“No,” she breathed. “How am I supposed to save…”
“Remember your painting. You have the ability to create worlds. With the right price, you can create a land for us, where we will not be threatened by the future.” I lifted my shaking hands, and her gaze darted to them. “May I?” I asked before touching her head.
Her thoughts battled for a long moment, but eventually, she nodded.
Closing my eyes, I pressed my thumbs against her forehead and called on the memory of my dreams. A small noise escaped her as we dropped through a sky filled with smog onto concrete paths beside paved tar. The iron monsters sped by. Countless screens fizzled with static. Great metal buildings stabbed into the sky. When it was almost too much for me to bear, I pulled away.
She gasped and covered her mouth. “That’s the future of this world?”
“Dale has already bent toward this path.”
Fury ignited in her gaze. “Because of you! What if all this time you started the future you feared?”
“It is possible.” I narrowed my eyes. “But I am not naïve, and humans do not sit still. The advancement of science would progress with or without my actions. The only way to salvation happened to be now.”
Tears filled her eyes, but she didn’t let them fall. “Through manipulation and torture?”
“Dale’s war is with us. Our war is with time. In a war, no one is spared some amount of unrest. Be thankful I harmed so few when your armies would gleefully slaughter us.” My final words came out in a hiss.
Mabilia’s shoulders sagged, and she closed her eyes. “I can’t forgive you.”
“I have never asked you to.” My chest tightened, but I knew I would take my sins to my grave. No one would save me from them. They were the price I began to pay for my people years ago.
She touched my hand, and my heart leaped. Her thumb ran over my skin as the spell around us faded away. The tears in her eyes fell like crystals, splashing against my fingers. “I can’t forgive you, but I finally understand you, at least some.” She rubbed her eyes. “I forgot to ask what happened to your hands.”
Hesitant, I reached forward, cupping her chin. “I suppose it’s too late now.” Besides Mythalzen had already told her most of it.
“You really won’t indulge me?”
Tears traced down her cheeks, and admittedly, it was hard not to. Sighing, I pulled my hand from hers. “On the third day, to save the would-be princess, a foul monster spun iron into silver at the expense of his hands.” Standing, I clenched them and stared at her. “A hefty price to pay, considering how much paperwork I have to do.”
When she offered me a small smile, I bit my tongue and turned.
“I trust you can return to your room and sleep through the night without my chaperoning your way there?”
“What about this mess?”
I peered at the cracked ground. All around us, books lay scattered from their shelves in the aftermath of her failed spell. I had already cleaned this room once in the past day. “Leave it. We both need rest.” Glancing back at her, I captured the way her hair fell around her cheeks, the dark shade brightening her heavy eyes. “I will see you tomorrow. Goodnight.”
Without looking up, she murmured, “Goodnight, my faerie.”
As I returned to my room, the softness of those words repeating in my mind, I worried that perhaps I had said too much.
Chapter 7
Ink Into Matter
“Show me the singing caverns.”
I blinked at Mabilia, not so much because of what she’d said—or because she had barged into my study without knocking—but because she wore a simple, light blue dress that matched the hue of the sky on a crisp autumn morning. No iron armor.
My gaze shifted to Esme, who stood diligently at her side, grinning brilliantly. It took me a second to realize their hands were clasped.
“Do you remember?” Her head tilted. “I was telling Esme about your stories. She said they were true, and I’ve always wished the singing caverns were real.”
“I remember,” I replied, and blinked again at their joined hands. Esme’s expression turned sly, and she set her chin on Mabilia’s head.
Mabilia proceeded without care. “Take me to see them.”
“It’s hardly morning yet.” I had woken and set to my duties, as usual finding myself buried with work in my study. Mythalzen sat in his normal spot on the floor at my side, but now he peered over the edge of my desk, shock on his face as he ran his gaze over Mabilia’s attire.
I swatted him when that gaze clung a little too tightly to her curves, and he ducked, chuckling.
“After breakfast then?” she asked, smiling too warmly.
My lips parted and closed until finally I nodded. “If you’d like.”
“Great! We can pack a lunch and discuss the kind of world you’d like me to make for you all.” She turned back toward the door. “I’m going to see if I can find something to sketch ideas on.” With that, she left as quickly as she’d come.
Mythalzen’s amusement stopped short when the door clicked. “She knows?”
“There was an incident.” I slipped a hand over my mouth, then looked at Mythalzen. “Just as well. Things should still work out.”
His brows knitted, his golden eyes stern. “Is she so cheerful because…”
I shook my head. “I didn’t tell her that part.” I would tell her the price in the moment when she had to act. If I told her now, I knew she would search for a way around it, if only to avoid killing someone. In her efforts, she would play with even more dangerous spells than she had attempted last night. There was no way I could see around my demise, and I had searched years for another answer. Half a soul was required for the magic we would touch.
“So…she’s just happy to save us?” Mythalzen broke my thoughts, his hands folded in his lap as he pinned them with a pensive stare.
“I imagine for my Mabilia, after the initial shock, the idea of creating a real world is enthralling.” There was something too kind toward me in her gaze, though. She said she wouldn’t forgive me, but she had taken down her iron walls. Nothing could be as it was. We both knew that. Didn’t we?
Mythalzen’s hands broke apart, and he looked up at me. “I know the price has to be as large as giving up half of one’s own ancient soul, but couldn’t multiple other souls equal that? I would gladly—” He swallowed, stopping, and flicked his gaze away. “S-sorry…”
The quiet vehemence on my face was all the sign he needed to cease talking. Exhaling, I pushed the anger aside and set a hand on his head. “Thank you for the sentiment, Mythalzen, but this is my weight to bear.”
Stunned, he watched me for a long moment. A fae’s thanks was not something easily given. He bit his cheek and took a shaky breath. “It won’t be fair to her. Even if she despised you—which she doesn’t—no one will be able to replace you in her life. No one will be able to ease the loneliness losing half her soul will incite.”
This time he didn’t flinch when my eyes narrowed. “I could commend you on your efforts to manipulate me, but I believe I’ve already warned you about including her in your plots to do so. She is a human amalgamation. That humanity will provide her two mercies: first, she will not suffer the ages as I have; second, she is not bound to my half of her soul.”
His nose wrinkled, and he glared at the ground in front of him. “Well, I’m sooo glad you’ve thought of everything. What color should the flowers at your funeral be?”
I sighed and returned to my work, mumbling, “Blue, just like the dress she’s wearing.”
In pure defiance, he grumbled, “I think I’ll make them red instead.”
A SWARM OF BUTTERFLIES with crystalline wings erupted before us, filling the air with fractured rainbows. I waved a hand before my face to keep them from landing on me, but Mabilia stood, staring at them in awe.
Sunlight trickled through the branches above, shedding beams of light on the entrance of the singing caverns. It gaped and glittered, boas
ting of hidden treasures within.
The singing caverns were unlike the ones my people had carved homes into. They rested untouched by mortal and immortal alike, teeming with magic. We revered them as sacred. I had long ago told Mabilia of the legends surrounding the caves. In fae lore, they were where Winter’s Howl and Celestine met for the first time. Love came unbidden and forbidden. Shortly after, their people tasked them to kill one another.
The price they paid for refusing was still their lives. But the universe honored their love and loyalty, painting them side by side in the night sky forever. Each century, they shared blessings with their kin, forgiving their people for their sins and raining potency upon all magic when they aligned with the full moon.
“Are you thinking about the stories?” Mabilia whispered, breaking my thoughts.
I glanced at her. “Perhaps.”
“I thought I’d wanted to picture the fae as romantic instead of scary and made them up subconsciously.” She met my gaze and gripped the lunch basket she held before her. “Are they true?”
I pulled my attention from her shining eyes and peered into the dimness of the caverns. “Yes. Winter’s Howl, as we know him, was of my people—the winter fae. Celestine came from a court that we have long since forgotten. Ancient tales describe that court as the day to our night. While we are spun of nightmares, they were weaved with dreams. Many humans worshiped them as gods while we became the devils. As perfect opposites, animosity bloomed. I don’t know if they still exist, but if they do, I believe it is because of Howl and Celestine that we have not in many years met.”
Silence breathed for an instant, then the wind stole it away, rushing past the bare, ice-clad limbs and making them rattle. “I want to learn more. About the fae. About this world. I’ve been trapped in Dale my whole life.” She swallowed, rubbing the worn straw of the basket’s handle. “Is it too big a dream?”
“A war brews.”
Anger sparked in her gaze. “It doesn’t have to. It shouldn’t! Why should all our people pay for your sins?” She stilled, realizing what she’d said, and dragged her gaze away.
Something bitter stuck in my throat no matter how many times I tried to gulp it down. At last, I replied, “When you have created a world for all the fae and moved us there, both fae and humans will find peace.”
“In separation.” She approached the cavern and set a hand against the cool, glittering stone. “Is that the only way you fae are able to keep from killing each other? When powerful forces keep you away from your enemies?”
“It does seem to have worked this long.” I stuffed my hands in my pockets and passed into the shadows of the caverns. The shallow scent of spices whirled about my senses, reminding me of the day not one week ago when everything changed. I was here beside Mabilia still, but I couldn’t let myself think our carefree, stolen moments together were back.
“The humans will forget you like you’ve forgotten your sister court.” Her tone hid nothing about how she felt.
“Not all of them. Some, the ones who can’t help but believe, will remember. There are always those few. Like you and your mother, they peer into places they can’t touch and create things out of shadows. We’ll still be there in those shadows even beyond the planes of their known world.”
“You make running away sound so beautiful.” She smiled, a forlorn little thing.
“It is beautiful.” I lifted a shaking hand to the damp cavern wall as we turned deeper in. The sheets of water skimming the stone turned to glass against my palm. The glass glistened in a kaleidoscope of color. “Instead of fighting a battle where compromise is impossible and death is inevitable, we are creating something new.”
“Compromise is never impossible.”
“We can only survive in a frozen wilderness. If I’m not mistaken, humans would die in days under such conditions. We cannot cohabit. And if we could peacefully segregate ourselves, which population would overcome the other? The mortals or the ageless?”
Her lips parted, then her brows furrowed. “I never hated when you were right before.”
My lips pulled into half a smirk. “A wonder why. Because you thought I was you perhaps?”
“Rub it in. I was an idiot.” She grinned. “I mean, of course I didn’t make you up. You’d have been much prettier if I had. Warmer, too. Like Mythalzen. You? You’re all hard angles. If I had wanted to create someone for comfort, I’d hope I’d have enough sense to not make them out of ice.”
My eyebrows rose. “I have never been so insulted and so complimented at once before.”
“How exactly is that a compliment?” She regarded me curiously.
I flashed my teeth. “You think I’m cool.”
Her eyes widened like globes, then her chest shook, and laughter peeled. The sound echoed against the narrow path. “You didn’t—” She cupped a hand over her mouth. “You’re unbelievable.” Her pace slowed until it stopped, and she took a shallow breath.
I stopped just in front of her, smiling at the way her whole body laughed from her stomach to her eyes, but then a single tear traced down her cheek and shattered on the ground. My smile fell and, with it, her laughter.
“I thought these moments between us were gone. It hurts knowing they should be, but I can’t bear the idea of letting them go.” She dropped her arm and clenched her fist. “You aren’t all bad. You did a lot of wrong things with good intentions. That means you aren’t all bad. And if you aren’t all bad…”
My chest tightened when I realized I’d relaxed too much. “Everything I’ve done has been to use you.”
“To save your people,” she protested. “And you couldn’t have found joy in it. I can tell when you get quiet and your eyes go distant. There’s sadness.”
“You’ll find yourself very hurt if you try to justify me, Princess.”
She frowned. “I’m finding myself very hurt if I don’t. If you have done everything selfishly, if you’re terrible and I’ve meant nothing to you, then that hurts so much more than trying. At least if I try, I have hope.”
“Hope is fragile. You can rely on nothing built with hope alone.”
“I don’t just have hope.” She huffed. “I have memories. Silent moments and secret times. Even when my mind was too muddled with other things to think about you, you always appeared when I needed you most, like you knew I was hurting and couldn’t bear it. You held my hand in war meetings. Told me jokes as I made weapons. Held me after I overheard the other children in the palace sneering behind my back.”
Throat tight, I murmured, “You said you couldn’t forgive me.”
“I can’t. I can’t forgive you. And I’m sure there are things you can’t forgive me for, either. I can’t keep track of how many sticks I’ve turned into swords. I’ve made countless weapons, knowing their intention would be to murder the fae, your people. Everyone has done unforgivable things.” She took in a shaking breath. “Everyone has something that haunts them.”
I narrowed my gaze and knew I could have her in my arms in seconds if I wished. She seemed to want things back the way they were badly enough herself. But if I held her, if I assured her, if we mended what was broken, would I have the strength to give it up? It hit me then—as her eyes gleamed with unshed tears and desperation—that perhaps I was sparing myself as much as I told myself I was sparing her.
How could I ever walk away from her if I let myself believe I was allowed to be whole once more?
“You don’t understand, Princess,” I whispered. She stiffened, a chill going down her spine. “It doesn’t haunt me. The blood on my hands, the sins on my soul, were nothing but necessary. Maybe if there had been another way, I would have taken it, but as there wasn’t, I don’t regret anything I’ve done.”
Hope went out of her eyes. “Why are you so intent on being the monster?”
“Maybe I’d like you to see me for what I am.”
A half-hearted scoff breathed out of her nose. “It’s hard when everything about you is a contradiction. J
ust tell me how I’m supposed to feel. It’ll make it so much easier.”
“What’s the point?” I offered her a wry smile. “We both know you never do what you’re told.”
Standing straight, she glared at me. “Should I hit you or kiss you?”
“Probably both.”
Her eyes narrowed, and she plowed past me. “You’re irritating. But I have time to figure you out. Maybe the fae are immortal beings just for that reason. It’s impossible to understand them in a single lifetime.”
Neither of us had that much time to spend together, but I rolled my eyes. “You would task your children with picking me apart?”
“Certainly.” She fluttered her lashes. “I’m sure they’ll love to learn about their father.”
All manner of breath left my lungs.
She peered at me quizzically for a long beat, then smirked. “For my notes, the monster can blush.”
Heat crawled up my neck and fled out along my ears in a way that left an odd sensation in my gut. I could find no words to reply, so I kept myself as hard as I could manage and fixed my gaze on the jagged crystals protruding from the walls. She was impossible. She could play me like a flute, but I could hardly find strength to return the favor.
Maybe in my heart I knew this was the last day before the end. The next time I saw her after this, she would sacrifice my being for my people’s new world.
This was all I had.
And I didn’t want to die with only a memory of hatred in her eyes. The torment and confusion was sweeter; it proved how much she cared. The hope was a delicacy. The love—if I dared to admit I saw it reflected there—was my reprieve.
The contradictions came because my head and my heart were at war. One screamed; the other bled. I could find no peace.
I SAT ON THE COLD ground with a hand trembling against my mouth and my lips pressed firmly together. The caverns sang around us, a chilling wind breezing through countless orifices to create a ghostly tune.
Kingdom of Villains and Vengeance Page 33