The Witch King

by H. E. Edgmon

  He lets out a loud sigh, more smoke leaving him.

  As soon as Briar is settled, I crawl into the space behind her. There’s a rather large dragon spike between my stomach and her back, but that doesn’t stop me from leaning as far forward as is physically possible so I can curl my arms around her middle, twining my fingers together just beneath her chest.

  “Squeeze with your thighs. And wrap your arms around his neck in front of you.”

  “What if we fall?”

  “We won’t. He’s trained not to let that happen.”

  “But what if we do?” She turns her head over her shoulder just enough to catch my eye. Our noses nearly brush.

  I take a deep, slow breath. “We don’t have to do this. We can go back to the castle.”

  “No. No, I want to. Just.” She swallows. “Don’t let go of me, okay?”

  Never.

  I nudge Summanus’s throat with my knee and cough down at him again. I don’t actually know how to get this part started, so I just shoot with a “Hey, bro, we’re ready.”

  It should not work. But seconds later, the creature is pushing his body up on all fours. We jostle as he moves, the spikes on either side of me digging into my body. My arms tighten reflexively around Briar.

  Summanus spreads his wings underneath our feet, unfurling them hard enough to create a breeze that blows all the grass and tree branches nearby. I swallow at the casual display of power.

  And then his wings are flapping hard, harder, making the whole world around us billow out. He’s running, racing from one side of the field to the other, and my ass can’t even stay seated on his back, my whole body lifting up and into the air every time he takes another step. My stomach flips around so hard I think I might spit it right out.

  And then he’s taking off, his whole body lifting into the air, and we’re right there with him.

  “Ohmygodohmygodohmygod,” Briar squeals, but it sounds more like a whisper over the wind rushing all around us.

  Finally, when we reach the highest we’re going to go, when Summanus’s body can coast a little instead of flapping harder and harder, and some of the turbulence finally settles, I look down at the world underneath us. All of Asalin spread out, thousands of feet below. Mountains and forest and fields and streams and gardens and homes and businesses and the palace, right there in the center of it all.

  It reminds me of the night in the tower with Emyr, looking out over Asalin together. I think I prefer the way it looks at night.

  I tuck my face between Briar’s shoulder blades and close my eyes, enjoying the weightless feeling of flying and the smell of her hair. For a moment, I can forget why we’re here. I can forget my goals of causing chaos for the sake of chaos, for the sake of being hated. I can forget being hated. For a moment, it’s just Briar and me and the feeling of being weightless and free and okay.

  The moment does not last.

  When Briar tugs aggressively at the sleeve of my hoodie, I finally pull my gaze up to her face. She’s staring straight ahead, brown skin a shade grayer, lips parted. I follow her line of sight to...

  “Is that Jin?” I demand, but I don’t know if Briar can hear me over the sound of the wind.

  I’m pretty sure it is Jin, though. I can just barely make out their electric purple energy crackling behind the dragon they’re mounted on. This one is smaller than Summanus, with blood-slicked-red plates of armor for scales and eyes so bright they might be white. And the two of them are barreling straight toward us.

  “WHAWEOO?!” Briar shouts, and it’s only through our near-telepathic connection that I understand what she’s asking.

  I don’t know what we do, though. I didn’t really expect to get this far, much less get caught by Jin.

  I wrap one of my arms tighter around Briar’s middle so I can release my other one, grabbing one of Summanus’s spikes and yanking to the left. The dragon seems to get the idea and suddenly swirls his massive body, turning the other direction.

  Not that it matters. Jin and their dragon are at our side within seconds. It’s definitely Jin, too. This close, I can see their face.

  They do not look particularly happy to see me.

  “LAND!” I can see them mouth the words, even if I can’t hear them. They enunciate it with a sharp jab at the ground with their thumb.

  NO! I nudge Summanus’s side with my heel, trying to spur him to move faster. He gives a disgusted grunt, but obliges me, picking up a little speed. Briar’s hair whips hard against my face, obscuring my vision.

  And then I feel it. Summanus shifts underneath us as something knocks up against his side. I have to grab Briar’s hair and yank it out of my way just to look over and see that Jin is banging up against our dragon with theirs. In mid-fucking-air! Are they trying to kill us?

  See, I knew it was too early in the day to say I wasn’t going to die.

  “LAND!” they shout again, and this time Summanus turns his head to blink over his shoulder at me.

  He’s waiting for me to tell him what to do.

  I came here to steal the king’s dragon.

  Briar twists her body around to press her face against my neck, wrapping her arms around me as Summanus picks up speed for the second time. And this time, I yank at his spikes to direct him upward. Higher into the air. Higher above Asalin. Let Leonidas and Kadri see us. Let Emyr. Let them—

  Summanus lets out a too-human scream, fire erupting from his throat and exploding into the air in front of us. When I jerk my head around, I see that Jin’s dragon has clamped her mouth down on his tail. He twists his massive body in the air, yanking backward and rolling around, thrashing the lower half of his body to try and throw the smaller dragon off him.

  My stomach is somewhere near my tonsils. I can feel my thighs losing their grip on his scales. I can feel Briar shaking with fear, pressed against me.

  What have I done?

  That’s the last coherent thought I manage before we slip from the dragon’s back and plummet toward the ground.

  You know, I’ve always heard your life is supposed to flash before your eyes when you’re dying. That’s not true. At least not for me. It isn’t my life I see. It’s everyone else’s.

  Will Tessa mourn me, or is this what she wanted all along? Will she cry at my funeral, finally realizing that I was the last blood kin she had left in this world, that I was her last living connection to being a Croft, or will she refuse to attend at all?

  The wind rushes in my ears, a high-pitched whistle that would set my teeth on edge if I weren’t about to die, anyway.

  Will Sunny and Nadua ever forgive me for being the reason their daughter dies here in my arms? Will the fae manage to get her body back to them? Will they even bother to do it? Or will the people who’ve fed and clothed and housed and loved me, accepted me, treated me like a son for the last two years, have no idea what happened to either of us? Will they go the rest of their lives waiting for our ghosts to come home?

  In my arms, Briar gives one long, heartbroken scream. My stomach flops like a fish tossed on the beach.

  What about Emyr?

  Overhead, Jin’s dragon finally releases Summanus, and he yanks his body in the other direction, flying back toward the field I grabbed him from. The smaller red creature wheels around and beelines for us. I can make out those brilliant white eyes as she speeds closer. Her mouth opens, revealing her own rows of fangs.

  The ground looms beneath us.

  The dragon snakes out her claws and yanks us into her grip, talons curling around us until she can, as gently as her kind is capable of, toss us onto the grass.

  “Good girl, Auriga,” Jin says with a click of their tongue, tall and muscled body leaping from the back of their steed’s neck to drop to the ground in front of us. They place their hands on their hips, raising their eyebrows high. “You wanna tell me what’s going on here?”<
br />
  I open my mouth to answer and bile comes out.

  While I empty my stomach into a cluster of wildflowers, Briar is having a meltdown. In hysterics next to me, she warbles, “It was a stupid plan! We just wanted to have a little fun! Why would you try to kill us?”

  “Kill you?” Jin groans. “I was trying to save you. Do you have any idea who you decided to take for a joy ride?”

  “The king’s dragon,” I finally mumble, wiping spit and vomit from my mouth with the back of my hand, then wiping the back of my hand on my jeans.

  “Right. The king’s. And are you the king?”

  “Not yet.” Not ever.

  “Yeah, and you’re lucky he didn’t just swallow your twink ass,” Jin scoffs, reaching up to rub their palm against Auriga’s neck. “His loyalty isn’t to you. You had no idea what you were getting yourself into.”

  “I—I am not a twink!”

  Jin just rolls their eyes.

  “We’re sorry,” Briar says softly, finally stumbling to her feet, swiping tears from beneath her eyes. “It won’t happen again.”

  “Damn straight it won’t. Now come on. Let’s get you back to the castle. Hopefully, I’m the only one who saw your little grand-theft-dragon act over here.” They click their tongue and flick three fingers at Auriga. The smaller dragon lets out a loud huff, turns, and takes off into the sky, following Summanus.

  When Jin turns their back to us and starts heading away, Briar quickly shuffles along after them. With a heavy sigh, I follow their lead.

  Ahead of me, I can hear Jin start in on their lecture. “You never just go and climb on someone else’s dragon. Well, not unless you’re like me.”

  “Like you?” Briar tucks a stray strand of hair behind one ear, turning her head up to look at Jin’s face.

  “I’m a professional.” Some of the annoyance has bled away from Jin’s tone, replaced by an obvious bit of pride. Maybe even a little smugness. “Not to mention the only witch to ever hold my position. It’s how Emyr and I became friends actually. He noticed I was interested in them. Kept sneaking out to watch them up close. ’Course, I was never so reckless as to try and steal one...”

  Disinterested in being chewed out yet again, I pretend I can’t hear them and instead drink in my surroundings.

  We’ve landed on one of the mountains, dumped on high ground, the back end of the castle in view. Asalin doesn’t seem so big, or imposing, or powerful. Up here, I don’t feel like an ant. I feel like I could do anything. Even appreciate the beauty of this place, without getting sucked in to all the ugliness that lies underneath.

  When I rejoin the conversation, they’ve veered into wildly different territory. Jin is in the middle of saying, “Gender is weird, you know? I mean, I always knew I was something. I’ve been out as nonbinary forever. But it wasn’t until I started dating Clarke that I realized how deeply being a lesbian was tied up in my gender, too. How I felt a connection to womanhood because of that.”

  Briar hums, nodding along in understanding. “You credit Clarke for that?”

  “Well...no, not credit. Clarke’s just the first girlfriend I’ve ever had, is all.” They laugh, rubbing the back of their neck. “I don’t know how I got so lucky on my first shot.”

  “I’d say you both got lucky,” Briar points out. “You’re a catch.”

  Jin flushes. “Thanks, but she’s... Well, you’ve seen her. Seriously, I didn’t even think she knew I existed. I never would’ve tried anything with her. But then one day, she just waltzed her little ass right up to my place and banged on the door. Said she’d bonded on me months ago, the first time she saw me with Auriga, and had been dropping hints that she wanted me to ask her out ever since. Got fed up with my being obtuse.”

  “You’re a mated couple?” I hasten forward a little, raising my eyebrows to consider Jin. “Fated mates?”

  “Yep.” Jin shrugs. “We’re not exactly traditional, but we fit.”

  Not exactly traditional is putting it lightly. I’ve heard of fae being bound to witches before Emyr and me, sure. But I’ve never actually met another couple like us.

  Oh. Wait, no. No, no, nope. Emyr and I are not a couple. Not. No.

  “Anyway, enough about me and Clarke. What about you, Wyatt?”

  “I don’t think Emyr and I fit all that well.” And we are not a couple!

  “Okay, well, agree to disagree, but that’s not what I was talking about.” Jin snickers. “What was it like for you? Figuring out you were trans. Was it easier, in the human world? I sort of thought it would be. I didn’t even really know being an enby was a thing, outside of myself, for a long time.”

  “Oh. Uh.” I rub a hand over the back of my neck. I don’t really want to talk about it. Not in detail. Not because it’s a bad story or whatever, just because discussing the intimate details of my life with someone I barely know sounds like some kind of torture designed for me specifically. “I guess I was just angry all the time.”

  Jin raises their eyebrows.

  Begrudgingly, I add, “I felt defensive over anything gendered, for what I thought was no good reason. And any time I was around a guy I thought was hot, I was, like...mad at him.”

  “You were mad at him,” Jin repeats, sharing a concerned look with Briar. “I don’t get it.”

  I scrub the tips of my fingers against my face, struggling to explain without sounding like a freak. “Right. For looking the way he looked. Because I wanted to make out, but also, like...steal his face. Especially trans guys. I was obsessed with trans guys. Obsessed. But also hated them, because they...got to be trans? And then one day I was, like...hey, dumbass, uh, you can be trans, too.”

  Jin laughs out loud, seemingly startled into it by my answer, and even Briar chuckles a little.

  Whatever. Gender is weird, the rules are all made up, and people should just do whatever they want.

  “How did you pick the name Wyatt?”

  “Oh, I dunno. I liked the meaning, I guess.” Brave in war.

  Maybe I’d like to think I could be brave someday.

  Briar releases a too-loud “HA!” and rolls her eyes. “Do not let him lie to you. I made him watch Charmed and he wanted to bang Dark Future Wyatt Halliwell.”

  “Okay, I desperately wanna get that reference, but...?” Jin’s eyes glint, looking between the two of us.

  “Early 2000s TV show. All about what humans think witches are. It’s on Netflix. Maybe we could double-date sometime and watch it.”

  “I would love that!”

  Briar grins and Jin grins back and it’s like we’re all hunky-dory and best friends and I hate it here.

  The three of us fall into easy silence, trekking down the side of the mountain. It’s gotten cooler since Briar and I first climbed the hill to see the dragons, and walking down is a whole hell of a lot easier than going up. I can actually enjoy the light breeze blowing at the back of my neck, the clear sky overhead.

  After a while, Jin breaks the silence by addressing Briar again. “Now, you’re cis, right?”

  Briar makes a face. “I don’t...like the word cis. Not to describe myself, anyway.”

  Something akin to abject horror appears on Jin’s face. “Tell me you aren’t one of those people who thinks cis is a slur.”

  “Oh, no. No. That’s not it. It’s just...” Briar lets go of both of us so she can gesticulate awkwardly with her hands. “My father is Seminole, and my mother Diné. Before settlers, there was no cis or trans for any of my people. We recognized from the beginning of time that there are more than two genders, and someone’s genitals are only one part of the bigger picture. I’ve never felt a connection to cis womanhood the way other people talk about it, but I do feel a connection to matriarchy, especially within my community. Calling myself cis feels like playing by someone else’s rules. But so would calling myself nonbinary.”

 
“Huh.”

  “But I mean, yeah, I was assigned female at birth.” Briar shrugs. “What about your people? You’ve always had traditional gender roles? Male and female? Even back in Faery?”

  Jin frowns. “I... I guess I don’t really know what things were like back in Faery. I mean, I guess so? Probably so.”

  “Don’t think the fae would stand for anything abnormal mucking up their traditions,” I offer as politely as I can.

  “The fae aren’t that bad,” Jin mumbles, looking sheepish. “Not most of them. Like, my parents weren’t exactly happy to have a nonbinary witch for a kid, but they could’ve been a lot worse. Most of the fae could be a lot worse. It’s just...the worst ones are usually the loudest. Same as anywhere else in the world.”

  “Sure, yeah.” Briar nods. “And when you’re backed by institutional power, it’s easy to be as loud as you want.”

  Jin watches Briar, and I watch Jin for a long moment. Finally, Jin turns their eyes toward me, something hesitant in their dark gaze. They open their mouth to speak, seem to think better of it, then close their mouth again.

  “What?” I ask, raising my eyebrows. If they have something to say, they should get it over with.

  Jin casts another look at Briar before sighing, softly, and reaching up to run their fingers through their short hair. “There is...a group that I’m part of. That you two might have some interest in meeting.”

  “A group?” Briar asks, leaning her head to the side. “What kind of group?”

  “A witches’ group.” Jin reaches up to curl their fingers around the base of their throat, awkwardly brushing their thumb against their skin. I get the impression they aren’t used to talking about this with outsiders. “We meet every other week to discuss the goings-on in Asalin. Things have gotten...tense lately. More so than before.”

  Derek said as much, that my impending marriage was doing more harm than good for fae-witch relations.

  “There’s actually a meeting tonight.” Jin worries at their lower lip. “They asked me to invite you, but I wasn’t sure you would be...interested.”