by Ella Fields
I would’ve smirked at his comical reaction if not for the contents of the satchel. Instead, I flopped into an armchair, kicked my boots off, and grinned when he scowled. They were crusted with dust and dirt, and left a nice little mark or two on the white fur rug.
“Just open the bag and look in the box,” I said, then yawned, my eyes closing as I heard him open the lid. I didn’t want or need to see the contents again, though it was the least I could do.
I opened my eyes. “I asked him to rule in my stead,” I said, rolling my lips. “In a land filled with those who shun and hate me. I asked him to do his best, and he did, but his best wasn’t good enough.”
With a blank expression, Zad set the lid back on the box, then placed it down on a table farthest away from the crackling fire. “They’re goading you.”
I knew that. “They’ve tortured him. They’re still torturing him.”
“That is why you’re here?”
I frowned. “Does my presence in your home really bother you that much?”
Zad rubbed his stubble-lined chin, sighing as he strode to the fireplace and braced his hands upon the mantel. “Audra, I’m not sure what you want me to do.”
“I’m not asking you to do anything, but your friends…” I watched his back arch as he hung his head. “I know they’re the reason you knew what was going to happen on my vow night.” I paused, crossing a leg over the other. “It occurred to me as I was visiting my exiled husband and replaying what was almost the happiest moment of my life that your appearance was rather timely, my lord.”
The silence screamed as I continued to watch his muscular back gently rise and fall.
Finally, he murmured, “I heard of it myself, not from my friends.” He straightened but didn’t face me. “As the weeks after your engagement carried on, something didn’t feel right, but no one would talk, so no one outside of their inner circle knew anything. They were too careful. So I pretended to go against the marriage alliance. Darkness knows I had enough reason to.” At his exasperated tone, I frowned but did not interrupt. “Or so Solnia and Phane believed, being that I thought I’d one day be your husband. They knew that, and after only a few meetings, they were easily misled.” He turned then, expression still blank as he said, “I infiltrated their inner circle a mere week before the ceremony.”
Which was why he could attest to their guilt in the days after, other than being there to witness the horrors firsthand.
“Why didn’t you tell me all this?” The words were almost whispered, and I hadn’t realized until I cleared my throat how much this visit was due to me wanting to look him in the eye and have him tell me what he knew for himself.
“I tried. You ignored me at every turn, and it was beginning to look suspicious, the way I was following you around, hoping for a moment where Raiden would leave your side.”
But he never did, not in those final days leading up to the ceremony.
I looked down at the fur rug and my dirtied boots. “So you decided to try to thwart their plans on your own?”
Zad nodded. “I had help as you can probably recall. We cut through the woods, which was why you wouldn’t have seen me at the festivities.” He snorted, shaking his head. “Not that you’d have bothered to look.”
I frowned and opened my mouth, but he went on, “And then we waited. They struck before you could fully enter the forest, though. That was not the plan. They must have found out at the last moment whose side I was truly on. We had to race…” He stopped, and I could’ve sworn there was a tremor in his hand as he cupped his mouth with it and turned back to the fire. “I didn’t know if we’d make it.”
Long moments ticked by as I let that night—what he’d done, and what he’d risked—close one of the tiny cracks inside me. “Thank you,” I finally murmured.
He stiffened, then slowly released a breath. “So what makes you think those are even Berron’s fingers?”
It took me a moment to gather the present into place, and then I flashed my teeth, laughing. “Oh, believe me. They’re his.”
Zad grimaced. His jaw clenched as he ran a hand through his hair, then moved for the door while muttering, “I’ll show you upstairs.”
After ridding the day’s ride from my skin in a tub that was almost as luxurious as my own, the female who’d greeted us delivered a platter of cheese, meats, and fruit to my room.
The room was filled with white wood. A bed fit for three kings sat in the center on a raised dais and carved trees rose from the four corners to form a canopy of wreathed, woven wood.
“Your name,” I’d said as she went to leave.
“Emmiline.” She then dipped her head and closed the door behind her.
I stared at it for a time, wondering exactly who she was to the lord, then my hunger bested me, and I devoured most of the food on the platter.
For hours, I’d stared at the intricate canopy above the bed. Exhaustion weighed down my lids, yet I couldn’t drift away.
My guards had been shown to rooms after I had been left to mine, and other than the sound of water gurgling somewhere in the large home, there was nothing but silence.
I shucked the blankets off and swung my feet to the cool marble floor. The door creaked slightly as I pulled it open and traversed the hall until I’d reached the stairs. They continued higher, presumably to the roof.
As silent as possible, I climbed them and met no resistance as I pushed the small door, a piece of cutout glass with grass on the other side, wide open.
I soon figured out why as I let it fall closed and crawled over the soft, wet rooftop, careful not to squash any flowers on my way to where two bench seats perched in the middle, hidden behind serpentine vines and sunflowers. To the left of them sat a fountain with what looked to be blue two-headed fish swimming inside. Grends.
“You needn’t bother with trying to be silent,” Zad said. “You’re about as stealthy as a wounded horse.”
Irritation prickled at my nape. Still, I climbed into the seat next to him, eyeing the wine he was nursing. “How is this possible?”
Zad licked the corner of his lips, then smiled. “Why, the same way what we can do is possible. Magic.”
“But it looks real,” I said, my eyes roaming the greenery and moonlit kaleidoscope of color.
“Because it is; it just needs a little more encouragement to survive.”
I pondered that, then asked, “Emmiline?”
Zad nodded. “Her powers are tied to the soil, to the earth.”
I blinked, then reached for his wine and took a hearty sip. He said nothing as I handed it back with a small amount remaining. A wave of his hand had it refilled.
“I need to learn that.”
“There are many things you still need to learn.” Unamused, he sipped his wine. “You went straight to heavy hitting without paying any mind to what the finer, less devastating things can offer.”
I ignored that. He was right, in a sense, but I had better things to worry over these days. “She’s royal, then.”
Zad seemed to stiffen. “She is.”
I eyed him. The unyielding set to his broad shoulders, the rigid lines of his hewn cheekbones, and that hardened jawline. “Your mother?”
He took another sip of wine. “You already know my mother is dead. Emmiline is my mother’s sister.”
I had heard that. “She bears an uncanny resemblance to you.” He frowned at me. “Bone structure, and the…” I gestured to his face. “Silent intensity thing.”
His frown gradually slipped, his eyes swirling over my features, and I felt myself sag as though I’d finally been handed water in the middle of the desert. “You couldn’t sleep.”
I shook my head, then grinned when a throw pillow and blanket materialized before me on the clear patch of grass. “I find looking at the stars can sometimes help.”
“Do you find yourself up here often?” I settled over the blanket and tucked the pillow beneath my cheek.
Zad’s crossed ankles shifted from side to side near my
knees. “Whenever I can.”
“How is it not freezing?” Granted, it wasn’t as cold here as it was at the castle; the temperature thawed with every mile away from it, but the air still carried a bite. A bite that didn’t bother me, but would bother most.
“The house is heated the same way your home is, only it extends to the roof as well.”
I yawned. “Which is also how you’re able to keep the gardens alive.” We had magic users working full-time to ensure my own gardens’ survival.
Zad picked up a book that lay beside him and opened it to where he’d marked the page. “Exactly.” He began reading aloud from a collection of tales that were crafted long before our parents were even blips on the horizon. Stories of princes and princesses, of royals being hunted and slain by faeries, forced to find a place of their own to ensure their survival, of kings and queens and human warriors and monsters of flesh and scale.
And all too soon, the deep, melodic timbre of his voice had my heavy lids drooping, following me into a dreamless sleep.
Some hours later, as the sun sent spirals of golden light snaking through the dark, I awoke to find the lord lying next to me, gazing at the fading stars. “Have you decided what to do?”
I stretched my legs and arms, then sat up and watched the last of the shadows disappear. “I’m not sure which cumbersome matter you’re referring to.”
“All of them.” His voice was lilted with sleep and pressed on every single place he’d ever touched. All of me.
There was little else to be done. A war was brewing whether I, or any of my people, liked it or not. “Raiden can wait.” I turned my head over my shoulder, offering a smile. “I think it’s time we go to war.”
“And you’d like me to join you, of course.”
I said nothing but continued to smile.
Zad nodded once with a gleam in his eye that couldn’t be read but filled me with warmth all the same.
I pressed a hand to Wen’s muzzle, the heat from his nostrils warming my palm. “We will stop more now that we have daylight, my friend.”
He huffed as though he didn’t care either way.
I grinned, sliding my hand over his neck before I mounted him and clicked my tongue. Before I could get ten feet away from the stables, Zadicus stopped me.
He stood in the sunshine, his long brown leather coat flapping behind him, and his hair kissed by the sun. Wen whinnied, and Zad stroked his neck as he neared. “You were going to leave without saying goodbye.”
My brow crinkled, my gloved hands creaking around the reins. “I said goodbye—”
With a crook of his finger, my head tilted down, and he grasped it within his cool, calloused hands. His eyes met mine for an instant that morphed into something more, and then our lips touched.
Rich and soft and toe-curling, his lips moved over mine in an unhurried caress that feathered everywhere.
Sooner than I’d thought I’d like, he released me. His eyes were slow to open, and when they did, they fixed on mine for a stretched moment as if waiting for something, and then he was stalking off toward the house.
Breathless, I rode to the gate, my gloved fingers rising to my mouth as my mind tried to make sense of why and how that felt different, brand new, when I’d lost count of all the times we’d kissed before.
His aunt curtsied, but her face still held that detached quality so much like her nephew.
I nodded, thanked her for the hospitality in a crisp tone, and then joined my guard.
We stopped at a glen at noon, allowing the horses to rest and hydrate as we ate the dried fruits and meats that Zad’s cook had sent us off with.
Rocks surrounded the shallow stream of water, making silence hard to achieve as our boots crunched over them. We were not foolish enough to discuss battle strategy or what we knew we would soon face. One of the first things my mother taught me as a child was that the trees had ears, and the wind was the messenger.
Even before these tense times, peace for a millennia didn’t mean we were not the type to play power games, seek information, and try to one-up each other in every way we could.
Certain creatures and dwellers of the forest never evolved, and they were neither friend nor foe. It was never personal. They straddled the line between, and only played games that could be of advantage to them.
With eyes on the forest looming at our backs, the northwest sprawl of the Winding Woods stretched up ahead in a curtain of darkness barely breached by sunlight, we drank and we ate and then we made haste to the city.
Ridlow, a young guard who’d only just completed his training, saw them first.
Though seeing them didn’t quite matter when I felt my very blood seize and tremble, then lower to a quiet hum. It was as though someone had reached inside me and turned out all the lights, leaving me with only natural, sluggish strength.
Panic sluiced through our group as murmurs and huge eyes were cast to the towering trees that had swallowed us.
Shadows formed around us in a semi-circle. Globs of darkness that materialized the closer they came, a glowing substance within their hands.
“Run,” Ainx cried, his stallion rearing as he drew his sword.
I knew he was talking to me, urging me to flee, but the shock, the anger that arose held me prisoner and refused to let me.
I unsheathed my sword and spurred Wen to the left. “Cut them down.”
A hooded figure appeared before me, a stone between their cupped hands.
My veins throbbed, pounding beneath my skin. I felt something trickle from my nostril, but I pushed forward and struck them through the ribs.
A scream filled the air as she fell back, the hood falling away from cream-colored hair, revealing thinned blue eyes. The stone rolled to the grass, and she panted, staring up at me with gritted teeth as she tried to staunch the wound in her side.
I pressed the blade to her frantic pulse, Wen huffing and skittish beneath me. “Who are you?”
Blood coated her teeth as she forced a smile. “Your end.”
A cry came from above, from the trees, and I fell from Wen, who galloped away, toward the fissures of light of the woods.
Groaning, I smacked at the ground for my sword as the world spun and heard Azela scream my name. I swung as a hand yanked my hair back, but whoever it was knocked my sword loose, then kicked it away.
“Now, now,” a female voice urged as I reached for them to no avail. “Be a good little queen for once in your life, and maybe you’ll live long enough to see another meal.”
I screamed as one of those pulsing rocks was set by my head, and then I blacked out.
I woke three times before I could finally manage to keep my eyes open long enough to see I was in some type of cage, then I let blackness engulf me once more.
“Audra.”
I moaned, forcing my eyes open again, but everything was too blurred, and my head felt like it was going to either catch fire or explode.
I shut them again.
“Audra, wake up.” Berron’s voice slithered into the dark space I’d been locked inside.
My eyes sprang wide, a silent scream left me as the pounding in my head increased, the world hazy and filled with unrecognizable shapes. Moaning, I gripped my head. “Berron?”
“Yes.” A clang sounded. “It’s me. Open your eyes, stay with me. It gets more bearable the longer you keep them open.”
I didn’t know if I believed him, but I had to see him. I had to see if I was stuck in some strange hallucination, dream, or if he was real. I groaned, my muscles spasming as I tried to twist away from where I’d been curled up on the dirt.
The sound of someone shifting encouraged me, and I gritted my teeth against the pain in my head, in every part of me, as I rolled and came face to face with one I hadn’t known I’d ever see again. “You,” I rasped.
Berron smiled, and I was thankful he at least still had his teeth. “Me.”
“I’m to wage a war for you.”
He continued to smile, a te
ar streaking down his dirt-covered cheek. “For me? I think you had to anyway, my queen.”
“Good point, but you forced my hand.” I grunted, trying to rise onto my elbow. It slid out beneath me, and I hissed as my cheek hit the ground, my teeth nicking my tongue.
“Easy,” Berron whispered, his eyes on some place behind me. They returned a moment later, filled with a million fleeting thoughts. “Just lay still for now. It’s better that way.”
“Why? Where are we?” And then I remembered them.
The cloaked figures. The blond female. The stones. Panic closed my airways, but I dared ask, “Where are my guards?”
Berron looked down at the ground. “One is here. I know nothing of the others.”
Tasting copper, I swallowed. “Who?”
“A young male.”
“Ridlow,” I breathed. I wasn’t comforted that the rest weren’t here. That could mean anything. They could be rotting corpses in the woods or left gravely injured for the beasts that roamed at nightfall.
“Are we in the woods?” I tried to look around, but from my vantage point, all I could see was dirt and rusted metal, Berron’s grimy face, and a wall made of sparkling black.
“I have no idea. We could be anywhere. They have a vanisher amongst them.” A boom sounded above our heads, and he hurried to say, “Listen, don’t be foolish. They will hurt you.” He lifted his hand, the one missing the last two fingers. “Or kill you. Play the game. Buy time.”
I winced at the sight of his blackened stubs. “You need to have them cauterized.”
“If I survive,” he said with a resigned tone.
“Berron,” I growled, then cursed and grabbed my head. “A vanisher?” Those were hard to come by and often coveted by those in the royal courts. With a vision of their destination, they could travel anywhere within seconds and could take up to two people with them.
“Shhh,” he urged, rolling over to face the other way.
I watched his back and how his tattered, soiled tunic moved as he pretended to sleep.
I wasn’t sure if I should do the same, or if I could. The throbbing in my head intensified to a point my hands were clasping it, and my ears started to screech.