The Witch King

by H. E. Edgmon

  The way she asks the question, I’m pretty sure she knows about the contract. Emyr was right. Gossip does travel in Asalin.

  “Not the way I hoped,” is all I can answer, because I don’t want to talk about it. Even if I tried, I’m not sure actual words would come out instead of whimpering. If I’m a feral dog, I’m officially a kicked one. “You gonna tell me what this is all about? Since when are you one of the Guard?”

  “Oh, no. Not one of the Guard. The Head of the Guard.” Tessa points to the white lines on her red coat, the ones that mark her rank. There are five of them.

  I can only blink.

  She continues. “Emyr’s first order as king. Said they needed to bring in someone from the outside to take Derek’s position, someone he knew wasn’t in league with him and his followers. Because someone here helped him and Clarke escape last night.”

  “What?” Something like cold dread erupts in me, steel marbles of fear spilling over the edge of the table where my sternum sits and landing on the floor of my gut.

  “Yup. They weren’t there this morning. We’re putting together a search team to find them.” She shakes her head. “And, uh, seriously, the dungeon could maybe use tighter security.”

  I would laugh if everything weren’t terrible. “Right. Well, congratulations, I guess.”

  “Ha.” She huffs, crossing her arms over her chest. Her translucent wings shimmy and shake at her back, flicking off droplets of rain. “Congratulations? Please. Do I look like I want to run this thing?”

  “Why’d you say yes, then?” I ask the question around a yawn. Something about talking to Emyr has taken it out of me, leaving me depleted of all my energy. I think about the days after the riot, not leaving my bed, sleeping constantly. There is a part of me that wants to go take that nap and just never wake up.

  Small part of me.

  Tessa shrugs one delicate shoulder. “Because he’s right. Someone from the outside does have to do it. And it gave me the authority to issue my first order. Your witches will be back in Asalin by morning.”

  That manages to perk me up, at least a little. “Jin and the others?”

  “Mmm-hmm. They’ve all been exonerated.” Her green eyes cut left and right, then she adds, “Whoever it was that helped them escape, I’m sure their heart was in the right place. Never should’ve been arrested to begin with, really.”

  “Right...” The kingdom is going to look very different from here on out. Emyr on the Throne. Tessa heading up the Guard. We’ve ushered in a new era.

  It’s just not one I’m going to be part of.

  “So,” I say, instead of cutting out my own heart the way I sort of feel like doing. “You think you’ll keep the job, then?”

  “I don’t know, Wyatt. I just—” She sighs, the sound rolling like a wave through her whole body. “Is this even a job that should exist?”

  “What do you mean?” I want to keep up with her, want to be present. But everything feels simultaneously like too much and nothing at all. Head full, but still somehow absolutely no thoughts.

  “I mean...yeah, maybe I’m one of the good guys. But the Guard has spent so long terrorizing people. Targeting people. Lying and manipulating and twisting the system to their advantage. Maybe we don’t need a good person taking control. Maybe we just don’t need the Guard at all.”

  What would Asalin look like without the Guard? It’s hard for me to imagine. My first thought is that there wouldn’t be anyone to protect us.

  My second is that the Guard has never protected me a day in my life.

  When I don’t say anything, Tessa pushes on. “And I love Emyr. I do. I think he’s going to be great as king. But... I don’t know. Don’t you think the whole concept of a monarchy is a little outdated? I’m just thinking out loud. I don’t know. We’re changing the systems. And that’s great. But maybe the systems don’t need to be changed.”

  “Maybe we need to burn them to the ground.”

  I stare at her and she stares back, and after a long moment, she says quietly, “Yeah. Maybe so.”

  Someone calls her name, and she twists her head and nods.

  “You gotta go,” I say before she can tell me goodbye.

  “Yeah. Duty calls.” Another eye roll. “But hey, I’m gonna find you later. I wanna hear about what happened with Emyr, okay?”

  I’m not going to agree to talk about it, because I don’t know if that’s an agreement I can keep. Instead, I grumble and wave her off, then enter the castle as she heads off to talk to one of her subordinates.

  Things seem quiet inside. Too quiet for a kingdom that was just overhauled over the span of a few days. Too quiet for a kingdom whose most wanted prisoners are now on the loose.

  Kadri is in the foyer, standing before the window overlooking the front lawns, leaning against her cane. Her energy is dragging, sweeping toward the ground. But when the front doors close behind me and her eyes shift in my direction, it snaps back to attention. Gray smoke furiously bubbles at her shoulders.

  “You have a great deal of nerve being anywhere near me right now, Wyatt Croft.”

  “I never planned to hurt Emyr.”

  “Only to aid a traitor in stealing the Throne.”

  Right, well. She does have a point.

  I’m going to forgive myself, I think. Eventually, someday, I’m going to have to learn how to slot the pieces of my heart back together and forgive myself for everything I’ve done. I’m going to have to let go of the anger I’ve been holding on to, the idea of the life I could’ve had that I destroyed. Twice. Because I have to. If I want to survive, I have to.

  But Kadri is Emyr’s mother. I don’t expect her to show me that same grace.

  After a pause, she asks, “Have you been to see Emyr?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How does he seem?”

  Heartbroken. Betrayed. Quietly furious. I shrug. “Okay, I guess.”

  She nods, her fingers gliding against the head of her cane, sharp eyes studying me still. Finally, she says, “It changes a person.”

  “What does?”

  “Rising from the dead.” Something like fear hides in the even timbre of her voice.

  I remember, with a jolt, what Emyr said about his mother. She was brought back to life with Healing magic. And now it’s not working. It can’t keep her here much longer.

  She may simply slip away, unable to ever be revived again.

  How long until Emyr slips away? How long can my magic, this magic I don’t even understand, keep him here? How many years? How many days?

  “One cannot undo death, not really. It is a specter that lingers forever once it touches a soul. Especially when one’s death was not an accident.”

  I want to ask her if she really can’t remember what happened the night she plummeted from the tower. When she lost her life. But I can’t seem to make my mouth form the question.

  “My son will never be the same again,” Kadri tells me before turning and walking away, leaving me in the foyer with nothing but my racing thoughts and my grief.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  THE FOOL

  “Do you really have to go?” Jin whimpers the words.

  I look up from packing my duffel bag, but quickly realize they’re probably talking to Briar. Jin’s sitting at the vanity in our room with Briar behind them, twisting little stems of baby’s breath into their short, dark hair.

  They landed in Asalin a few hours ago, and Briar took on the role of breaking the news about Clarke to them. They haven’t left her side since. Right now, yellow and purple dance against each other until their edges turn into one vibrant shade of peach.

  “I really do. But we’ll keep in touch. And maybe I’ll be back to visit.”

  Tears well in Jin’s dark eyes, and they tilt their head forward, pressing it against the vanity top, big shoulders tremb
ling. “I’ve had a very bad day. I wish you would stay.”

  Briar looks at me. I look back. What am I supposed to say?

  What’s done is done.

  “This is your fault,” Jin mumbles, shooting me a glower that lacks any real heat. “You and Emyr need to figure your shit out.”

  “We’ve figured our shit out.” I shrug. “Just because we love each other doesn’t mean we fit. We need different things.”

  “And what you need is to run away again? Really?” They sniff. “At least neither of you is an attempted murderer. You just need to stop being such complete dipshits. No relationship is perfect.”

  “I think when people say that, they usually mean one person prefers Italian and the other would rather eat sushi. Not one person tried to coerce someone into an unwanted marriage and the other planned to help their archnemesis steal their crown.”

  Jin rolls their eyes, energy buzzing a little brighter as they sit up to argue with me. “First of all, what kind of person prefers Italian over sushi? Ew. Dump them. Second of all, that is not what people mean when they say that. And honestly, you both screwed up so fantastically that you might actually be perfect for each other.”

  I shrug. I don’t know what to say. Briar and I are leaving for the airport in an hour. It feels like my future’s been sealed. At least the next few hours of it.

  Jin stares at themself in the mirror, watching Briar’s hands work their way through their hair. “Really, everyone makes mistakes. That doesn’t mean they’re bad people.”

  I stare at them for a long moment. I don’t ask if they think Clarke is a bad person for what she did. I’m worried I might not like the answer. Stockholm syndrome is a hell of a drug.

  “Okay, all done,” Briar says quietly, stepping back to observe her work on Jin’s hair. She smiles, stroking her fingertips against their shoulders. “Can we go say goodbye to Auriga and Summanus before I have to leave?”

  “For you, anything.” Jin stands, leveling me with a hard look. “You will come back and visit, won’t you?”

  “Sure,” I mumble, a halfhearted response, but before the two of them slip out the door, I add, “Hey, Jin?”

  “Mmm?”

  “You’ve heard the stories about what I did, right? The way my magic came off me? How it killed that fae the night of the riots and brought Emyr back?”

  They nod.

  “Do you have any idea how I did that?”

  Jin frowns. “You don’t have any control of your magic, Wyatt. It did what it needed to do, however it could do it.”

  “Well, do you...” I run my tongue against my fangs, twist my hands together in front of my belly. “Do you think, when I come back to visit, you could help me control it?”

  To be able to do that on command. To wield that kind of power, and actually know what I’m doing the whole time. It terrifies and excites me.

  They stare at me and don’t say anything.

  I continue. “I just don’t, uh. I don’t know anything about it. How it works. How I can do the things I do. How to, uh, not do some of the things I can do. And Lavender was going to teach me, before...” I don’t finish that thought. We both know what happened, why Lavender never had a chance to teach me. “Do you think you could help me learn?”

  “Of course.” They rest one big palm against the doorway, eyes narrowing slightly. “But do you really not know where it comes from? Do you not know why you can do what you do?”

  I blink. No. How would I? Everything there is to know about the witches has been hidden from me my entire life.

  When I don’t say anything, Jin continues. “Fae draw their power from the earth around them. Witches draw our power from what we feel. Every emotion in your body. Your magic is a manifestation of them. The fire burns out of control, the darkness drowns you, because you were never given the chance to learn how to channel those feelings. Your magic’s just eating you up, breaking out in whatever way it can whenever you feel too much to keep it in any longer.”

  It’s such an obvious thing and it still somehow manages to knock the wind out of me.

  The memory of Briar’s energy from the night Emyr died burns in my mind. The way her body pressed against mine and her energy crawled beneath my skin and latched on to me from the inside. It was only after that that I managed to bring him back. Magicked healing. Human love. And my desperately clinging to both of them, like a bridge between two worlds.

  Briar once told me my darkness was a form of protection. I needed to protect the people I loved. And apparently I had the ability to do it. Because that darkness rose up and out of my body only when my people were in danger, only when I had to save them.

  Of course, there’s also the fire. The flames constantly burning beneath the surface of my skin, fueled by anger. There are things that don’t need protecting, that need to be burned to the ground, and I’m more than happy to set them ablaze when the situation calls for it.

  But isn’t anger another part of love? Isn’t it just the heart’s way of letting you know a better world is possible?

  “Wait!” I call out when Jin and Briar turn to leave again, apparently taking my silence as a dismissal. When Jin meets my eye for the second time, the words come tumbling out of me. “If our power comes from emotion, wouldn’t that mean it’s infinite?” A beat passes, heavy in the air between us. “Wouldn’t that make us stronger than them?”

  Jin tilts their head forward. “Why else would they hate us this much?”

  And then the two of them are gone.

  Alone in the big room, I’m not sure what to do with myself. There are too many thoughts competing for attention in my head, none of which I want to focus on.

  I’ve written a letter for Emyr, explaining the truth about Briar’s family and what happened with the door. It’s the coward’s way out and I know it. But he doesn’t want to talk to me, doesn’t want to see me again. And if he changes his mind about that, if he’d like to wring my neck once he finds out the truth, he knows where to find me.

  Derek and Clarke are still out there somewhere. God only knows who the rest of their followers are, which fae in the Guard or the Committee ascribe to their screwed-up, genocide-happy beliefs. They aren’t going to stop trying to go after Emyr and the witches.

  And since the witches don’t have any political power here, it’s gonna be all on him to make things right. Emyr’s looking down a long, gruesome battle, and he’s doing it all by himself with no idea who he can or can’t trust.

  I finish packing, shoving what’s left of my things into the duffel bag.

  My fingers ghost against my tarot deck. I haven’t pulled in a few days. But I’m not sure I should now. No, I probably shouldn’t. Do I really want to—

  Oh, it would appear I’m already pulling the deck out of my bag.

  I slide the cards free from their package. They’re a beautiful set, solid matte black without illustrations, just the title and number of each card emblazoned with a gold stamp. The delicate weight of them is familiar on my fingertips. Shuffle. Shuffle.

  My thoughts stay on Emyr, but they stay on more than Emyr. They stay on Asalin. On the other four fae kingdoms, too. The witches and fae living in less than harmony across the globe. The humans living in ignorance of their very existence. Faery, and what might be coming for us through that door.

  All of that is weighing on me when I flip the card over.

  I can’t help but smirk.

  The Fool.

  New possibilities. Starting over. Naive optimism.

  For once, I consciously agree to let love guide me. And I already know what I have to do.

  My boots bang against the marble tile as I race through the hallway toward the Throne room, the sound echoing off the castle walls. I pass Roman, Lorena, and Solomon gathered together with Tessa, and my sister calls out to my back, but I ignore her.

&nbs
p; By the time I reach the king’s private wing at the center of the palace, Wade is leaving the bedroom. He frowns at me, blinking like he isn’t sure he’s really seeing me.

  He looks rough. Dark circles under his eyes, hair disheveled and hanging limply around his neck. He swallows. “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For bringing him back.” Are those tears in Wade’s eyes? “If he’d died because I hesitated to turn Clarke in...if I’d lost him, I never would have forgiven myself.” He sniffs. “I’m still not sure he’s ever going to forgive me.”

  He doesn’t wait for my answer, just heads off down the hall, heels clicking quietly beneath him.

  I feel bad for the guy, I do. Guilt is a horrible thing to carry around.

  But I also have more important things to deal with right now than Wade’s feelings.

  “You need better security,” I inform Emyr’s back when I step into his bedroom.

  The king’s suite is bigger than his old one, but nearly as bare. The biggest bed I’ve ever seen sits in the center, adorned with black silk sheets. There are two golden wardrobes and no windows. He’s standing in front of one, and he turns his head over his shoulder to look at me when he hears my voice.

  A beat passes before he looks back at his clothes. “There is spellwork in place. It prevents anyone with ill intent from entering.”

  “So, I really am pure of heart and dumb of ass, huh?”

  He says nothing.

  “Where did your parents go? You kick them out already?”

  “My mother and father have retired to another suite, which should be of little concern to you.”

  I move over to his bed and sit down on the edge, watching his profile. “Hey, Emyr?”

  “What, Wyatt?”

  “Do you remember when you asked me if I would have brought you with me when I ran away?”

  He pauses, for the briefest moment, before continuing his work. He doesn’t look at me. “Yes.”

  “I would have.” I lick my lower lip, grazing it with my teeth. “Oh, and, hey, Emyr?”

  “What, Wyatt?” He sounds so tired.