by H. E. Edgmon
She reaches across the table to rest her warm, soft hand over top my own. I wish I could find some comfort in the touch. I wish it could make me feel anything other than trapped.
“But this is going to be such a good thing for you. The first witch to ever marry into a royal family? We’re talking about making history.”
I don’t care about making history.
“Revolutionaries usually end up getting killed by the masses,” I remind her. “No one wants me to rule. Aren’t you a little worried they’ll revolt against a witch wearing their crown?”
My mother sniffs. “People will adjust.”
“But—”
“This conversation is pointless,” my father interjects, tone firm. “There is a contract in place. You will marry Emyr North or you will die.”
When my black energy sweeps out around me, it brushes up against the energies of my family. My father’s biting ice blue. My mother’s, the same shade as her favorite red lipstick. My sister’s, a perfect mix of the two—a field of lavender.
My darkness and I don’t belong here. We never have.
My mother snatches her hand back as if I’ve burned her. If I did, it was a happy accident.
“Contracts can be dissolved,” I insist through clenched teeth. “You can ask the king and queen to talk to the Court, tell them—”
“We will tell them nothing.” My father isn’t even looking at me. “What’s done is done.”
“You should be so proud,” my mother insists, shaking her head. “Most of your kind would be thrilled to take your place.”
“Then let one of them,” I snap back, fists clenching until my nails dig puncture wounds into my palms.
“For crying out loud,” Tessa scoffs, rolling her eyes. “You’re a witch. And you want to run away from the one thing that might make your life worth something? Are you seriously dumber than you look?”
I do not point out that we look eerily similar.
“Tessa. Please.” My mother sighs at her before she turns her attention back to me. “When we were made aware of Emyr’s bond, we were so excited for you. So proud. And we demanded the contract be put in place to protect you. To protect your future here. Don’t you understand why?”
Of course I do, but I wonder if my mother does. I know it’s because she’s like a hellhound on a scent, catching the whiff of power from a hundred miles away. Why does she think she did it? Does she actually think she’s the good guy here?
I shrug.
“When you were born, when we learned you were a witch, we were terrified of what your life might look like. We were so scared of who you would grow to be.”
“Should’ve dumped you in the human world and left you for dead,” Tessa interjects, and my mother silences her with a glare.
I’ve grown up hearing that line my entire life. How lucky I am that my parents chose to keep me, their broken little daughter, when so many of the fae abandon their witchling offspring outside the gates of Asalin. To starve to death or be eaten by wild animals, whichever should come first.
How lucky I am that my mom and dad were willing to take on the burden of keeping me around.
“Sweetheart, marrying the prince is the only thing that will save you from being like the rest of them. You don’t want to be like the other witches, do you? Don’t you want to be something special?”
As I look between their faces, I know I have my answer. Nothing I can say or do will sway them. My parents will never take my side, because they believe the way the rest of their kind believe. That the only value my life has is what I can do for the fae around me.
The terms of my engagement are clear, signed with Emyr’s and my mingled blood when we were barely old enough to spell our own names. We will be married. It’s only a matter of when. One day, the contract will finally be called in. If I’m not there to meet him at the end of the aisle, he can trigger the clause that forces my own blood to wreak havoc on me. The magic in my system will eat away at my insides until there’s nothing left, until I’m nothing more than an unanchored energy that can never move on, never find peace. The same would happen to him, if he were to break our pact.
It sounds like a terrible way to go.
But so does putting on a white gown and a fake smile and living the rest of my life as a placeholder in someone else’s fantasy. Being forced to produce heirs for the Throne. And what would they do to those children if they were born witches, like me? Would I be forced to keep having baby after baby until I gave them a fae? What if I never did? Would they ever let them rule? Or would the fae mob finally bubble over and do what they’ve wanted to do for a long time?
Dying because I broke the contract would suck. But there’s a good chance I’m going to end up dead because of this engagement either way.
* * *
The memory eats at me as I make my way back inside. It comes to my mind often, the last conversation I ever had with my parents. The fire happened the next night.
I can’t tell Emyr no unless I’m willing to die—or kill him, I guess. He has the ability to call in the blood contract whenever he wants, but so do I. We have the power to destroy each other, have since we were children. And it isn’t like the idea has never crossed my mind. Triggering his clause instead of mine. After all, whether he’ll say it out loud or not, that’s the very thing he’s holding over my head.
But even entertaining the passing thought makes me feel sick.
The Begay-Brown home is a little small, a little run-down. There are brown watermarks at odd intervals on the ceiling, and in a few places where the rot’s gotten very bad they’ve nailed down pieces of wood to keep the elements out.
But there’s something in the air here. The furniture, worn out and covered in dog fur, looks lived in, the living room the kind of place that’s seen thousands of family movie nights. The walls are covered in political posters and family pictures, alongside tapestries and beadwork made by members of Nadua’s and Sunny’s Nations. There’s a feeling of community, of unity, that I’ve never quite known how to put into words.
And even though the house could use a few repairs here and there, it’s incredibly clean. Everything is organized, every odd and end has a place. After two years of living here, I’ve begun to see the patterns in the chaos.
I expect some added chaos when I walk in, but instead I’m greeted by things seeming far too normal.
Doli and her grandmother are still sitting on the couch watching a game show. Sunny’s whistling a tune in the kitchen. He smiles at me when he catches me staring at him. He doesn’t look at all like his wife just told him she stabbed a mythic creature in her backyard.
He’s a mountain of a man, built like a bear. Well over six feet tall, easily more than three hundred pounds. He has warm eyes and the kind of smile that makes people smile back at him. His swirling energy reminds me of tangerines, bright and fresh. The prison tattoos covering his big body don’t take anything away from how good it is just to be in his presence.
He’s standing over a pot of something simmering on the stove and motions me forward with a big wave of his arm. “Wyatt! Come here, taste this!”
Stepping over, I blink down at what appears to be soup. It doesn’t look great. Bits of hacked-up meat and mushy vegetables float in a brown broth decorated with leaves and spices. (I think there’s a good chance the unidentified meat is from the deer carcass he and Briar were hacking up when I went outside.) But the smell. Holy shit, it smells so good I almost start to drool.
Sunny holds out a spoon to me and I take a bite. Oh. My eyes nearly roll back in my head. He seems to gather from my reaction that I’m enjoying it and he laughs, a big, barking sound that dances around the room.
“Go tell Briar and Nadua lunch’s ready,” he demands, swatting the soup ladle at me. “Think they’re back in your room.”
The bedroom at the back of the house
that Briar and I share is tiny, and it feels even smaller because of all the stuff.
We swapped out her bed for bunk beds a while after I moved in and, officially, I’m supposed to sleep on the top bunk. Unofficially, we both sleep on the bottom, and the entire upper bed is covered in sketchpads, books, weird cool shit we found outside, and empty food containers we should’ve thrown away forever ago.
A little white table is shoved in the corner, every inch covered in beads and string and other crafting supplies. There are clothes everywhere, a folded pile at the foot of the bottom bunk, a wadded-up bundle under the nightstand, a collection of mismatched socks spread out by the little window. Unlike the rest of the house, there is no method to this madness, no secret organization. Or if there is, it’s one only Briar understands.
Every inch of the walls are covered in posters, or pictures of the two of us, or more pieces of clothing hanging from anything they can hook themselves onto. The floor-length mirror is decorated with stickers reading things like There Is NO Planet B! and The Government Doesn’t Care About You. Briar’s denim jacket, smothered in pins and patches—BI FURIOUS with a double-headed battle ax is my favorite—hangs limply from the corner of the window frame. The trans and ace flags hang side by side on the ceiling.
I know they’ve been talking about me as soon as I walk in and the room goes uncomfortably quiet. Briar is sitting on the bottom bunk with her arms crossed over her ample chest while Nadua stands in front of her, a stern expression on her face.
After a beat, Nadua sighs. “Think about what I said.” She brushes past me as she leaves the room, taking her red clay energy and a faint smell of smoke with her.
When she’s gone, I ask, “What did she say?”
Briar stares up at me, lips parted.
I’m gay as all hell, but Briar is the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. Her skin is deep, warm brown, her curves generous. Her broad nose sits over a thin upper lip, and her white front teeth have a slight gap between them. There are flowers braided into her long black-and-teal hair today, purple coneflowers that match the T-shirt under her overalls.
Her energy is so bright I can feel it from across the room. Could practically feel it from the other side of the house. It’s yellow like sunflowers and bumble bees and lemonade. Everything about her reminds me of spring. New life.
Fitting, since it’s Briar who brought me back to life once. When Nadua brought me here, a shell of a person, hollowed out from the inside, Briar’s the one who helped me relearn how to exist. I’m never going to be able to pay her back for that.
After a beat, she asks, “Was one of them really here? In the yard?”
I sigh, moving over to our bed and dropping down next to her. She wiggles out of the way until I can throw myself sidelong against the far wall, dragging a pillow underneath my head. “Not just one of them. Him. Emyr.”
“Shit.”
“I know.”
We aren’t supposed to tell humans about us. Like, the number one rule of magic club is that you don’t talk about magic club, or whatever. Humans aren’t supposed to be involved in our affairs unless absolutely necessary, and even then we’re supposed to get permission from the Throne.
Personally, I think that’s bullshit. I mean, I’m a wanted criminal, I guess, so it’s not like I asked anyone for permission to tell Briar my life story. But even if my record was squeaky clean, even if I was just some random witch living in the human world, I don’t see why I would have to play by the rules of the fae.
Technically, all fae and witches living in North America are under the rule of the king and queen of Asalin, Emyr’s parents. There are other fae kingdoms around the world, and every fae and witch within each territory answers to their monarchs. And for the fae, sure. I get it. But what about the witches? Why should we have to answer to the rulers if we leave their kingdoms? After all, they’ve made it plenty clear we aren’t their equals.
Witches are born to fae, but we aren’t fae. We don’t have their wings, or their horns. We don’t access our magic the same way.
There are three types of fae, each with a different sort of magic at their disposal. Feelers can read things, like the emotions in the room or psychic visions of the future. Influencers can manipulate things, like the elements or even the thoughts in people’s heads. And Healers...well, they heal.
Witches, on the other hand, can access whatever magic they want. The difference is that, while the fae’s power comes naturally to them, witches require practice, and training, and the proper conduits. In order to be any good at what we do, we have to learn from each other. And without the ability to do that, really bad things can happen.
Like the fire.
No one is totally sure why witches are the way they are. No one could tell me why I was born to two powerful fae, with a perfect fae sister, and I came out like this.
It just happens sometimes. Rarely, maybe one in a hundred. And of those, probably only half actually make it to adulthood. That’s my best guess, anyway. It’s not like there’s anyone doing studies on this shit.
I am one of the fae, officially. Their blood runs through my body. Their magic is mine, even if it’s twisted and ugly and I don’t want any part of it. But I’m not one of them. I am an entirely different creature, born into a world that’s never known how to handle me or anyone like me.
“He expects me to go back to Asalin with him tomorrow.”
Briar lies down so she can join me properly, the mattress dipping with her added weight as she curls up against my side and rests her head on my shoulder. Her skin smells like cocoa butter. “What are we going to do?”
Always we and never you. Briar has this thing where she’s always adopting other people’s problems as her own. Mine in particular.
I nose against her shoulder. “I love you,” I tell her, because I do, and because sometimes I need to say it to remind myself I’m capable of feeling it in the first place.
She doesn’t say it back, but she kisses my cheek and that’s just as good.
After a moment, I sigh. “I don’t think I have much of a choice.”
“But...but what about the fire? Won’t you get in trouble?”
I shrug. “He says he’ll protect me.”
I don’t know if I believe him, but I guess that doesn’t matter.
Briar worries her lower lip between her teeth, one hand resting against my chest, over the fabric of my hoodie. She tugs aimlessly at the drawstrings for a moment before finally sighing and asking, “Can’t you just...ask him to let you go? I mean, he has to understand how bad it would be for you to go back to Asalin. Doesn’t he care? You said you were best friends once.”
We were. Best friends. More than best friends. Once.
My mother worked at the palace when I was young. She was an Influencer, and she specialized in making unique garments for fae high society, woven with spellwork to make them impenetrable to outside magic. I wasn’t welcome at the school for fae children and my parents didn’t want me socializing with other witches, so she kept me with her. I would toddle around underfoot and try to stay quiet.
And then, one day, Emyr saw me.
I don’t know what it feels like when a fae lays eyes on their mate for the first time. I don’t know how he knew what I was to him. But he knew. Suddenly, he wanted to be around me all the time. And I, having spent my life up to that moment feeling completely on my own, was just happy to feel like someone actually wanted me around. We were, for a time after, inseparable.
Most of my earliest memories feature Emyr front and center. The two of us running through the halls of the castle together, chasing the feral cats or wild chimera kittens who would sometimes wander in from outside. The two of us hiding behind boulders and hills to watch the pixie and goblin communities from a safe distance. The two of us in the woods building forts from sticks and brambles, coercing perytons to eat from t
he palms of our hands, making up stories about the human world beyond our home and what it would be like to live there. Playing make-believe as if we were the humans, just two human kids living human lives, away from Asalin and the Throne and all of the responsibilities waiting in our futures.
Certain nights stick out more than others. The first time Emyr’s father, the king, took us flying on dragonback, the three of us thousands of feet aboveground and me feeling like I never wanted to come down. My sixth birthday, when Emyr and I found Boom, a sickly, pint-size hellhound puppy on the verge of death. We snuck him into the castle, and Emyr poured his Healing into him. He was our dog after that. We joked we were his parents.
My heart gives an uncomfortable twist, my throat tightening.
There are a lot of good memories, but there are a lot of bad, too. And whatever Emyr and I used to be to each other, we aren’t anymore. He’s made that perfectly clear, showing up here to drag me back to Asalin against my will.
“I tried,” I finally answer Briar, blinking away whatever burning emotion might’ve bubbled up because of my childish nostalgia. “Apparently, that’s not an option. He needs me.”
“Needs?”
“His cousin Derek is vying for the Throne.”
I don’t know what I expect her to say to that, but it definitely is not what she actually says, which is, “Derek? What kind of name is Derek for a fae?”
I frown, looking at her bewildered expression. She isn’t wrong. I’ve been in the human world long enough now to know that Derek is hardly the kind of name that inspires fear in the hearts of the masses.
“Fae started adopting human names after they got here from Faery. Makes it easier for them to travel in and out of Asalin, like when they need to travel to the other kingdoms. His parents probably just heard the name somewhere.”
Honestly, I don’t know how much the fae have changed since they dropped here from Faery. I don’t know how much the human world has influenced them, how different things might have been if I’d been born in that world instead of this one.