by C. M. Cevis
The woman almost dropped the rope and gasped. “It is not a leash,” the queen said quietly.
Luna smirked. “Whatever makes you feel better, sparkles. What do you call it then? Are you trying to tell me that when you look at that man beside you, you don’t think it looks like someone tried to muzzle a pit bull?”
Sadness passed over the woman’s face. “I… didn’t think it was a leash until I saw it on my son.”
That was one thing Luna liked about the fae—always honest. Well, when it suited them. Some were the tricky ones who wanted to make deals for your first born and such, almost like deal demons. Except those wanted your soul, fae just wanted… it depended on the fae. It was complicated.
“She means it,” Liza said, almost surprised. Every eye in the room shifted and Luna paused. That was new. Could every fae see her sister? Or was something different about those assembled here?
“What does your prince’s punishment have to do with my basement?” Luna asked. She’d look into the type of fae she was dealing with later.
Vernon narrowed his eyes. “Do you know nothing of this place you occupy?” he asked, motioning to the gate.
“Watch it, old man. Sounds like you’re here to ask me for a favor. Maybe don’t piss me off before you do. I don’t have to do whatever it is you’re about to ask, including letting you through this doorway.”
“There are other ways into the human world.”
Luna nodded as if that had just occurred to her. “You’re right! Have fun with those other ways.” She began to close the door.
“Wait! You have to do this, human woman! You are the guardian,” he yelled.
Luna frowned and turned to her sister. “The guardian?”
Liza shrugged. “No idea.”
She opened the door again. “I am not the guardian of anything other than myself, Vernon.”
“The gate is awake. That only happens when the chosen guardian finds and awakens it. Only the chosen guardian can guard against what might come through them,” he explained.
“And I am supposed to guard against you?” Luna asked, folding her arms.
Vernon sighed. “We are of no danger to you, but I can’t say that will be the case for others that may come through this or the other gates.”
“Where does this gate go?” Liza asked.
He eyed her. “You… do not know how it functions?” She could almost see the calculations ticking in his devious brain.
“You know what, forget it. I’m guessing it goes to your kingdom.” She sighed.
“Perhaps we could help you understand the workings of this gate.” He spread his hands benevolently. “Such knowledge is surely worth helping us with our prince’s temporary exile.” Vernon looked very proud of himself for having come up with this exchange. There was only one problem.
“A favor for a favor is never fair and never reciprocated. Try that with someone who doesn’t know better,” Luna said, echoing something her father had drilled into her during childhood. It was one of the many lessons he’d taught her that turned out to be true.
“Temporary exile?” Liza asked, skipping right to the important part.
“My son, the prince, has been sentenced to a twenty-one-day exile from the kingdom. Our law dictates this would be handled by the guardian, as he or she would be the only one with the knowledge to keep the exiled from causing destruction to their home.”
Luna gave Vernon a questioning look. “Any particular reason you can’t just toss him in jail?”
“He is a prince,” the queen interjected.
“Yes, you keep telling me that,” Luna said, rubbing her temples. “Can you tell me something else? That answer is not the catch all you think it is.”
The queen looked to Vernon. He clasped his hands before him, the picture of longsuffering. “Certain levels of nobility are not… allowed to be simply thrown into a cell to wait out their punishments.”
Luna blinked at the man. “Why not? If they can commit crimes like everyone else, they can do their time like everyone else.”
Now Vernon looked to the queen, clearly nonplussed.
“The mantle of responsibility that rests upon the crown family requires… unique consequences when that mantle is misused,” the queen finally said, this time her voice a bit gentler. “It’s just the way that it’s always been.”
“And you’re perfectly fine with this? I mean, it seems to me that maybe the punishment meted to princes should be worse than the average joe, not better But then again, I don’t know what your jails are like.” Luna frowned as she said it.
“Our jails are not like human jails, our prisoners are not simply held there. They serve their time in ways that make sure they will not forget,” Vernon explained.
Luna made a face. “Ouch.”
“The difference in punishment sounds unfair and pretentious when you say it that way,” the queen responded softly.
“It is unfair and pretentious,” Luna and Liza said in unison.
“I guess I’d never thought about it before now. Just like I’d never thought about how much this resembles a muzzle.” The queen seemed to shrink as her straight back bowed, her face troubled.
Luna felt sorry for the woman in front of her. She carried herself as if she’d been raised to always see herself as important. She probably had been, if fae monarchy was anything like human monarchy. And yet here she was, starting to see that some of her traditions were terrible, one at a time.
She nodded at the woman, appreciating that she could admit to being wrong, but cursing internally at what she was about to ask. “Why am I keeping your son?”
“He has—” Vernon started.
Luna held up a hand and shook her head. “I’ve heard enough from you. I want to hear from the queen.”
Her voice was almost a whisper as she spoke. “Gideon used magic to seduce the princess of the kingdom of the west. The action violated a treaty negotiated decades ago to keep us from going to war, as we have never gotten along, and now puts our kingdom at a disadvantage.”
Luna’s eyes shifted from the sad mother to the bound son. “That’s one heck of a mistake.”
Gideon didn’t say anything, but his eyes couldn’t hold hers.
“My son was acting out. He wanted my attention as his mother, and I was too busy with everything else to give it to him. My husband…” She stopped, took a breath, and continued. “My husband even tried to tell me that Gideon needed me, and that he did as well, but I was too busy to listen. Until it was too late.”
Well crap, now Luna felt really bad for her.
“Your husband?” Luna looked around at the others.
“He was not permitted to come along.”
Luna rubbed her forehead. “So all I have to do is keep him for twenty-one days, and then you’ll come back through the glowing gate and take him home?”
Vernon nodded. “That is all.”
Luna ignored him. “And what will you do with your twenty-one days, Your Majesty? Will you do something worth doing? Or will you waste time?”
The queen’s eyes were watering. “I will spend time with my husband. I’ll have these horrid leashes done away with and find a better way to restrain our people. And I will… start the process of doing away with the inequalities in punishment by class.”
Luna smiled. “That sounds like a good to-do list.”
Vernon’s jaw worked up and down, but only sputters came out. Finally, glaring at the guards, he stepped up to the queen and whispered loud enough for all to hear, “Your Majesty, you can’t do away with laws that have governed our kingdoms for centuries. There will be an uprising, a coup!”
The queen spoke at a normal volume, voice cool. “I am the queen, Vernon. I exist to change things when they no longer serve the people because that is who I am to take care of, am I not? Not the nobility, that tiny subset of subjects, but all of them. I’m sure the majority won’t mind an even playing field.”
Something dark flared in Vernon’s ey
es, something Luna did not like. But he simply closed his mouth and bowed his head, retreating to the side of the room, head down.
“You are welcome any time, Your Majesty. But leave the old guy behind next time,” Luna said with a smile that the queen weakly returned.
“I just might take you up on that.”
Luna sighed and whispered the words to open the locks on the doorway before she stepped through.
“I am only doing this because I like you for some reason. Don’t make me regret this, Your Majesty,” she said, letting her hand rest in the queen’s palm for just a moment before she took hold of the… leash. She was going to have to do something with that thing.
“You may call me Maya. I hold no sway over you, so I need no title,” she said.
Luna smiled. “It’s nice to meet you, Maya. I’m Luna, and that’s my sister Liza. We will keep your son safe.”
“Thank you,” she whispered.
Luna watched as Maya turned to her son and wrapped her arms around him wordlessly. He couldn’t hug her back because of the shackles, but he closed his eyes as she held him close.
“We must get going, Your Majesty,” Vernon said, interrupting the moment. Luna really didn’t like him.
“Yes, of course.” She reluctantly let Gideon go and turned to face Luna. “If I return, how will you know that I am here?”
In the time it took Luna to realize she meant the locks, Liza was saying, “I spend my free time down here. I’ll tell her to come down.”
“Thank you,” Maya replied. She hesitated for a moment more, then turned and stepped through the gate. Vernon followed, and then finally the two guards.
“No one told us how to control this stupid muzzle,” Liza said as the last guard disappeared.
“Hell,” Luna said, frowning and turning to look at her new charge.
“I can tell you how to control it,” he said, his lips forming into a mischievous grin.
Luna narrowed her eyes. “I’m sure we can figure it out. And if not, I guess you’ll have no choice but to behave, now won’t you?”
“What?” Gideon looked genuinely surprised.
“Mmhm. Come along, little prince puppy. Let’s go figure out what to do with you,” Luna said, giving the restraint a little tug for good measure.
“See, you shouldn’t have brought out the troublemaker face so early. Now she’s going to have to teach you a lesson and all that,” Liza said to Gideon, laughing.
“Right, my magic doesn’t work,” Gideon said, following behind Luna and Liza as the lock slammed shut behind them.
“I’m a witch, Gideon. Lots of things don’t work on me. Keep that in mind.” Luna said, tossing a wink over her shoulder as the three of them headed up the stairs.
26
Luna hadn’t been sure what to do with her current charge, but keeping him in that silly basement while she figured it out seems inhumane. Instead, she’d left the magical muzzle on him and put him in one of the rooms at the far end of the house from Zelda. One that had its own bathroom and a nice view of the backyard. Then she’d put the same lock that she’d used in the basement on the doors leading out into the hallway from the bedroom and the bathroom. He could use the toilet and shower, rest or read, but that was about it. At least until Luna could figure out a way to keep him from wandering off without locking him away like some sort of bad puppy that she didn’t feel like dealing with.
She was sitting in her room alone, staring off into space when something occurred to her. Something about her nightmare the night before.
She remembered it vividly. It had been part of her coma dream, except this time, nothing was really happening. She’d walked from an empty street into the police station and moved past the empty front desk and through the station. She’d remembered thinking that it was odd that no one was around to stop her from wandering, but something had driven her onward.
She’d moved through the halls until she reached the evidence room towards the rear of the building. That was when it clicked: There hadn’t been anyone at the front desk because this had been the day she’d asked the officer at the front desk to go on a search for something that didn’t exist while she snooped in Wesley’s office.
The officer was in the evidence room when she entered, but stood frozen, as if time was standing still. He held a box with her name and address scrawled on the side in sharpie marker, his other hand inside it, but he didn’t so much as blink.
It was as if her brain was trying to tell her something, but she had no idea what.
Inside the box was… nothing. It kind of made sense, all things considered. It had been a fake dream with a fake murder and a fake house search. Why would there actually be something in the box if whoever had been driving the dream hadn’t ever intended for her to see it?
But it wasn’t the box that bothered her.
It was the officer. The officer wasn’t an officer.
“The officer wasn’t an officer,” Luna almost yelled it.
“Are you actually going crazy now?” Liza asked, coming into sight beside her.
Luna laughed. “Possibly. I know where I’ve seen him before.”
“Who?”
“Jacob! He was the police officer at the front desk in my coma dream.”
Liza blinked at her. “That is a really odd realization to have if you two have never actually met before.”
Luna hunched her back and frowned, thinking hard. “The other odd bit is that no one else that I can think of was out of place.”
“Out of place how?”
“People had the same jobs, lived in the same homes, all of that. But Jacob isn’t a police officer.”
“You didn’t know what he was until Dr. Bates sent you to him. Maybe you’re brain just shoved him somewhere because it needed a face for a random officer.”
Luna turned to her sister. “I thought you said that the dream was being abnormally controlled. By someone else.”
Liza opened her mouth and then shut it again. “You’re right.”
“So it would have been his or her mind that put him there, right?”
Liza nodded. “In the wrong place.”
“In the wrong place,” Luna repeated. “That seems odd. Especially since no one else was off. Just him.”
Liza frowned. “Why would one person be out of place? Why would whoever was controlling everything know where everyone belongs except one person?”
“If they weren’t sure, why put him in the dream at all?”
“That seems like the kind of question we should get answered, don’t you think?” Liza smirked.
~*~
Gideon shifted in the armchair and smiled at the birds in the trees outside the window. The sun had risen about an hour ago, and the air was full of birdsong. The melodies were just for Gideon. Or that was what he told himself. The reality was that with his magic restricted, he couldn’t ask them a damn thing.
His apparent jailer had put him in a quaint room with a four-poster bed covered in a navy-blue quilt, a small side table and bookshelf, two comfortable chairs in front of the bay window, and a small, attached bathroom. Better than the dark closet or dank attic he’d expected. He got plenty of natural light, the chair was comfortable, there were several books on the shelf, and he had access to bath he could draw himself. More than most prisoners he’d seen could say.
His lovely jailer-guardian-witch—whatever—had told him that if he wanted other books, she could get them for him. She’d also informed him that she had coffee and food, and that she’d make sure to bring him three meals a day. In the grand scheme of things, this wasn’t going as terribly as he’d thought it would. But he still didn’t want to be there.
He was bored. Getting more bored by the minute. The lives in the town around him teased him, especially as more woke from the night’s rest, but he could do nothing about it. Whatever lock had been on the basement door, the pretty witch had put the same on his door and windows. Gideon could barely get near them, much less break th
rough them. Especially in this horrid contraption.
He was going to have to figure out another way out of this pretty little prison. And it would start with his beautiful captor and her ghostly sister making a mistake. Neither seemed like the type to make mistakes often.
Gideon and his father had always had a close bond. Close enough that when he’d become old enough to make his own plans and such, his father had made sure that they were linked. He’d said it was just in case he was needed and it was an emergency, but initially he hadn’t believe him. He’d thought his father was trying to spy on him. It wasn’t until he’d actually had an emergency and hadn’t known who else to call that he’d realized that his father was honestly looking out for him, nothing more.
“Dad, can you hear me?” Gideon whispered.
“Of course he can’t hear you. Are you trying to tell me that your own mother had these things made and you have no idea what they do?”
He wasn’t sure where the ghost girl had come from, but there she was, standing right beside him as if she’d been there the entire time.
Gideon turned and looked at the still closed doors, the magic of the witch’s lock shimmering against it. “How did you get in here?”
“I’m not really alive. And I’m not just a simple ghost. There are lots of things that I can do that others can’t.”
“Like pass through your sister’s locks?”
“Like that.”
Gideon smirked. “That could be a handy skill to learn, if you were willing to teach me.”
The ghost smirked. “I’m not that slow, Prince Bad Boy. And stop calling me ghost girl in your head. That’s not nice at all.”
Gideon blinked at her for a moment. “You can read minds?”
She shook her head. “It depends on the person. You seem to scream every little thought you have, so I can’t really help but hear it. For the record, you should probably stop doing that. If someone was trying to get some dirt on you or your mother, all they’d have to do is stand around and wait.”
“I’m not sure how to stop doing something that I didn’t know I was doing in the first place.”