for whatever you are, chap.”

  Rafe gave a perturbed look, still irked over being cuddled against his will. In the aftermath, I noticed him rub at his chest.

  Yikes. I wasn’t ready for that to happen again.

  We made for the west, following the cavalry’s footsteps, in the supposed direction of Giant’s Necropolis, keeping our eyes and ears open for any scarlet-cloaked scouts that might be roaming the lonely landscape. Ruckus bit at grasshoppers hiding in the tall grass as they fled to get out of his path. He thought himself a ferocious beast. From atop his back, I blew into the royal whistle with more ferocity than ever before, willing a messenger of Beau’s to find me. Other birds passed with long necks and bright feathers, but none were the bird I wanted.

  Eventually, we spotted a lone house made of log surrounded by a fence in the otherwise middle of nowhere. It looked to have once been a woodcutter’s abode. The lot was abandoned, but a scarlet ribbon tied to the fence showed that the cavalry had passed through.

  We were on the right track. We pushed our stags harder than ever before, and they lived up to their name, tearing across the wildlands like the wind, hooves clomping into the earth with satisfying resonance. Our cloaks fluttered, cape-like, in the wake behind us.

  This felt right.

  The cavalry’s scouts had found Giant’s Necropolis and had led the rest of the cavalry west.

  We were going to rescue Beau.

  Or she may have already been rescued.

  Either way, I would be reunited with her before nightfall.

  It was going to be okay.

  It was—

  “Whoa!” Albie abruptly ordered his stag to stop and the others followed. He was slightly ahead of us, at th
e edge of a small valley, and whatever lay beyond caused him to turn around and shout: “Rafe, shield the Queen! Don’t let her see!”

  His distress echoed through the gilded grasslands.

  Obedient, Rafe hopped from his steed and grabbed Ruckus by the reins to turn him around. I still had a neck that worked, idiot, and I used it to swivel around, hoisting myself higher on Ruckus’s back to see what Albie and Windley were gawking at.

  In the valley, the grass was no longer golden. It was a basin of sickly red. As though someone had taken a paintbrush to it.

  But it wasn’t paint. For scattered amongst the red were three dozen stags and three dozen riders.

  Beau’s cavalry had been slaughtered.

  If you’re lucky, you won’t ever experience a moment like that, one that scorches your soul so that every time forevermore that your mind goes blank, the void is taken up with the image of it, like a malignance. For me, there are two moments like this. This was the first.

  I clicked my tongue to push Ruckus on, zipping around Rafe and Albie and toward the carnage, as knight and magician reached after me, shouting for me to stop.

  Stopping wasn’t an option. I needed to know—was she among them?

  I had never envisioned what a massacre might look like, but if I had, I wouldn’t have been able to imagine this. It wasn’t as though the bodies had been slashed through with a sword; they had been obliterated and smeared along the yellow grass.

  The first time I saw one, I leaned over and expelled my breakfast.

  It was hard to see faces through my blurred eyes, but I pressed on, holding my mouth for fear of another adverse reaction, and pushed Ruck through, coating his hooves in sticky residue. I didn’t fear whatever enemy had done this, for the echoes were abuzz at the thought of a threat. I was comforted having them there, by my side, giving me strength.

  I pushed Ruckus on, to one edge of the battlefield and then to the other, looking for someone who might be Beau. That raven hair, that princess-like frame, those delicate fingers. I looked into the face of each one, sorrowed for each one.

  When I realized Beau wasn’t among the slaughtered, I collapsed off of Ruckus, knees in the sticky grass, and wept. On the opposite side of the field, Rafe was having a similar reaction, bittersweet, knowing that Beau’s body was not amongst them but mourning the lives lost.

  I didn’t know them, but each soul was treasured by someone. Each soul had merit, deserving to taste delicious things, hear beautiful music and experience warmth.

  None of these deserved to die.

  “They all had merit,” said a voice in the far reaches of the void. “They deserved to live.”

  Before I could respond, a pair of wrinkled hands wrapped around me and lifted me out of the bloodied field. “Come along, My Queen. This is no place for you.”

  I curled into Albie, as I had so many times as a child, and let him carry me, wrapping my arms around his neck as he kissed my forehead with his wiry mustache.

  “It’s awful, Albie,” I wailed. “So senseless.”

  “Hush now, My Queen. I’m here.”

  He carried me away from the field painted with death and set me tenderly at the feet of his stag, covering me with his cloak to shield me from the cruel truth.

  I heard him talking to someone: “Can you ride, my boy? I need you to take the Queen back to that woodcutter’s cabin. Rafe and I will give them a proper burial.”

  Oh. That was Windley. Albie was talking to…

  “Windley!”

  How could I not have considered him? These weren’t just Beau’s subjects; these were Windley’s comrades. The cavalry was separate from the royal guard, but out of any of us, Windley had the closest ties to them. He likely knew many of them by name.

  And if I knew Windley, he wouldn’t allow his grief to show. He would bottle it up until it consumed him.

  I was lamenting for those fallen, my heart pained as if they were my own guard, thinking of how Beau would feel if she knew, wondering if she did know. But none of that would save any of them. I needed to place my heart elsewhere.

  Knees shaking, I rose to my feet, steadied myself against Albie’s stag and allowed my eyes to focus. Windley was standing stiff beside Albie, hands and knees bloodied as though he had knelt to inspect one of the bodies. His reaction wasn’t like mine or Rafe’s; rather, his face was blank, his eyes soulless, as though he had forgotten how to feel.

  He wasn’t the type to lament. He was the type to disassociate. And I considered that for him, this was the more dangerous path.

  “I will take him, my knight.” My throat was rough from vomit.

  Albie’s face contorted, his eyes bloodshot as he turned to examine me. “My Queen?”

  I stood with the basin to my back, staring off, instead, across the fields of bullion, shimmering under the afternoon sun. “I will take Windley to the woodcutter’s house. Ruckus will carry us. It’s only a short distance.”

  Windley didn’t acknowledge any of this, just flexed his bloodstained hands and looked across the field with a hauntingly unsympathetic expression.

  He had no outlet. He never had been one to dip below the surface of conversation.

  I put a hand to his chest. “Come on, Wind. Let’s go.”

  He obeyed, mounting Ruck’s back, tucking up his hood, and resting forward as he was prone to do on early mornings. I took Ruck’s reins around him, bade Albie farewell, and sent us off with a click of my tongue. We wouldn’t look back. Though we mourned in different ways, looking back was conducive to neither.

  Windley said nothing as we rode, but I kept a hand on his back as a way of connection and told him to hold on a little longer. We would be to the cabin soon, and time would begin its magic, turning massacre into memory. We just had to keep going.

  When we arrived at the woodcutter’s plot, Windley dismounted without a word. He settled on the edge of the lumpy bed, dirtied from years of collected dust and disuse like everything else in the cottage. I retrieved water from the outside well and wet a cloth. I washed the blood first from his hands and then from mine before slipping onto the floor beside the bed, wrapping my arms around my knees and giving in to the weight of emotion.

  I wept.

  For him. For Beau. For me. For all of those people and those who loved them.

  I wept because Windley didn’t have the capacity to, because I was at my breaking point, and because I had made it this far.

  Now, I could grieve.

  I may have mentioned before, but grief is nothing like shock. It is much, much worse.

  I wasn’t sure that Windley would ever acknowledge what had happened, but my grief was an invitation. Some things can’t be solved by being powerful; they must be solved by being vulnerable. This was one of those times.

  I don’t know how many minutes ticked before I was joined on the floor by warm arms strewn around my shoulders. Windley drew me to his chest and held me as I held him and together, we existed on the decimated floorboards.

  “I’m so sorry,” I whispered into his shirt. “There’s no curative out there for this. I can’t heal it. But I swear to you, I will avenge it.”

  He trundled me and pulled me onto his lap, enveloping me in his embrace and burying his face in my hair. Together, we breathed.

  Together, we grieved.

  Until we had nothing left to give.

  “It feels good to hold you, my queen,” he said into my shoulder. “Let me hold you.”

  We melted in each other’s arms as day moved on, as time passed, as Rafe and Albie worked tirelessly to dig a mass grave for the heroes of the Clearing who had given their lives to find their lost queen.

  Chapter 20

  The Betrayal

  This story would be better if it were told by Beau. Beautiful, regal, freckled Beau. If it were told by Beau, you wouldn’t have had to hear about the painted field or the events that next ensued.

  But these are important, captive ones. Pain makes us who we are.

  I
awoke to the heat of fire. Someone had built one in the hut’s small fireplace, and I had been rolled near to it in a makeshift mess of blankets. My body ached from disuse.

  I didn’t know how much time had passed, but enough for Rafe and Albie to have returned, for Windley to be sitting up on his own, and for his hair to have shifted to peach. The three of them were talking in a low hum at the dwelling’s only table, using barrels and debris as makeshift chairs.

  I pushed myself up from the throws like a creature emerging from hibernation. “Albie?”

  The guards rose, but only Albie approached. The other two shuffled further back into the shadows.

  “My Queen.” Albie knelt beside me. “How do you feel?”

  “Groggy,” I said. “How long was I asleep?”

  “A few days.”

  “Days?” How was that possible? I had been cuddling with Windley, and that felt like only hours ago. “I never sleep for days.”

  “You were distraught,” Albie said. “I… took liberties.”

  I looked beyond him to where Rafe was rubbing his chest and where Windley was standing with arms folded, staring at the floor. At least the pointy-eared guard appeared to have recovered. He no longer looked like a shell of himself, with color in his cheeks and psyche composed.

  “This may come as a surprise,” Albie continued, “But Windley has sorcery in his blood. His kind has the ability to force people into sleep. I ordered him to use it on you while we tended to matters here.”

  It wasn’t a surprise to me at all, but Albie didn’t know that.

  The real surprise was that Windley had used his power on me without my consent for days on end, knowing full well I would be furious with him.

  I tried to catch his eye, but the coward hid from me.

  Oh no, he didn’t get to just run away from me now. Not after the hours we had spent grieving together. Not after using my vulnerability as a crutch for his own. Not after all of those clandestine nighttime encounters and feeding our monster time and again.