by Ruth Vincent
We didn’t have a plan for if I used the wrong knife.
Betrayal buzzed through the haze of agony.
It couldn’t be. Why would the Fairy Queen want to kill me? I was her daughter.
But what if the Queen herself had gotten confused and sent the wrong one? They looked identical.
It could have been an accident.
Or someone else had tricked her? Someone had switched the knives on my mother in an attempt to kill me?
Pain was wiping out my ability to think.
Waves of darkness were closing over me. I was going to faint.
Through the agony, I heard a voice. It was shouting something, over and over. What was it? It was a deep male voice. It was Obadiah’s voice. What was he saying?
And then I heard him plain and clear.
“Drop the knife,” he was screaming. “Drop the knife.”
The knife. I was vaguely aware that I was clenching it still between both hands; the pain had locked my fingers in a vise around the hilt. I tried to loosen their grasp, but my hands were numb. Then suddenly the knife was wrested from my grasp. Air tumbled back into my lungs, and I screamed, plummeting into a depthless abyss.
The first thing I was aware of was the cool scent of pine needles and the slow whooshing sounds of water. I was definitely not in my room. I was outside. There were twigs poking my back, and the air had the intoxicating smell of Elixir. It had worked. I was in the Vale. My eyes popped open to see Obadiah prostrate beside me, groaning. I rolled over to throw my arms around him, squealing with joy that we were both alive.
“You got through too!” I cried.
The knife was lying beside him, glinting in the brown leaves. It was the real knife.
“I managed to get the knife from you,” Obadiah said, sitting up and smiling. “Though I almost didn’t. Your fingers were like a vise. I had to pry it from your hands. You were halfway in and out of the worlds. You dropped it just at the last second before you disappeared.”
I sat up and hugged him, not knowing if I was crying or laughing. I was making strange gasping, snorting sounds in shock as my brain and my body caught up to one another.
“Mab, try to be quieter, love. We don’t know where we are,” Obadiah whispered, but he held me tight, and I could tell he was just as ecstatic and relieved as I was that we had both survived. He picked up the Vale knife and put it in his pocket. I wondered if he could still feel its awful sensation through his jeans. I was glad he’d volunteered to hold it. I couldn’t bear to touch that thing again.
I sat up, looking at the columns of trees that surrounded us. They were enormous, too big to wrap your arms around, but I could see no doors or windows. These weren’t House Trees. We had to be in the Central Forest, the only place the Queen couldn’t see with her spying network of pixies.
“You should stay here,” I said to Obadiah. “I’ll go to the Queen’s palace alone.”
“Mab.” He cupped my hip to him, drawing me close. He was worried, but this was my fight.
“The Queen, um, my mom, won’t let harm come to me. You’re less safe than I am here in the Vale. You keep the knife. If any of her henchmen come after you, just use it. You’ll pop back into the human world and they won’t be able to get you.”
“But what about you?”
“I’ll be with the Queen. She can travel between the worlds as often as she wants. I’ll be fine.”
Obadiah looked stern. He didn’t want to agree to this, but I wasn’t giving an inch.
“I’ve got to do this. Whether you’re happy about it or not.”
He frowned. “Just stay safe, promise?”
“I promise.”
I rose to my feet as he helped me up, brushing the leaves and twigs from my hair and clothing. We both stood facing each other, and I stood up on my tiptoes, kissing him full and hard on the mouth. He responded eagerly, his skin smelling of Elixir and the forest. It was with great reluctance that I pulled back at last.
“Get yourself to your safe house. Promise me you’ll stay hidden?”
He nodded.
And with one last kiss goodbye, I set off to meet the Fairy Queen.
Chapter 8
I received an utterly different reception at the palace this time around. With all the Queen’s goblin guards and elf butlers practically falling over themselves to serve me, like it was some sort of brownnosing competition, as if everyone wanted to win favor with the Queen by kissing up to her daughter. It made me grossly uncomfortable. “No, I don’t want any refreshments; no, you don’t need to take my jacket, I want to keep it; no, no, no Elixir please,” I kept saying. “Just take me to the Queen.”
At last I was led into the Great Hall. Memories from the last time I’d been here assaulted me as the huge double doors swung open. I’d run out these doors in blinding, angry tears when the Fairy Queen, whom I’d always thought was evil, who’d taken my magic powers from me and exiled me to the human world, told me that she was my mother, and that she’d tricked me into becoming a changeling for my own good. I still couldn’t forgive her all her human captives, but she was my mother, and we were tied together in this life for better or worse.
I saw a figure hunched over at the far end of the room. It had to be my mother. She was turned away from me, clad in an ever-shifting iridescent blue dress that was made of fluttering butterflies. The hideous goblin Korvus Korax was crouched beside her, whispering something in her ear.
She must have heard my footfalls on the gleaming agate floor, because she turned around and I had to stifle a gasp. I clapped my hands over my mouth without meaning to.
She looked terrible. Her face was haggard—bone white skin, gaunt, with dark sagging purple circles beneath her eyes. She was so much thinner than when I’d last seen her; the fluttering butterflies masked it, but maybe that was why she’d worn this gown. She was clutching a cane. It was encrusted with gems, but still, it was a cane. She could fly; why was she leaning on a cane?
“Mother . . . ?”
She rushed towards me, hobbling on her cane, the butterfly wings shimmering rainbows as she walked.
I kept waiting for her to put on her glamour. In the past, she always did within seconds of seeing me when I caught her off guard. But her face continued to look the same. Was it a sign she felt comfortable with me, comfortable enough that she’d let me see her old? I wanted to believe that. That would have comforted me. It would mean she really considered me her daughter, not just her successor. That we were family; because you didn’t care how you looked around family. But the Queen wasn’t like that. There was a haunted expression of shame in her eyes as she approached me, and my gut twisted. She wanted to use her glamour, I realized, but for some reason, she couldn’t. Was this what she’d meant by things were getting worse?
Guilt stabbed me that I had been away for so long.
“Mother? What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I’m fine, my darling. Come closer, let me embrace you. It is so good of you to visit me. I didn’t know you would come back so soon.”
Tentatively, I walked closer, and steeling myself, I reached through the butterflies that tickled my skin, and gave her a hug. Her body was so frail beneath the swirling, living dress of wings that I could feel her bones beneath.
“Mother, no offense, but you look terrible. What’s going on?”
She let out a long sigh.
“Leave us,” she said to Korvus. He seemed very unhappy to have been so unceremoniously dismissed, but he nodded at me politely and shuffled out of the room. I breathed a heavy sigh of relief as I heard the door close behind him. I didn’t think I’d ever be comfortable around him. He had only been following my mother’s orders, but he was the goblin who’d grabbed the little girl I’d been switched with out of her crib, and ignored my screams for help when I’d realized I was stuck as a changeling. He might be polite, but I could tell he still hated that I’d returned when he thought he’d gotten rid of me all those years ago. I was the wedge between him and the Queen. There
wasn’t a lot of love lost between us on either side.
The other courtiers who were still loitering around the edges of the hall, trying to unobtrusively eavesdrop, filed out too. My mother sat down upon her great stone chair, carved with the likenesses of past Fairy Queens. There was a blank space at the bottom, a gap, reminding me of the mantle of power I’d been reluctant to have put on my shoulders.
“What’s going on?” I asked again. “You look really unwell.”
I sat down on the stool beside her, realizing as I did that the perch I sat on was probably usually occupied by Korvus. She extended her hand, taking mine and squeezing it. Her fingers were ice cold.
“I’m so glad you came, Mab. I didn’t want to force you, you know. But it is such a delight to see you.”
Her eyes were shining, even if her face looked horrible.
“It’s fortunate you’ve arrived. It’s time now.”
I looked up at her, not understanding.
“It’s time for you to take my place. For you to assume the throne.”
I stepped back from her, vehemently shaking my head.
“You did promise me you would, dearest, when you begged me to save Obadiah’s life.”
I glared at her, furious. And in that moment I understood why all the old stories warned against making promises with fairies. They’d always find a way to trap you. But the Queen had trapped me once. I wasn’t going to let her trap me again.
“I promised I’d do it. I never promised I’d do it immediately. What am I supposed to do about my human life? My human parents? Obadiah? Eva? Reggie? Where would they think I’ve gone? What do I tell them? I can’t just leave. I need time to make a transition like that.”
The Queen frowned.
“But we don’t have time. The drought . . .”
I stared down at the floor, fuming at how she was trying to manipulate me.
“Look at me, Mab,” she said, and reluctantly I raised my eyes to her haggard face.
“You see it—what the drought has done to me.”
I gulped, nodding. There was no denying how awful she looked. I knew the drought was bad; I just never thought it would affect the Queen, and affect her so quickly. She seemed so all-powerful.
As if reading my thoughts, she said, “The drought affects all of us, but I suppose it affects me most of all. The more powerful you are, the more you’re dependent on Elixir. My body feels the depletion in our atmosphere. Even drinking Elixir doesn’t help me anymore, because my reserves are so low.”
My mother was succumbing to the Elixir Thirst. Suddenly all her symptoms made a terrifying sense: the cane, the weakness. But that meant . . .
She looked down at me, and there was something tender in her voice when she spoke.
“I love you too much to lie to you, Mab.” A shadow of shame passed over her face. “Well, not anymore. I won’t candy coat it for you, as the humans say.” She took a deep breath, her forehead pinched. “I’m dying, my dearest.”
“No!” I grabbed her hand, staring wildly up into her eyes. She couldn’t die. She was still young, by fairy standards. We’d just barely begun to get to know each other. And now she was going to die? I couldn’t let this happen. There had to be some way to get her the Elixir she needed.
Panic took hold of me like a spreading frost in my stomach. If she died, that would mean I had to take over the throne. She was right; we didn’t have time. Becoming Fairy Queen had always seemed like something so far into the future as to be almost theoretical. But if the Queen was sickening so quickly, it could be soon. How was I going to take over the care of the realm? I could barely manage my human life. And what would happen to my human life if I was forced to become Queen? How could I ever explain to my parents, Obadiah, Eva, Reggie, everyone I knew, where I had gone?
“Don’t grieve for me, Mab,” she said. “I’ve had a good long life. Seven hundred years. Even many of the vampires would be envious. Of course, once I expected to live forever, but I suppose those days are over for most fairies now. I am at peace. I found you again.” She squeezed my hand. I squeezed hers back, but my vision was blurring.
“I may have found peace for myself, but I haven’t found peace for our realm, and that troubles me. I can’t leave the kingdom in its current state; it’s why I am so grateful you’ve returned.”
She lowered her voice, leaning into me. “I have to do something about Korvus. He’s been my right hand since I had to send you to the human realm. He was a good adviser for a time; it was he who was the architect of the Elixir producing program.” She must have seen the look on my face because she frowned. “I know you don’t approve, but it bought us decades. He has been good to me politically, personally. But I’ve relied on him too much.” There was genuine fear in her expression. “He thinks he should be the next leader, the next Fairy King. A goblin king.” She scowled at the very idea. “He’d be a disaster. He likes power too much. I know I’ve been accused of being a dictator, but Korvus would be an evil dictator. I can’t let him take over from me; I can’t let that happen to the Vale. But if you don’t take the throne when I leave it, he’ll seize power. I know it’s what he’s already planning. I can see it in his eyes. Wait, he’s coming.”
The Queen suddenly stiffened and was silent as a door cracked open. Korvus appeared.
“Did you need me, Your Majesty? I couldn’t hear what you were saying, but you sounded upset.”
I couldn’t read him well enough to tell if he was lying about not eavesdropping.
“I’m fine, Korvus,” my mother said imperiously. “I asked you to leave me be.”
He looked insulted, but gave a courtly nod and bid us both goodbye before shutting the door behind him.
“You have to take the throne. I didn’t want to pressure you into it, but I didn’t know how quickly I’d succumb to the Elixir Thirst. I know you’ve been hesitant to take up this role. But I’m afraid we don’t have time to waste anymore.”
“I can’t.”
The words sprang out of my mouth before I had time to think about it and hold them back. Up until this point I’d been vacillating, but now I knew with a certainty I’d never known before: I did not want to be Queen. It didn’t mean I didn’t want to help fix everything that was wrong with the Vale. But I wasn’t ready to take up my mother’s mantle of power. And as bad as I felt for her, I wasn’t going to let her illness pressure me into it.
My mother stared at me, not understanding.
“No,” I said again. “I love you, and I’m so sorry, but I can’t.”
I couldn’t become the new Fairy Queen. I loved my mother—did I love my mother? I hardly knew her, but she was my mother, and I cared for her. And yet, I couldn’t do what she did: kill innocents for the good of the realm. And my human life—I couldn’t just give all that up.
“There has to be more time. Can you just drink more Elixir?” I was ashamed at the thought. More Elixir meant more children suffering.
My mother looked at me sadly. “I’ve tried that, my darling. It doesn’t seem to matter how much I take anymore. My body isn’t absorbing the Elixir. The Thirst has progressed too far.” Her voice trailed off.
“Is the Elixir not as strong as it used to be? Is diluted somehow?” I asked, thinking of the wolf currently in Obadiah’s storeroom.
“I don’t think it’s that. You see, Elixir has two parts. One we can manufacture from the children to bolster our supply, but the other part comes from within us, analogous to your human DNA. Once the Thirst has begun to attack that . . .”
The two parts of Elixir: the X-factor and the Y-factor, I thought, thinking of Eva’s lab. The Queen could steal dopamine, but she couldn’t fix an underlying problem with her fairy DNA. My mother was really going to die. And I didn’t even know how to feel about it. If it were my human mother, I shuddered to even think; I’d be balling my eyes out right now. But this strange, remote Queen, this majestic, Machiavellian fairy—my birth mother—I didn’t even know how to feel about her.
/>
But I didn’t want her to die.
“I tried to delay. I tried to not tell you, but now there’s no more time . . .”
“There has to be something we can do,” I said, twisting my fingers together. “I wish there was something I could do to help.” But I had nothing. The look in my mother’s eyes said she’d resigned herself to her death in a way I could not.
“There is something you can do to help,” she said. “You can rule.”
“But I can’t.”
“Mab, you will make a good Queen. If we start your training now . . .”
“I don’t want to be Queen!”
I hadn’t meant to yell at her, but the words came flying out my mouth. Every little fairy girl dreamed of being Queen. The other orphans and I had taken turns wearing acorn crowns and mantles made of leaves and made each other monarch for the afternoon, but being Queen for a lifetime, for eternity perhaps, was nothing like that. It wasn’t a game anymore. It was hell. I would have enemies plotting to kill me for as long as I lived. And the children the Queen was using to manufacture Elixir . . . I could never, ever kidnap and kill anyone like that. But if I didn’t, all the fairies would die and it would be on my head.
“Let Korvus do it, if he wants it so badly,” I said, and then instantly blushed fever-hot in guilt. Let Korvus rule, so he could kill kids and I could feel like it wouldn’t be my fault. But it would, because I hadn’t stopped him.
“I can’t let Korvus take power. A monarchy in his hands would be a catastrophe. He has no scruples.”
“Scruples? Spoken from someone who kills children?”
“I know you don’t approve of my methods, but I do what I have to do. I don’t enjoy doing this to them, Mab. I have nightmares each night.” Her bone white chin trembled. “I do what I must. Korvus is different. Korvus likes the experiments. He enjoys what we do to the Shadow children. He feels nothing when he hears them scream.”
I shuddered.
“And even if you think I’ve gone too far, he would go farther. Korvus stops at nothing in pursuit of his goals. Nothing. He wants to increase the program, take even more children. He’s desperate to find a solution to the Elixir drought as soon as possible. You know the goblins don’t need Elixir like we do; that’s not his motive. If he offers the fairy populace a chance at survival, they’ll follow him anywhere. That’s why he was so eager to help me with my experiments. I see it now. I thought he was just loyal to me, but I was blind.”