The Witch King

by H. E. Edgmon

  When I blink myself back into the present, Lavender’s eyes are trained on my face. “I started something back in the seventies.” She sniffs. “Things are very different now.”

  Jin slides their hand up to squeeze her shoulder before moving to one corner of the room to grab a little tea trolley with a laptop set up on top of it. Like Emyr’s cell phone, at first glance it looks inconspicuous enough. But when Jin pushes the lid of the laptop open, I realize the logo etched into the metal isn’t actually a logo at all, but another sigil.

  “What is that?” I lean in closer to Clarke.

  “One of their many projects,” she answers with a small shake of her head.

  The laptop’s screen is black for a moment, then kicks on to reflect...the room itself. It’s as if a tiny camera that we can’t see is buzzing around the room, flitting from person to person, zooming in on everyone’s face before finally landing on the notebook in Lavender’s hand. When it does, a light on the other side of the computer turns on, and the image on the screen is projected onto the far wall, big enough that we can all see.

  Clarke explains, “They’ve been building their own version of the internet. They’ve already mastered sending spells through the phone. The laptop’s a bigger version of that.” She grins, pride etched on her pretty face as she talks about Jin’s accomplishments. “They’ve even uploaded your contract onto the net.”

  “Huh?”

  “The blood oath that ties you to Emyr. He gave them access to it and they designed magic that would make it digital. They’ve been doing it with other old documents, too.”

  That’s...interesting. The important part of the contract isn’t necessarily the paper it was written on. The magic that happened when Emyr and I mingled our blood, when the Court came together and sealed out fates—it’s inside us now. Part of us. That’s what blood magic is. That’s why, if I broke the contract, it would kill me, no matter where I was.

  Clarke isn’t done with her bragging just yet. “The laptop also has something they’re calling Fae TV.”

  “Fae TV?” Sounds terrible.

  “Mmm. Lets us send a broadcast to anyone with one of these magicked laptops. Was meant to make it easier to connect with people in the other kingdoms, to send messages that we wouldn’t want intercepted by the humans. We record these meetings in case we ever need to publish them on there, to prove we haven’t been doing anything unscrupulous.”

  “Huh. Who all has one of these laptops?”

  “Jin and Emyr. And they sent one to all the royal families, too.”

  “Okay. First things first.” Jin claps their hands. “Is everyone here tonight?”

  “I don’t see Alice and John,” someone offers up.

  “Anyone know where they are?” Jin asks.

  “Probably in bed. I hate newlyweds.” Lavender clicks her tongue disdainfully, scribbling the two names into her notebook.

  Jin makes a face. “I’ll talk to John tomorrow. I seriously doubt either of them has been compromised.”

  I look at Clarke and raise my eyebrows in question.

  She lowers her voice to say, “Like, uh, they’ve turned on the group. Passing information to the Guard or something. Technically, what we’re doing here isn’t illegal. But there are things we talk about that...well, we wouldn’t want them getting back to my brother, so long as it’s avoidable.”

  “All right.” Jin clicks their tongue. “Let’s recap. What have we noticed the last two weeks?”

  “Five more Faery flags went up.” The words come from a tall, thin boy with skin the color of dried tobacco and coily hair pulled into a ponytail. His cat-eye glasses sit poised at the tip of his nose, and his oversize pink sweater threatens to swallow him whole. The purple-haired girl is seated next to him, one hand on his thigh.

  “Five? In two weeks?” Jin rubs a hand over the back of their neck.

  “Yeah, well, two of those went up days after Mrs. Carwin and Mrs. McCough caught Roman lecturing their six-year-olds about their fae privilege.” He pushes his glasses up.

  Roman scowls. “Teach them young, and maybe they won’t grow up to be such shits.”

  “They are not your children to teach.”

  “And thank fuck for that, because if I had some fae brat as my kid, I would—”

  “Stop!” The purple-haired girl casts an angry glare between the both of them until they settle back down in their seats. She looks at Clarke and sighs. “I’m sorry. I try to control them, you know.”

  “It’s all right, Lorena.” Clarke shrugs one dainty shoulder, reaching up to flick her blond curls behind her back as she stands in a flourish of pink energy and gauzy fabrics. She curls her arms around Jin’s waist from behind, settling her cheek against the center of their back. Even with her massive heels, she doesn’t even reach their shoulders. “If the worst I get called is a brat, I’d say that’s still privilege.”

  Jin smiles, rubbing their palm against the back of Clarke’s hand, tilting their head back to kiss her gently.

  Roman makes a face at the two of them before looking back to the sweatered guy. “Solomon, she talks about us like we’re her dogs instead of her boyfriends.”

  “You are a dog,” Lorena and Solomon answer in response.

  Roman throws his hands up.

  “I’m going to have to insist that Jin bars you two from these meetings if you keep monopolizing every single conversation.” Lavender taps the tip of her pen against her notebook. “Five new flags. Anyone know what brought about the other three?”

  “Not exactly.” Lorena clears her throat, glances at me and then quickly away. “Though they did all appear after Wyatt’s return.”

  All eyes on me again. I would like to disappear forever. I would like to stop embodying a physical form altogether. Thanks.

  “Right...” Lavender slides her tongue against her front teeth. “Anything else?”

  “Delilah has decided to leave Asalin,” a soft-spoken witch, probably in her thirties or forties, pipes up. The man beside her takes her hand. “She says there’s nothing for her here. She wants to go to a human school in New York City. She’s been working on fabricating transcripts to apply.”

  Delilah must be their kid. Statistically speaking, fae/witch couples are only a little more likely to produce witch offspring than fae/fae couples, but witch/witch couples have the highest rates by far. For that reason, witches are usually dissuaded from procreating at all.

  At least, witches who aren’t bound to the fae prince.

  “Oh, Miranda.” Jin turns away from Clarke to look at the woman, shaking their head. “I know you wanted her to stay. But maybe she’ll be happier.”

  She’ll definitely be happier, I want to say. I don’t know much about what the witch children in Asalin get up to, because I was never allowed to know. There’s a little school I always wanted to be part of, though I have no idea what the lessons are like. Once they graduate, most of them end up working for pennies at the palace. Or leaving. Witches like Jin, with high-ranking, important careers and connections to the royal line, are practically unheard of.

  “And what could I even say to convince her not to go?” Miranda asks, eyes wet as she squeezes her companion’s hand. “She isn’t wrong, is she? Every day, it feels more and more like she’s right. There’s nothing here for her. Or any of us.”

  “That’s not true.” Jin moves across the crowded room to crouch in front of Miranda, arms balanced on their legs. “We won’t see the kind of changes we’d like overnight, but we’re doing what needs to be done. We’re sticking together. We’re supporting one another. And soon, with Wyatt on the Throne—”

  “Give me a break, Jin.” Roman doesn’t let them finish. “The poor woman is terrified about sending her only kid off to a world she knows nothing about. Don’t condescend to us about how Wyatt the Awaited One is going to swoop in and save witchk
ind. It was hardly believable before he got here, and it’s not any more so now. For crying out loud, look at him.”

  I was really enjoying everyone definitely not looking at me, too focused on the arguing and the back-and-forth. But now, all the eyes in the room snap right back toward where they started, scrutinizing me like some kind of bug. I want to burst into flame.

  Of course, Briar refuses to take the criticism lightly. “Wyatt could do a lot of good for Asalin. He’s a good person. He will make a great king.”

  She says it with so much conviction, as if she doesn’t know I have zero intention of sticking around and doing any good here. Besides, I will not make a great king. I know it. And I suspect most of the people in this room know it.

  “King of what? King of the witches? We’re hardly people, as far as the fae are concerned. King of the fae? They’ll never recognize his authority. He’s going to be king of sitting next to Emyr North and looking pretty for the next eighty years.” Roman might as well have plucked the thoughts from my head. “I say Delilah is right. Screw Asalin. This place isn’t doing anything for us. We should all leave. Now. Take root in the human world.” His eyes glint with something fierce and familiar.

  “I don’t think it will be what you’re imagining. Even in the human world, we will be expected to play by fae rules.” Miranda shakes her head.

  “They can expect whatever they want! What are they gonna do to us if we just bounce?” Roman laughs. “They won’t risk exposing themselves to humans, even if it means not keeping us in line.”

  Oh, okay, I think I might be falling in love with Roman. I bob my head as I say, “That’s what Derek is afraid of. That integrating more and more risks exposure.”

  Roman points one gnarled finger at my chest. “Do not say that cretin’s name in my presence.”

  Lorena frowns and offers Clarke another apologetic look. “Sorry.”

  Clarke only shrugs.

  “Witches leaving Asalin behind will do nothing but give the fae precisely what they want—our exile. And then what will we do? Force ourselves to play by the rules of humans, to avoid risking exposure ourselves?” Solomon’s tone is scathing. “We have been robbed of feeling at home anywhere we go. Of having anything that belongs to us anywhere. But we have just as much right to Earth and to Faery as anyone else.” His voice rises an octave higher.

  “Oh, shut up about Faery!” Roman throws back at him. “Faery is dead! The only people with any right to that realm are a bunch of corpses!”

  “That isn’t what Emyr thinks.”

  Briar’s voice is even and soft, but it manages to quiet the whole room. Everyone turns to look at her, including me. She flushes under the scrutiny but juts out her chin all the same.

  “What does that mean?” Lorena demands.

  “Well...” Briar glances at me. “Isn’t that what he said the other night at dinner? That Emyr thinks Faery might be inhabitable? That it could be healed with the right magic?”

  Slowly, I explain, “He mentioned that. But he doesn’t have any proof.”

  “How would we get proof?” Solomon is leaning forward, eyes sharp and intense. Too intense. It’s unsettling, really.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Emyr wants to go through the door,” Briar pushes. “That’s what you said, right? He’s trying to convince his father to open it and send another team through, Healers instead of warriors this time.”

  “I remember when Leonidas’s group went through the door the first time,” Lavender says, tone grave. “Many died. I cannot imagine he will let his son try it. No, that door stays locked for a reason.”

  “But if the prince is right...” Solomon presses, standing up and pacing back and forth across the floor, nearly jostling other witches with his elbows as he does. “If we could open the door to Faery and survive on the other side—”

  “The fae could return there,” Briar finishes for him, her dark eyes alight. “And the witches could have Asalin for themselves.”

  “And every other fae village across the globe,” Solomon snaps, standing up straighter. “Our persecution is not limited to our own borders. Our siblings across the seas face similar circumstances.”

  Briar leans in closer, the two of them clearly sharing some kind of moment. “You could all finally be free. You could even begin to integrate—”

  “Into the human world! And when witches are born into Faery—”

  “They could pass them back through the door to you, here.”

  A beat goes by before Clarke says, “Well, if no one else is going to say it, I will. You are off your rocker, Sol.”

  The room erupts in shouting. People keep throwing fingers in each other’s faces, spewing obscenities and accusations. Jin towers above them all, trying to quiet the chaos by asking, over and over again, that everyone please sit down so they can have an earnest conversation.

  Solomon says something to Roman that makes him so angry he storms out the back door. I wait a moment more, and when the fighting doesn’t stop, I stand and try to ease out after him.

  Lavender catches me just before I manage to bolt. “Wyatt!”

  Her eyes are so icy blue they could be white, and they’re boring into me when I turn to look at her. She pushes herself up from the table, shuffling past a few people still screaming at each other, to join me in front of the door. “Perhaps, when things are less...loud, you could come back and see me. Just the two of us.”

  I want to make a joke about her not being my type, because I think it would be very funny. But something about this woman is unsettlingly authoritative, and instead I just say, “Um, sure.”

  “You are very behind in your development.” Oh, okay. I mean, she’s not wrong, but ow. “It’ll take a lot to get you back on track, but I’ll do my best.”

  As she toddles away, toward a little trolley with a teakettle, I lock eyes with Clarke across the room. She snickers, like she finds it funny I’m underdeveloped.

  I huff, and finish my escape outside.

  Roman is leaning against a tree in Lavender’s backyard, his maroon red energy sizzling and crackling around him like a firework about to go off. His head jerks up when he hears me approaching, and he scowls.

  “Leave me alone, Croft. I don’t want to hear about your grand plans for witch revolution.”

  “I don’t have any grand plans.” I lean against the other side of the tree, shoving my hands into the front pocket of my hoodie. “I’m a clueless seventeen-year-old who didn’t ask for any of this.”

  Roman snorts out, “Weird flex, but okay,” and I sense he agrees with me. At least about my being clueless. After a moment more, he asks, “Does your boyfriend seriously think he could get back into Faery?”

  I bristle at Emyr being referred to as my boyfriend, but there’s really no use arguing about that. Not right now, anyway. “He thinks there’s a chance. But he also thinks he and I are going to live happily ever after, so, you know.”

  “So, he’s even more clueless than you are?”

  “That’s what I’m thinking, yeah.”

  He snorts again, then sighs, casting a look toward the back of the house. “They all just want something to believe in. No matter how ridiculous, they want to feel like they have choices that aren’t just...”

  “Burning it all down?”

  Our eyes meet, and he inclines his head. “Burning it all down.”

  “But you know better?”

  He considers me for a moment, as if debating how much he wants to say. Finally, he turns his head back to the sky, offering me the bony slope of his jaw. “My parents are both in the Guard. They’ve got six kids. I’m the only witch.” He smiles a smile that isn’t really a smile, that’s just a show of teeth. “They were on their way to leave me in the woods when Lavender stopped them. Begged them to let her take me. Promised she’d never tell me who they were, ne
ver tell anyone. That their shame could stay buried.”

  I frown, raising my eyebrows. “How’d you find out, then?”

  “Uh, because I have two brain cells? Because people in Asalin don’t know how to mind their own business, ever? There was a pregnant woman, and then she wasn’t pregnant anymore, but there was no baby, and then Lavender mysteriously shows up with a kid? It was an open secret.” Roman slides his teeth against his lower lip. “One day, Lorena, Sol, and I are about thirteen. We’re playing in the creek in the woods. Using mud to draw runes on stones and casting them, trying to see our futures. And my father shows up. Starts accusing us of casting hexes. I don’t know why. Don’t know where it came from. Guess he saw some magic he didn’t understand and got scared. Or maybe he’d just been waiting for thirteen years to finally get rid of me.”

  That sounds ominous. I frown, shuffling a few steps closer to Roman. “What happened?”

  “He tried to arrest us. I may have gotten a bit angry. I told him I knew he was my dad. And he...” A haunted film settles across Roman’s dark eyes. He’s here, but he isn’t. “Anyway, Lorena’s mom is in the Guard, too. Solomon’s dad is one of Queen Kadri’s personal attendants. If they hadn’t both spoken out on my behalf, well. I think Daddy would’ve gotten what he wanted.”

  To finally get rid of him.

  Roman coughs into his fist, finally dragging his attention back to me. “Suffice to say, I know the issues between the fae and witches aren’t going to be solved with fairy tales or hugs or a wedding between two clueless kids.”

  I slide my tongue against my teeth but say nothing. He isn’t wrong. The witches are looking for liberation. Maybe, as king, I would have the power to give it to them. Or at least to influence things to move in the right direction.

  What does it say about me that I intend to run instead?

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  SOME THINGS NEVER CHANGE

  Since stealing one of their dragons did nothing for my cause, today I’m going to steal the fae’s drugs.

  Well, technically it isn’t a drug. Technically the morghira is a flower.