by Erin Hayes
That smile changed his entire demeanor. Without it, his face was harsh and commanding. The burnished copper of his skin reflected the metallic hardness of his features. His straight, hawkish nose pointed to those lips, the overall effect almost cruel.
Until the harshness of his expression melted into something warmer, something matching that voice.
Something rich and addictive.
“The question, little witch, is what are you doing out roaming my halls late at night?”
He raised one eyebrow. In that instant, I was certain he could see right through me—and I was fine with it.
I’d been told the elves were cold, effete creatures, brutal and dominating to their women, worse to witches. I could believe part of it. Everything about Lord Kaedon’s face and body pointed to someone who could be incredibly domineering and even unkind.
But there was nothing effete about this man. He was all harsh angles and straight lines. And all male.
“I’m waiting for an answer,” he reminded me, the candlelight flickering across his face.
I froze, suddenly as afraid of him as I had been attracted only seconds before. Down to the very center of my being, I knew I didn’t want to answer any of his questions—but that he would force me to.
Just as I knew he would force me to use my magic in his service.
My brief reprieve had come to an end.
Chapter Four
When I responded to Kaedon, I tried to stand up straight and tall and answer him defiantly. My shaking hands gave me away—their trembling sloshed melted wax over the candlewick, plunging us into sudden darkness even as I said, “I was unable to sleep.”
Up until that moment, I had thought dangling from the face of the mountain was the most terrifying thing that would ever happen in my life.
That was before I was trapped in a dark corridor with an elf lord, who was an enemy of my people.
My heart fluttered wildly in my chest, and I took a slow, careful step backward, away from where Kaedon had been moments before.
“And where are you going now?” His mocking voice came out of the darkness. Only then did it occur to me to wonder why he didn’t carry a candle.
I froze, like any small animal when faced with a larger predator.
Stories of elven ability to twist a witch’s magic against her swirled through my mind in a kaleidoscope of confused images. I hadn’t tried to access my magic so far, but I considered it now.
Instead, I found the courage to continue speaking to him, to answer his question.
“I don’t have any other source of fire,” I said. I was surprised—and pleased—to note that my voice didn’t tremble as my hands had. “I don’t know these corridors as you must. Returning to the infirmary seems the only logical choice.”
Oh, yes, Harper, revert to logic, some shrill, panicked voice in the back of my mind babbled. That always works. Evil elf lords determined to suck you dry of your magic are always swayed by logic.
I was glad he couldn’t see my face, certain it must be reflecting every fleeting thought that flitted across my mind.
Again, the Fae lord’s deep voice came out of the shadows. “Then let me assist you.”
He appeared beside me as a hulking shadow, and I cringed away. But he reached out and tucked my arm through his, as sure in the dark as anyone else would have been in the full light of day.
The man moves like a cat.
In fact, everything about him seemed cat-like—his ability to move in the dark, his almost-languorous gestures, even the way he watched me as if I were a mouse he played with.
I could even feel his stare in the dark.
He didn’t speak again until we were almost to the infirmary. “Have you often been unable to sleep?”
“Occasionally.” I kept my answer short, though I found myself wanting to add “my lord” to the end of every statement. I refused to give into that urge. His demeanor might call for subservience, as if he expected it, but I was not his subject and I would not act as if I were.
No, I would fight every internal urge to treat him as a master, even though he might have me in his power.
While I had been musing over what to call him, we reached the doorway to Bertino’s infirmary room.
“If you are well enough to wander my home at night,” Lord Kaedon said as he opened the heavy oak door for me, “then I believe you’re well enough to join me in the solarium tomorrow afternoon. Two o’clock, please.” The words were spoken pleasantly enough, but there was no doubt that this was a command, not a request.
I nodded dumbly, certain he could see me even though I recognized little of him beyond a darker form in the shadowy doorway.
“And to help you find your way,” he said, reaching out to tap the top of my candle. A flame popped out of the wick, as if it had been waiting for a chance to appear. My surprised gaze flew up to meet his.
“I am told that even the youngest of witches can manage a tiny fire spell. And I’ve had good teachers.” He took a step back and swept a low bow toward me. “I look forward to seeing you tomorrow afternoon.” One eyelid shivered down in a wink, and Kaedon was gone, retreating silently into the darkness on those cat-like feet of his.
Slowly, I closed the door, considering the potential implications of his ability to light a candle flame.
None of them were good.
Elfin and witch magic were very different. Whereas witches used the elements, often harnessing them with spells and potions, the source of our magic was ultimately within us.
Elves had no innate magic. What they used, they took from others. It was why they enslaved my people every chance they got. The more powerful a Fae lord’s magic was, the more people he had stolen it from.
Kaedon’s easy use of magic suggested he was well versed in that kind of theft. The memory of the sly smile on his face when he’d winked turned my stomach, eliminating the hint of attraction I had felt in the hallway earlier and replacing it with the sick dread I somehow managed to lose during my time in the infirmary.
I will not let him take my magic.
I repeated my vow over and over as I lay in bed, shivering in reaction to the encounter.
I didn’t blow out the candle until the gray light of dawn came seeping into the room. Even then, I did not sleep.
I finally managed an uneasy doze after Bertino came into the infirmary.
The short, round man bustled over to me at one point, laying his hand on my forehead to check for fever. “Are you having a relapse, girly?”
No one here called me by name. No one had even asked what it was.
I shook my head, then rolled over to go to sleep, turning my back to the healer.
As I lay there, I realized something I hadn’t noticed before. What I had taken for mutterings to himself as he worked on his various medications were also—at least some of them—spoken spells that Bertino was incanting over potions.
The thought I had let my guard down around these people twisted my stomach. Tears welled up in my eyes, and it was all I could do to keep them from spilling over.
For the first time since I had been sent away from the island, I felt true despair. Unwanted at home, desired here only for my magical ability… It was the worst fate I could have ever conceived.
Better to have died in the mountains.
But as two o’clock approached, I hardened my resolve. I had a reservoir of magic that no one could suspect. In the years since my mother had been banished from the island, no one in the coven ever suspected what I carried within me.
I would hide it from this elf, too.
And then, when he least expected it, I would unleash destruction on him, his castle, his people—everyone and everything he had ever cared about.
I would raze it to the ground.
By the time a servant elf arrived to help me prepare to meet Lord Kaedon in the solarium, I had regained my composure and determination. She carried an elf-style dress over her arm. It was certainly finer than anything I
had ever worn, velvet, lace, and gold trim. I stared at it in confusion as she held it up.
“His lordship suggested you might like something… um…” The maid glanced at the shift I wore and blushed. “His exact words were that you might prefer to wear something less sheer during your interview with him today,” she finished in a rush.
I looked down. On the island, we rarely considered clothing beyond its utility, apart from a few especially vain girls. And bodies were just, well, bodies. Now, though, I felt a hot crimson blush crawling up my neck and onto my cheeks at the thought of Lord Kaedon examining me under the nightdress.
Never had anything about my body humiliated me. Not until now.
I would decimate him.
“Help me put it on,” I said tonelessly.
The maid curtsied, as if I were an elven lady. I ignored her, beyond what it took to get strapped into the dress.
After a few moments of silence, she began chattering brightly, as if to make up for my lack of conversation.
“This dress belonged to the castle’s former mistress, before His Lordship—” The maid broke off, changing the subject abruptly. “He sent me, because I’m the best seamstress in the fort. This will be too big, almost certainly, but with a tuck here and a stitch there—” She bent down to turn the hem under and run a quick slip stitch around the bottom of the skirt. “You’re right as rain, m’lady.”
Stepping back, she examined her handiwork. “We don’t have any proper shoes for you. Not fit for a lady, anyway.”
I snorted at that, and she glanced at me, startled. When I said nothing further, she continued. “I’d arrange to have children’s shoes sent up, but even the young ladies’ shoes won’t be fine enough to match this dress. Luckily, I hemmed it so the shoes won’t show.”
I blocked out the rest of her chatter about dresses and shoes and other inconsequential things as I worked to prepare myself to meet with Lord Kaedon.
When she had the dress prepared to her liking, she sat me down in a chair and dragged a brush through my hair, then twisted and pulled and pinned it in all directions. When she was done, she handed me a mirror.
I didn’t look like myself. With my black hair braided and piled atop my head Fae-style, I looked older than my nineteen years. I was paler than I remembered, too. In fact, except for my rounded ears, I could’ve been one of the elven ladies I had seen in the scryers’ pool back home—the ones we watched when they left the Fae realm.
Abruptly, I set the mirror down. “Let’s get this over with,” I said. The maid’s face fell, and I almost wished I could compliment her on what I was certain was amazing job.
I was going to beard the lion in his den, and I had no reserves remaining for any niceties.
It was all I could do to remember to breathe.
When the maid showed me to Lord Kaedon’s study, she opened the door on him as he was ending a session with what looked to be like a large-scale version of a vision mirror—a kind of scrying device that allowed a witch to see past, present, and possible futures.
When he caught sight of me, he swept his hand around in a circle, closing his fingers and shutting down the spell with a muttered word.
Today, he was dressed in all his lordly finery, very much the aristocrat rather than the savage mountain elf I had seen so far.
“Come in,” he said. Gesturing me toward an upholstered chair, he moved to a sideboard. “I’m sure you are sick to death of Healer Bertino’s horrible drinks.” He poured a small glass of some kind of spirit, and I took it when he handed it to me, though I was not sure if I should drink it.
I would need my wits about me if I were going to fight against Kaedon and Fae kind.
The elf took a seat across from me, swirling the amber liquid in his glass around in a circle and staring down into it for a long moment before he spoke. “Bertino informs me your name is Harper?”
I jerked in surprise. “I don’t remember telling him that.”
An odd smile flitted across his face. “I suspect there is quite a lot you don’t remember from your first few days here.” He took a long swig of the drink in his glass before setting it aside on the nearby table, then stood. “Come with me, Harper. There’s something I would like you to see.”
Ignoring his outstretched hand, I set my untouched drink down next to his and stood without any help. The elf narrowed his eyes at me briefly, but turned and moved to the vision mirror. With a wave of his hand and a single muttered word, he reactivated it.
Then he reached out and took my hand, and we stepped into hell.
We stood in the middle of a battle that raged all around us. For a long moment, I couldn’t tell what was going on, and I clutched the Fae lord’s hand. A haze of smoke obscured anything farther away than a few yards, but I could see flashes of color shooting through the air, magical bolts meant to destroy the other side.
The ground at our feet showed the effects of those magics. Corpses lay piled in heaps, intermixed with still-living survivors, their blood-slicked skin shining wetly in the gray air.
Moans and cries of pain echoed from all around us, people begging for life or death or simply surcease from pain.
Though I had used vision mirrors before, none had been this complex. I could even smell the blood-soaked battlefield—the scent of singed skin like charred meat, the smell of released bowels, overlaid by the copper sent of blood. It coated my tongue and the back of my throat with the taste of death.
I swallowed convulsively, trying to hold down the light lunch one of Bertino’s servants had insisted I eat earlier. My fingers tightened around the Fae lord’s as I felt the need to cling to something living amid all this death.
Lord Kaedon glanced down at me. With his other hand, he gave the sign to close out the vision. Instantly, we were back in his study, surrounded by the suddenly comforting smell of old books, slightly musty and decidedly un-bloodied.
When Kaedon handed me the glass of amber alcohol this time, I thankfully took a drink. Collapsing into the same chair I had inhabited before, I gazed at him, waiting for him to tell me why he had shown me that particular vision.
“That’s on the western coast,” he said quietly, his expression somber. “That particular battle has been waging for almost a week. There are heavy casualties on both sides.”
I realized then I hadn’t even noticed whether the bodies around me belonged to witches or elves.
It hadn’t seemed to matter in that moment.
Kaedon took a seat across from me once again, leaning forward and gazing intently into my eyes. “The Fae and the witches are destroying each other.”
“Everyone knows that,” I said. “Our people have been at war for centuries. As long as anyone can remember.”
Kaedon sighed, rubbing one hand over his eyes and then smoothing it over his hair. “That’s true, but it’s not the whole story.” Restless, he stood and began pacing around the room. “No one can win this war. We will literally wipe each other off the map before that can happen.” He glanced at me as if to make sure I was following. “Our people are too evenly matched.”
He closed his eyes, gathering his strength for what he had to say next. Then he inhaled deeply and opened them to pin me with a look.
“Harper, I want you to help me end this war.”
Chapter Five
I froze with my glass halfway to my mouth. “You mean you want me to help you win this war.” I didn’t bother to phrase it as a question, so sure was I of his motives.
“No. Neither side will ever win this war.” His pacing continued, his strides lengthening so that he moved completely across the room in each pass. “Our people have been fighting one another for generations now. First one side holds the upper hand, then the other. But neither side has any true incentive to stop slaughtering the other.”
He stopped directly in front of me and dropped to his knees, gripping the armrests of my chair and leaning forward to stare into my eyes. “We are destroying each other.” He enunciated each wo
rd carefully, intently, his gaze boring into me. I found myself drawn in by that intensity. “Please, Harper, help me find a way to stop this war.”
“What can I possibly do?” I forced myself to look away, to break the connection of that stare. “I’m nobody. A witch with no influence, no connections, and an indifferent skill in magic, at best.”
Kaedon’s eyes narrowed as he sat back on his heels.
“That’s not what I saw when you used your magic to pull my nephew back onto the cliff, away from a certain death.”
“That wasn’t skill,” I argued, even knowing how unlikely he was to believe me. “That was… the last magical flare of a dying witch. I had no control over it, and no idea how I could ever do anything like it again.” I had no idea if he would believe me, but I’d heard stories about dying witches completing amazing spells just before death, as if their magic had acted on its own in moments of extremity.
Kaedon stood and ran his hand over the carefully arranged braids, as if he would’ve preferred to run his fingers through his hair in frustration, but was stopped by his elven training.
He did not take his eyes off me. After a minute or so, he chewed on his bottom lip. I had to force myself to tear my eyes away from the unexpectedly arresting sight of his straight, white teeth biting into his expressive mouth.
“Come with me,” he said suddenly, coming to a decision. He held out his hand imperiously, certain I would take it.
I hesitated long enough to cause him to narrow his eyes at me again, but in the end, I knew I had little choice but to go with him.
He led me back to the vision mirror, where he again used a single hand gesture and one-word incantation to open a new scene. I barely had enough time to consider the complexity of a system that would allow for that kind of control—or the power of someone who could use it so easily—before we stepped through into another overwhelming view.
This time, we stood in the doorway of a tiny cell. As with the previous vision, I had complete sensory input. Cold emanated from the slightly damp stone blocks making up the walls. A single torch sputtered and smoked, stinging my eyes and casting a hazy light across the room.