by H. E. Edgmon
Interested is definitely not the word they intended to use, but I’m not sure what was. I look at them, considering, eyes narrowed.
Briar answers before I can. “Of course we’re interested.”
I snap my head to look at her, eyebrows shooting up toward my hairline. “Oh?”
“Yes,” she pushes. “These are your people. You’re going to be their king. Don’t you want to hear what they have to say?”
Briar knows I have no intention of actually becoming their king. I don’t know what she’s playing at.
“If you decide to come,” Jin continues, not waiting for me to answer Briar’s question, “we meet at nightfall, in the cottage across from the bakery, with the blue door. Come around to the back and someone will let you in.”
“We’ll be there,” Briar promises, flashing a reassuring smile.
I grit my teeth and will myself to say nothing. Silently, the three of us continue to make our way toward the castle, looming ever more ominously as the distance closes.
CHAPTER TEN
A CLUELESS SEVENTEEN-YEAR-OLD
WHO DIDN’T ASK FOR ANY OF THIS
A statue of Vorgaine sits in the center of the village, just down the street from the bakery and the little cottage where we’re meant to be meeting the witches after dark. The god stands ten feet tall, her body carved from marble and silver. Her curls are wild, as if blowing in a breeze, her head tipped back, mouth open in a silent scream, showing off the long, murderous lines of her fangs. Her wings stretch over her head in an unmoving flurry, and all of her many eyes stare unseeing at the dusky night sky above us.
It’s sort of a horrifying image, really. Looking at her for too long makes me uncomfortable, but Briar wanted to stop and examine her more closely. So here we are. I can feel eyes on me as villagers mill about the square, most of them probably coming home at the end of the day. Just like in the tribunal room, I fight not to meet anyone’s stare. I don’t want to see anything they might be feeling reflected back at me.
People leave offerings at the foot of Vorgaine’s statue. Random things that don’t make sense out of context, but meant something to the people who left them. Pages ripped from books. Drawings and letters folded up to conceal their contents. Money. Jewelry. I spot a sheet of paper scrawled with sigils, a carved wooden dragon, and an old glass thermometer.
“Have you ever left anything?” Briar asks, cutting a look at me. “When you were a kid here, when things started to get bad. Did you ever think about asking her for help?”
I make a face.
Some in Asalin still genuinely believe that Vorgaine is watching over them, that she’ll grant their wishes and take care of them if they leave her some worthless little trinket. But I think, for most people, this is superstition. Like throwing salt over your shoulder or not walking under ladders in the human world. Most people don’t really believe it, but it’s better safe than sorry.
My parents believed Vorgaine died when Faery did. She was the god of that world, but not of this one. And if this world has a god, we haven’t met them.
And still, my answer is, “Once.”
“What did you ask her for?”
It should be too intimate a question for her to ask, but the boundaries between appropriate and not have always been a bit fucky when it comes to Briar and me. There isn’t much we don’t tell each other.
The one and only time I left an offering was in the weeks leading up to the fire. I was too big for my body. My skin no longer fit. I flinched at every whisper or sidelong look from the fae, in the village and at the palace. Emyr kept trying to fix it, kept asking me what was wrong so he could just fix it, but he didn’t get it, and I didn’t get it, and everything hurt, all the time, both in ways I had words for but was too afraid to say aloud, and ways I didn’t yet.
“I just wanted to be happy again.” I shrug. “But it didn’t matter. Even if she were answering prayers, I don’t think she can hear mine.”
At least that’s what the fae say. Vorgaine is their god. The witches are her children’s unwanted abominations. She would not lower herself to heed the call of one like me.
I can feel Briar staring at me, but don’t meet her gaze.
Instead, inclining my head toward the bakery, I say, “C’mon. You wanted to see the snacks here, right?”
She hesitates before reaching for my hand, and I lead her away from the creepy tribute.
The moment we step inside the bakery, my stomach gives a loud rumble. The entire little storefront smells of carbs and sugar, two of my most favorite things, and I swallow back a mouthful of saliva as it blooms between my teeth.
Glass cases are set up displaying the different pastries and snack foods, an assortment of vivid colors and sticky, gooey goodness. Rovuri, round balls of puffy, light pastry filled with sour berries, honey, and cream. Voleia, a loaf of bread that’s hard as rock on the outside and as soft as feathers within, dusted with powdered sugar and filled with nuts and sometimes chocolate. Kytur, a savory pie filled with white cheeses, leafy greens, and shredded or ground meat—peryton, traditionally, but chicken or beef are common substitutes.
I am truly, one hundred percent a food bitch. Maybe, if my plan works, if I get myself out of here and into the real world, in an apartment with Briar somewhere far away and filled with queers, I’ll go to culinary school. Maybe I’ll open up my own little café, with a weird menu and even weirder customers.
It’s a dream I’ve never let myself consider, not really. I’ve lived the last three years constantly wondering when I would start to feel fae breath at the back of my neck, when everything I’d started to build would finally be ripped out from under me. Things were as happy as they could’ve been in Texas, with Nadua and Sunny and the rest of Briar’s family, but some part of me knew it wasn’t forever.
If I can find a way to pull off Derek’s plan, I’m staring down a forever of my own making.
Briar makes a delighted sound and sets about bending over to examine each and every item behind the glass. But my eyes shift to the baker himself.
The fae man stands with his arms crossed behind the counter, a white apron drooping off his thin frame. Brown wings are pulled tight against his back, the claws on one hand tapping against his countertop with impatience. Murky yellow energy bubbles like angry pus around his shoulders. He narrows his eyes as he watches us, suspicious, hateful.
I know that look. I grew up with it following me everywhere I went. I anticipated it tenfold, coming back to Asalin after the fire. If it were up to me, I wouldn’t mingle with these people at all. The situations I’m willing to put myself in for Briar...
“We should probably hurry up,” I say to her back without looking away from his face. He sneers at me, upper lip pulling up over his teeth. His canines are smaller than most of his kind. They remind me of a dog’s.
“I want this one, I think.” Briar grins, looking at me over her shoulder and pointing to the halyic in the case. A wonderful—and unsurprising—choice, the dessert is basically a bunch of wafer-thin cookies stacked on top of each other, stuck together with syrup, then drizzled with a thick, tart, multicolored icing. It’s served on a stick, because it’s a mess to carry. Kids love it.
I approach the fae behind the counter and he tenses, tilting his chin back to look down at me. I smile just enough to flash my own fangs.
I promise you, I’m a hungrier stray than you are.
“We’ll take two halyics.” I produce a single, crumpled-up ten-dollar bill from my back pocket, and slide it across the counter.
The baker looks at the money, then back at my face. “Sorry. Fae currency only.”
I’m... What?
I look to the glass cases. Clear as day, the prices for each pastry are written on little notecards next to their display, each one written in USD. As it has been for my entire life, everywhere in Asalin.
Fae currency still exists, sure, but it came from Faery. It’s the same few thousand coins that’ve been floating around for the last five hundred years. Most people won’t spend them anymore, if they have them, just hoarding them in keepsake boxes and passing them down to their children. For a while in the very early days after their arrival here, fae relied on bartering as a means of currency, but long before I was born, they’d started integrating money from the human world into their system. It was one of the earliest ways they adapted, one of the smallest, simplest steps they took.
There is no such thing as a store that accepts only fae currency.
“That’s bullshit,” I answer him finally, though I do snatch the money back.
He smiles as if amused by my answer. “That’s business. I don’t have to serve anyone who doesn’t follow my rules.” I want to hit him until his smile turns red. “Not even the prince’s little friend.”
“Now, wait just a minute.” Briar slaps her hand against the countertop, her own yellow energy, brighter and bolder than the baker’s, flaring to life. “That’s discrimination!”
He looks into her face and laughs. Laughs. “And?”
Blackness blooms along my fingers, stretching up to my palms, along my wrists. Though I can’t see it through my sleeves, I know it’s crawling its way to the insides of my elbows. I grit my teeth, hands balling into fists in front of me even as fire licks beneath the surface of my skin.
Years, I went without my magic flaring. Years, I managed to keep the fire at bay.
These people bring it out of me. This ugly thing I have no hope of controlling. They turned me into this monster. And as long as I’m around them, it’s all I’ll ever be.
The baker’s laugh disappears. “Get out of my store, you little freak.” He motions to Briar with one clawed hand. “And take your empty sack of flesh with you.”
The wood of his countertop beneath my fists begins to smoke and singe. His eyes widen, and he takes a step back, disgusting yellow energy spilling into the air around him.
“GET OUT! NOW!”
“Wyatt—”
“Is there a problem here, Norman?” a familiar voice lilts from the front of the store.
“Clarke.” Briar lets out a shaky breath, one hand shooting up to grab my shoulder, the other motioning to the baker. “He won’t serve us.”
“As is his right.” Clarke’s heels click against the ground softly as she approaches, coming to a stop at my other side. Her soft-pink energy thrums up against my black. “Just as it is your right to choose not to patronize such an establishment. My many, many connections at the palace and I have that same right.”
“Miss Pierce,” the baker begins, shaking his head frantically, shoulders drooping. “You cannot—”
“I would give serious consideration to telling me what I can and cannot do, Norman.” Clarke turns her head to look at me. At length, I manage to pull my gaze from the baker’s face and meet her stare. “C’mon, Wyatt. It’s after dark.”
The witches are waiting, she doesn’t say.
I manage to nod, pulling away from the counter and turning to follow her out of the bakery. My fists leave two black, burned holes in their wake.
* * *
There are maybe twenty or thirty witches piled in the back room of the little cottage across the street. I’ve never been surrounded by so many witches before. I was never allowed to be around so many witches before. While the rest of my kind mingled in the streets and made their own little community within Asalin, my parents kept me in a viselike grip, watching my every move, making sure I didn’t associate with those they considered beneath them. They wanted so desperately to believe I wasn’t like the others—and eventually, that desperation lead to their own downfall. If I’d been allowed the resources I needed, if I’d been supported in learning to control my magic, how differently my life might’ve shaped up...
But I wasn’t, and I wasn’t, and it didn’t, and now here I am, surrounded by strangers, every single one of them staring at me.
“Found them,” Clarke says in a sort of singsong as she closes the door behind us and slides a dead bolt into place. “They were at Norman’s.”
“Oh, you do not want to go there,” announces a girl who appears a few years older than us. She’s striking to look at, a few inches taller than me, built thick and muscular, with cool-toned black skin and sharp features. Her hair is left long and braided on one side, dyed a deep shade of purple, while the other half is shaved. The leather jacket and combat boots make her look like she’s ready to fight, if needed. “The stale food is not worth his even staler attitude.”
“Yeah, we gathered as much,” Briar mumbles in response.
I’m still bristling from the encounter, my heart bouncing against my breastbone so hard it might break, like an alarm clock ringing itself right off the shelf.
The room is dark and cramped, everyone squished together on old, antique-looking furniture. This place isn’t decorated the way I’d imagine a top-secret meeting room for a rebellious witch alliance should be. There are little cat trinkets on the shelves, a tray of snacks and tea on the coffee table, and doilies. Like, so many doilies. Everywhere.
Though, as Clarke ushers us to one of the couches, where Jin is sitting, I can make out the sigils painted on the walls. Well, sigil. The same one, repeated over and over again. The one I saw that first day back in Asalin, on the front of the abandoned building.
“What’s it mean?” I ask Jin when I drop down next to them.
They glance at the walls, tilting their head down to whisper at my ear, “It’s a barrier. Keeps the fae out.”
“Most of the fae,” Clarke amends, tugging up one sleeve to flash me a sigil painted in black ink on the inside of her forearm. It looks almost the same as the one on the walls, except this one has a single, thin slash running through it.
Sigils are witch magic. She couldn’t have given that mark to herself, not if she wanted it to actually work. Must’ve been Jin’s work.
“So the fae are barred from entering this place, unless invited by a witch? What’s with all the secrecy, then?”
“Just because they can’t get in here doesn’t mean they wouldn’t wait for us to come out,” snaps a guy about the same age as the purple-haired witch, from where he’s leaning against the table nearest her. He’s got the most skeletal face I’ve ever seen, eyes sunken into his head, gaunt cheekbones, made up for only by full lips and an array of piercings that help fill things out. He’s pale enough to look half-dead, too, and his limp brown hair hangs unkempt to his shoulders. “Drag us into the dungeons, interrogate us about our plotting.”
“Roman, that only happened once. And it was fine.” Jin makes a face, like they don’t really believe their own words.
“It was not fine,” Clarke argues, taking her girlfriend’s hand and giving it a squeeze. “They treated you like a terrorist.”
“The Guard will jump at any excuse to get rid of us,” Roman snaps the words, hard, like a bite. And he’s watching me. “What are you going to do about that, witch king?”
“Excuse me?”
“Roman—” Jin tries to interrupt, but this guy clearly has a bone to pick.
“They think you’re some kind of savior. That you’re going to lead us to salvation. But you don’t look like a messiah to me. And forgive me, but I don’t see how continuing to play by their rules is going to get us anywhere we haven’t already been.” He raises his eyebrows, like he’s waiting for me to argue back.
I blink. I got nothing. He’s right.
“We just got started,” comes a tired, tired voice from the dining table at the far wall. The woman sitting there appears to be in her eighties or older, gray hair pulled up at the top of her head, a notebook open in front of her and a pencil in one hand. She’s wearing a pink floral muumuu. “Can we at least get through the recap before we start th
rowing curses?”
“Of course, Lav.” Jin gets up and moves to stand behind the woman, placing one large hand gently on her back. “Wyatt, Briar, this is Lavender. This is her home. She started this group back in the seventies.”
Lavender. The name brings back a stark memory, one that I didn’t even know existed until this moment.
* * *
I’m young, maybe six or seven, and I’m following at my mother’s back through the village. We’ve just come from the palace, where she spent the day at work and I spent the day hiding in Emyr’s chamber. These are my favorite days, but this is my least favorite part. I wish I could go back. I wish I could be with Emyr all the time.
“Isobel, you cannot avoid me forever,” comes a harsh voice from behind us.
When I turn to try and get a look at the woman, my mother grabs my upper arm and yanks me around so that I’m behind her legs again.
“This is becoming harassment, Lavender.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way.” I can only barely make out hints of the woman, a pantsuit and sensible beige shoes, nothing particularly descript. Certainly not to a child. “But you’re leaving me very little choice. This is important. Your daughter—”
“My daughter is no concern of yours. Your little cult is not going to get their hands on her.”
Lavender sighs. I think she tries to lean around my mom to look at me, but my mother takes a step back, continuing to block her view. “Someday, she’s going to sit on the Throne. She’ll rule over all of us. What you do now, the choices you make, will shape the person she is when that time comes. Don’t you want her to know everything about herself? To be in control of the magic in her body?”
“She’ll be fine. But if you continue trying to induct my child, you won’t be.”
With that, my mother drags me away, grip on my arm tight enough to bruise.
* * *