by Scott, Amber
Chapter Two
The violet glow snaked over shadowy boughs, wound over mossy rock, and drew Ailyn deeper into the wood. The soft glow pulsed, begging her forth. Or was that her growing sense that she’d be finding Maera soon? Her heart pounded in anticipation. She moved one hand to the hilt of her dagger. Should her bow prove the lesser weapon, she had her blade. The other she laid on the tree limbs, feeling her way. The magick invisibly pulled at her. She’d never felt the like.
It hissed. Or was that only the hush of shivering leaves she heard? Aye, on ye go. Follow her fast, lest Maera betrayed the kingdom whole and through.
Ailyn walked deeper into the glade, readying to take Maera by surprise and then to demand answers. How could Maera up and flee? Did she not fathom the weight of her every action in these precious hours? The banquet had been solemn, aye, but the circumstances called for such. The thousand-year alliance between all four Fae tribes deteriorated alongside the queen’s health day by day.
The dewy floor masked Ailyn’s footsteps conspiring with her. Maera. What’ve ye run from?
Nothing could warrant the princess abandoning her people. Nothing. She’d bet her best saddle that Maera had come here. Of course she had come here. Ailyn could feel it in her bones, no longer chilled in the near-wintry night air, but eerily warm instead. The glade was strange and different compared to her childhood memories.
The violet wisp stole away, forcing Ailyn to increase her pace. The pull of it strengthened. Wrapping resolve around her like a blanket against the cool fear inside herself, Ailyn stepped into the sacred space. For a scant moment, she could not move. Her breath left her. She’d never beheld such beauty as the rippling glow above the glassy pond.
Magick. True and pure. The likes of her ancestors. The kind her mother’s mother weaved tales around. Impossible tales only a child would wish were real.
A ripple of azure moved up the gauzy mist. Ailyn found her breath again. The veil that concealed the Fae realm from man’s hateful eye thinned by the second.
She shouldn’t get so close. No Fae, noble or common, dared get close to the portal. One memory of such a thing did exist, should she let her mind live it again. Bands of water, spiraling outward from the small tip of a child’s finger. The child’s hand touching the water, so close to that portal, reaching out to touch the glow….
A new prickle on her skin brought her attention back to the glade. She tore her gaze away, squatting. She unsheathed her blade, awareness sneaking over her scalp, down her back. Movement caught her eye.
Ailyn hissed her anger, the sharp noise piercing the stillness. Maera?
A breeze moved the leaves louder, fingering through her hair in cold warning. Her vision focused as the shadowy figure approached the water’s edge. She pulled the arrow taut against the string, watchful, ready. Aye. Ailyn knew the line of those wings. Her princess was found. And she was alone.
Ailyn shot to her feet and strode forth. “Maera!” she called, anger welling in her chest.
Maera swung to face her. The light illuminated her future queen’s alabaster skin. “Ailyn? By Brigit, you scared me.” Her hand trembled atop her breastbone.
“Who brought you here?” Ailyn said, barely containing her derision despite keen cognizance of her station. “Are you alone?”
Maera’s eyes narrowed. “Aye. I came alone.” She backed away a step, which took her into the water. The tips of her wings sank. “You can lower your bow. I’m safe. Did Colm come with you?”
“My liege, no, I ... I ...” She didna have the courage to lie, and her relief warred with her anger. Guilt found room, too, plucking her chest. She should have insisted that Colm and she stay together. She should have somehow brought the whole lot of the guard with her. “I’ve come alone.”
Ailyn trod with care, needing to be closer, lest Maera get too near the portal. The glowing ripple above the pond’s center thickened, flirting for her attention. She shook off the effect, directing her mind to her duty. To her kingdom’s future.
“Alone? Are you certain?” Maera’s penetrating gaze tripped Ailyn’s heart anew. Fifteen years it had been since last they’d been here.
Small hands braiding pink petal flowers into a crown. One for Maera, one for Ailyn. Muddy toes dipping into cool waters. Heavy magick on the horizon under a bright moon. Maera had comforted Ailyn’s broken heart then. She’d convinced Ailyn to leave the glade, her hiding place, before the portal could seduce them in.
Ailyn willed the images back behind memory’s jagged curtain. They were no longer children. No longer playmates. “I’ve come to escort you back, my liege.”
“Me? Go back?” Maera laughed hollowly. “No. You are who must go back, Ailyn. Not I. Tell them you couldna find me.”
A flash of anger warmed her chest anew. But a small voice inside her warned to take care. Maera was not herself. The indrawn shoulders. The tremor in her glorious wings as she lifted her skirts and backed another step into the water. A thousand pleas darted through Ailyn’s mind only to leave unspoken. She stepped closer, recognizing the fear in her princess’ bearing.
“My liege, stop please,” Ailyn said, holding out both hands, struggling to keep her voice light. Lighter than her heart. “Lest you chill your bones through.”
“I feel naught but warmth here, Ailyn. Hope. Possibility.” Her voice did not sound hopeful, though. Maera’s frown deepened as she glanced behind her. “D’you think it is true?” She paused for three heartbeats. “That if you pass through, a part of you remains here, as they say?”
Ailyn scowled. She did not like her princess’ uncharacteristically fanciful tone. “Nay, Maera, dinna consider it. Nothing can be so terrible that you would attempt the veil.”
Maera’s hands settled—one to her throat, the other on her stomach. Grief contorted her features. Ailyn strode closer, weighing the risk of scaring Maera against the danger of her proximity to the portal. She could not ignore, either, the longing building within her to touch the pulsing hue herself.
“Leave me now, Ailyn,” Maera said, her tone harsh. “I will not go back. I relieve you of your duty to me. Go.”
Foolishness! Her childhood friend was made of stronger stuff than this, surely. She nearly shouted as much, but something held her back. Her station permitted no argument, while her duty forced her to stay her course. Protect Maera. Protect the kingdom.
With only a few feet separating them, perchance she should pounce on Maera and drag her by her raven hair to safety. They’d be too equally matched, though. Maera taller, Ailyn stronger.
She should have forced Colm to listen.
Conjuring one other tactic, Ailyn strolled over and plopped down at the water’s edge. She yanked off her boots and hiked each pant leg high, re-strapping their leather bindings with much ado. “I have not come to beg you back. I know better than to force your hand.” Ailyn nodded to the lavender blur as though her every muscle did not bunch in awareness of its danger. “How long now?”
Maera eyed her with caution. “I canno’ say.”
Ailyn watched the shimmer with careful fascination. “It is their sacred day, is it not?”
Shrugging one shoulder, Maera murmured, “Who is to say what conjures the veil?”
Ailyn let silence swell around them, readying for Maera to make her move. So much hung in the balance this night.
The queen’s once-brilliant golden wings, said to outshine Anu’s own, had wilted. Then blackened. And a fortnight past, the edges disintegrated. A concerned kingdom followed Maera’s every step and sneeze since the day her mother fell ill.
“My liege, please, come out of the water a moment at least. I shall not stop you, but I’ll neither be leaving.”
Maera regarded Ailyn a long moment and then waded over, hiking her filmy skirts high, then sitting down. Ailyn realized those skirts could aid her. Wet and tangled as they were, if she swept Maera’s feet out from under her, wound them about…. Bah! She’d planned this poorly, she had.
The lavend
er air rippled with deep azure. At the center, the mirrorlike surface of the water began extending upward. The portal was opening. She had to get Maera away. How?
By changing her mind.
“What are you planning here, my liege?” Ailyn asked.
“Not planning. Executing. What I must,” Maera said, then sighed. “I wish I could rest my head, shut my eyes, and awake to it all being a dream. A terrible dream.”
Ailyn’s chest ached. Losing her mother, faced with four nations’ futures…aye. Ailyn couldn’t begin to guess the weight of Maera’s burden.
Ailyn set her bow and quivers on the ground beside her and attempted a light tone. “Sleep? Here in the mud, then?” She dug her toes into the wet dirt as demonstration. The dirt was damned cold. “Aye, cozy. Far better than returning, to be sure. Might I join you?”
Maera cracked the smallest, briefest of smiles. “You’d be sorely missed.”
“As are you this very moment.”
Bunching her wings in tight, Maera set her chin upon her knees, her gaze transfixed to the widening light. “They are better off without me.”
Ailyn’s heart tore. She wished she could knock shoulders with her liege, turn this “passing through” notion into a jest. To somehow make Maera look Ailyn in the eye, and swear all would be right and well. But all was not right. Nor well.
“D’you think it true what they say?” Maera said, squeezing her eyes shut a moment.
“What who say?” she finally braved asking.
“If we crossed,” Maera said, fingering the muddy edge of one wing. “And all our body survived to the other side. D’you think the mortals truly hunt us? Use our skins for skirts and our bones for their lost magick?”
“Skins for skirts? By Morrigan! What a hideous image that conjures! Who told you such a tale?” A tale she knew well enough, too, though.
She shrugged, a grin threatening her cheeks but not her eyes. “The guard.”
Ailyn grimaced. She’d heard worse among them, but Maera should never have. “Aye, and the intentions of my peerage prove honorable yet again.”
Water lapped at their feet, a bit higher, faster. The glassy center stretched higher and wider, a full myriad of colors at play.
“My mother passed through once.” Maera stared, entranced.
“Of course she did. In a merrow’s sealskins and with the bloodstone in hand, no doubt.” Ailyn imagined Tullah passing through the portal, sneaking about among barbaric humans. The very thought made her sicken. Maera’s stare pinned her, though, sobering her. “Are ye serious? The queen? How?”
“I haven’t any idea. She walked up and stepped right through, I suppose.”
As legend told any faerie of noble blood. At least Maera was talking. Contemplating rather than attempting. She had to keep her talking and pray someone would find them in time. Between the allure of the portal and her own meager negotiation skills, ’twas a miracle Maera still sat beside her.
“I dinna mean how she made the passage,” Ailyn continued. The water glowed. The power beckoned inside her like a seductive whisper to her soul. Certainly Maera felt the pull, too. The longing. The heart-deep need. “I ken the laws of it.” She couldn’t hide the edge in her voice. “I meant how do ye know such a thing?”
Maera’s hard stare matched Ailyn’s tone. This time, the shafts of gray in the princess’ blue eyes held resolve. “Last night. My mother whispered a tale to me. She told me of the bloodstone and swore it was real. She bade me retrieve it.”
Shivers raced over Ailyn’s skin. The queen had whispered words to Ailyn as well, though not last night. Not about the mythical bloodstone, either. Words far more cryptic had escaped her parched lips. He will kill her.
“She held my hand in hers,” Maera said. “And spoke of how she’d left our realm. She clutched my hand and wouldn’t let go until I repeated her words.”
Ailyn swallowed against welling emotion. Tullah was more than their queen. The woman had given Ailyn every kindness through her orphaned years.
“I thought she would die. Right there with no one save me to bear witness.”
Ailyn bit down, lest her lip tremble. She did not want to hear of the moment Tullah did in fact die. “Was she lucid, then?” she asked instead.
“Aye. Lucid enough.” Maera drew up her legs and stood. She shook out her long skirts. “She survived.”
Survived? For months, the kingdom had lived and breathed a deathwatch. Waiting for word that their beloved queen had returned to the goddess.
Maera could be next.
Soft color danced over Maera’s filmy blue dress. For a moment, Ailyn stared, fixated by the layers, a flurry of wishes rising inside her.
For a strange moment, time suspended and all serious matters hung with it, light, airy. Not gone, but weightless. Then Maera stood and walked deeper into the water. She did not lift her skirts but let them pool on the surface, then sink, further seducing Ailyn’s gaze.
The veil’s deep colors whispered over the garment and the water. So tempting. She stood as well, preparing to physically stop her princess.
“Do ye ever wonder what would it be like?” Maera said. Her voice sounded far away and her attention veered to the color-dancing air at the center of the small, still pond. “A different life. A different birthright?”
Different birthright? The air shifted. Ailyn’s neck hairs lifted.
“Curiosity is natural, methinks.” Fear tickled under her breastbone. Ailyn adjusted her bow so the threads stopped touching her skin. “We dinna have to go back, Maera. Not yet. But let us away from the portal.” New need to leave took hold of her. Someone—something—was coming. “Think of the worry we’re causing.”
But Maera shook her head. “Nay. If I’m to return to where I belong….” She stepped deeper in. “Will you...” The tips of her wings sank below the surface.
“Will I what?” she asked past the tremor in her throat, stepping in deeper also.
Maera pressed a hand to her gut, shaking her head. Ailyn could guess what she wished for. If only Maera didna have to marry. If only her mother had recovered and continued her firm rule. Maera’s wings bowed, wetting further. She wouldna be able to fly.
“The guard is on the way. Colm will arrive at any moment. Let us leave, ’ere they discover us like this.”
Ailyn took in a gulp of air, tasting the water’s mossy scent, the leaves and the heather on her tongue. She went deeper into the cold water, halting when Maera put both hands out. Maera moved in deeper, the water lapping her thighs, her skirts a wide circle of watery light. “Maera, you cannot.”
“Can you hear it, Ailyn?”
Her heart hitched. Hear what? The mad beating of her pulse? The hiss of the leaves? Desperation gripped her. “Get out of the water, Maera! The cold alone will be biting off yer toes.”
“The music, Ailyn. I can feel it in my veins.” Maera closed her eyes for a breath. When she opened her eyes, they shone bright. “There’s little else I can do, Ailyn. I wish I could tell you, that I could make you understand. Find Colm. He’ll understand what to do.”
The icy water did more than bite. It snarled and cut. Ailyn thrust forward, reaching for Maera’s arm, intent on yanking her back to shore. Maera dodged, diving toward the shimmer. Within two strokes, she reached her hand out so that her fingertips disappeared into the glow. “If it’s true...”
“Stop!” Fear careened through Ailyn. She dove forward, her footing slipping, and her balance off. “Maera, stop this madness!”
“There is much you canno’ know, Ailyn…”
Ailyn fought to correct her clumsy stroke in the water. The string of her bow clutched her neck. She had to get to Maera. “Think of your people, Maera!” The icy water attacked her skin and muscle.
“I am.”
Heat radiated off the shimmer in stark contrast to the icy depths beneath. Tossing off her bow and quiver of arrows, Ailyn stretched her right arm, kicking and twisting in the water. Her fingers touched Maera’s sleeve.
Just one more push and—
Her childhood playmate—of a time, her heart sister—glanced back, parted her lips, and then vanished.
“Maera, no!” Ailyn screamed, piercing the sudden quiet. She dove for the sparkling surface, sweeping her arms wide. She reached and felt for her friend. “Maera!” she half-sobbed.
Maera had merely gone under.
Certainly not through.
Let her be beneath.
Please, only beneath!
On a deep gulp of air, Ailyn dove under. The water yawned around her, swallowing her up. Her toes found the bottom, and then slipped off. The glow of the veil lit the pool, showing a tangle of emerald reeds along the murky bottom. No sign of Maera. Ailyn pushed, twisted, and searched for some glimpse of skirts. Her lungs began to burn. She needed to surface. But a slip of milky blue snared her hopes. She pushed toward it.
Her chest felt afire. She needed air. She kicked hard, panic pulling her down. Closer. So close. She reached out, almost touching the thin softness, readying to yank it upward with her. But the material slipped through her fingers and survival took over. Cursing Maera for her recklessness, Ailyn swam upward.
She broke the water’s surface gasping and coughing. The icy water seemed impossibly colder, or was it the frosty air on her face? “Maera?” The glow of the veil was gone. Nothing but shadows and darkness met her eyes, a flickering of a faint, distant light beyond the trees.
“My liege?” she called again, her voice raspy. She got no answer.
Taking a new chestful of air, she dove back under. But the light was gone. Naught but inky darkness met her. She swam anyhow, reaching, feeling for a limb or fabric until again her protesting lungs forced her to surface. “Maera!” she shouted.
Only the echo of her voice answered. She strained to hear more, and a low hum teased her ears. Ailyn pressed her shaking lips together and swam toward the shore. In the distance between the trees, a light flickered. Taking one more searching glance around her and finding no signs of life, she saw little else to do but head toward the light.
Chapter Three