by Cora Avery
“She told me she’d given up too much to gain the means to locate a Prince, and I heard her telling one of her servants that she owed the Elf King too much to back out . . . whatever that means. I only assumed she used Elf magic. I can’t imagine how else she could’ve located me.”
“Anyone who knew you would know you were a Prince,” she said. “You can’t hide a face like that.”
A flush spread over her cheeks as soon as the words left her mouth, but she kept her eyes on the door. And then she recalled how he had been shrouded in shadow when she’d first arrived.
“Except you can,” she said, looking at him again. “You can obscure yourself, can’t you?”
His eyes narrowed, the deep shadows of his brow closing in around the bright green lights underneath.
“That’s a neat trick,” she said, gaze flicking back to the door, “and very useful for a Prince who doesn't wish to be one. But I suspect Lavana was only keeping you in here until she began to Shine, then you would’ve begged her to claim you. Lucky for you, she found a new Prince before that happened.”
“I’ve heard about this Shine . . .”
Her tongue flicked over the smooth spot where her tooth had been. All the while, the rats scratched and scurried, bolts rattling in their moorings.
“But I can’t believe it is as impossible to resist as I’ve been told,” he said.
She glanced at him. “You’ve never experienced it? You’ve never even seen a Rae who’s been claimed during her Shine?”
“I’d never met any Rae before Lavana.”
“Well, no wonder you have such a poor opinion of them,” she said. “I don’t know if it’s impossible to resist or not. I’ve never met a Prince who’s tried.”
Though hooded, she could feel the weight of his gaze on her. “You’re not in your Shine now, are you?”
She snorted. “No.”
One of the bolts clattered loose and rolled towards her, tapping against the toe of her sneaker, but she didn’t move right away. She remained in the middle of her cell, feeling the pressing presence of the iron without being sapped by it in any way. Whatever Kaelan had done, it seemed almost as good as ichor-gold. But she’d never heard of a Prince who was able to give his Rae protection against iron, not even temporarily. Her thumbs skimmed over her fingers as she gazed down at the bolt. She had the strangest urge to pick it up. Was it possible he’d lent her so much protection that she could actually touch the stuff with her bare hands?
She met Kaelan’s gaze again. “Why don’t you wish to be claimed?” she asked.
“I told you—”
“Yes, you don’t wish to be owned. I know,” she said. “Is that all?”
His face darkened, which was to his benefit, hardening all the lines to chiseled perfection. “Is that not enough?” he asked.
She didn’t believe him. There was something more to it, but it wasn’t her business to pry, though it was difficult not to interrogate him further. How could such a beautiful, powerful Prince be so willing to forsake everything he could gain by being claimed on principle alone? It was just unheard of.
“Well, I have to say,”—she inched closer to the door of the cell, attempting to hear over teeth scraping and softly breaking stone—“you are the most unusual Prince I’ve ever met. And I’ve met my fair share.”
“And do you have one?” he asked.
“I did,” she said, “but I never claimed him.”
“Why not?”
“I met him in exile. I had no intention of returning here. What was the point? And . . . I promised my mother I wouldn’t claim a Prince until after I became Radiant.”
“You did?”
“Yes, and I keep my promises.”
“You lived in the human world?”
She nodded.
“Did you like it there?”
“I liked not being tortured, not having to kill, or worry about being killed. I liked pizza.”
“What’s pizza?”
She smiled. “Flat bread with a tomato sauce and cheese, lots of it. You can put other things on it, olives and peppers . . . it’s delicious.”
“And will you go back there if we escape?”
“I don’t know where the nearest portal is,” she said. “Besides, there’s someone in this world I need to find before Lavana does.”
“You’re not going to return to your Prince?”
“Assuming he’s not dead?” She shrugged.
“You didn’t love him?”
She focused on him again. “Is that what you want? To fall in love?”
The shadows seemed to increase around him. “Doesn’t everyone?”
She shrugged again. “I’ve never thought about it.”
“You’re lying,” he said.
She scowled. “Why would I lie? I’m a Rae. All we’re taught to love is power, and more power.”
“Ah, but you’re not like the others,” he said. “Isn’t that right?”
“No. I am just like them,” she said. “I’m reckless and arrogant. I’ve killed more than once, and when I decide there is something I want, I won’t hesitate to kill again to gain it. The only real difference is that I’ve decided I want to live more than I want to be Radiant.”
“But live for what?”
“Isn’t simply being alive enough?”
“Not for me.”
“Well, that’s your problem.”
“It’s not a problem. I’m already in love with someone,” he stated.
“Oh? You fell in love with some poor common Pixie-girl?” she asked.
“No. A nymph.”
She snorted.
He glowered at her. “Is there something you want to say?”
She cocked her head towards the door, listening. She started to back up. “I think we have visitors.”
A voice bellowed outside their door. “Oi! Stop that damned beast!”
The rat’s head appeared under the door’s crack. Tight between its yellowed teeth were a pair of golden mail gloves.
“Yes!” Magda clapped her hands and dropped to her knees. “Come on.”
The other rats fled at the sound of the guards’ bellows.
Her ratty hero wriggled beneath the door and then darted through the bars towards her.
At that moment, the door swung open. Three guards filled the doorway.
The rat clamored up her leg and delivered the gloves straight into her hands. She scooped him up and kissed his damp fur. Though she hadn’t given him any reward, he squirmed free and vanished down the grate, too frightened to linger. She promised herself that she would find a way to thank him, somehow, someday.
The guards stared as she pulled the gloves onto her hands. They looked at each other, but none of them moved.
“Step forward,” she said to Kaelan, grasping the bars between them.
“What do we do?” one of the guards asked.
She gave the cage a shake, loosening the bolts from the floor. The rats had done well. Stone broke away from the iron in huge chunks. Bolts screeched against the floor, some snapping and breaking, others popping up and rolling away.
“One of you is going to have to unlock the doors,” she told the guards with a vicious smile.
They gawped at her.
Enjoying her newfound strength, she pulled the cage back towards her. Metal ground upon the stone.
She peeled off the gloves and held them out to Kaelan. He grabbed them from her and stuffed his hands into them.
The guards argued about who was going to handle the iron key to open the door.
Kaelan knelt and heaved the grate up from the floor, dropping it to the ground with a cracking clang that silenced the guards’ argument.
“I’ll do it,” the smallest guard finally said, turning back and disappearing down the hall.
Kaelan stripped off the gloves and held them back out to her. She put them on as he slid into the drain, folding his shoulders so he could fit.
She gripped the bars once
more and pushed with all her might, moving the cage oh-so-slowly clear of the drain. Her arms burned, not from the iron, but from the effort. Kaelan had healed her and she felt stronger than she had in days, but she still couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten. And she had been tortured.
The bar bisecting the drain inched along. The opening grew, four inches, five . . .
The hole was longer than it was wide. She probably didn’t need to uncover it completely, but with her broad shoulders and generous bust, she didn’t want to get stuck because she hadn’t bothered to push it another two inches.
Then Lavana appeared in all her blue-eyed, haughty, red-lipped glory. And she wasn’t alone. Endreas hovered in the shadows behind her, watching with those glorious dark eyes of his.
“What is this? What’s going on! Stop!” Lavana shouted, pushing past her gaping guards.
Magda chuckled through her gritted teeth. “Say please, dear cousin.”
“You’ll never escape. I know where that drains.” She seized one of the guards. “To the Brittle Stream at the edge of the forest. Go now!”
He nodded and raced away.
The other guard returned, ashen, sweating, and trembling. The pungent stink of scorched flesh preceded him.
Magda continued shoving against the iron bars, though her arms were starting to shake and her knees to weaken. Kaelan’s protection against the iron gave way. Though she wasn’t touching it directly, she was surrounded by it. For a moment, she faltered, her progress halting.
“Oh, don’t give up now,” Endreas said, stepping into the threshold. “You’re so close.”
She shot him an irritated look, but started pushing again.
“Hurry!” Lavana shouted at the quivering, green-gilled guard as he jabbed the key at the cage’s lock.
Before he could get the key in, he collapsed. The key clattered to the floor.
Lavana grabbed the other guard’s collar. “Pick it up!”
The guard paled, but bent to scoop up the key.
“Do all Pixies heal so quickly?” Endreas asked as if he were in the midst of a dinner party conversation.
“What?” Lavana snapped at him.
“How has she recovered?”
The guard grasped the key, letting out a growling howl through his teeth as the reek of his burning flesh filled the cell.
“The Prince must have healed her, obviously,” Lavana said.
“Oh, you’ve lost your Prince too?”
Eight inches . . . nine . . . was that enough? She stared down at the black hole, trying to determine if she would fit.
“I don’t need him anyway,” Lavana said. “I’ve decided to claim Riker.”
Magda almost stumbled into the bars. “Riker is here?”
Lavana bared her teeth in a savage smile. “That’s right. I caught him. He’s mine now.”
“And Damion?”
“Open the damned door!” Lavana barked as the guard swayed where he stood. The key hovered in front of the lock, and then finally, he pushed it in. The lock thunked.
Magda gave the cage one last shove, clearing the drain. The guard stumbled back as the cell lurched, dropping the key, clutching his wounded hand. The door swung inward.
Magda reached through the bars, grabbed the cover, and then dragged it through to her side. She dropped onto her butt, legs dangling.
As she slid down, Kaelan grasped her waist to help her down.
Lavana had to wait for the cell’s door to stop swinging. She stood on the other side, white-faced, hands fisted, two slaps of red high on her cheeks, her aquamarine eyes full of cold fire.
Behind her, Endreas smirked and winked at Magda.
Magda dragged the iron grate over the opening once more.
She caught Kaelan’s shoulders as she splashed into the wet muck. They were chest to chest in the tight space. She couldn’t tell if it was his heart pounding or hers. Though it was pitch black, his eyes glowed like dewy grass in starlight. His breath slid warm over her face. A woozy tingle spread under her skin.
“The tunnel is small. But we should fit,” she said. “We’ll have to crawl. We need to hurry. There will be guards.”
“There’s another way,” he said. “Close your eyes.”
“What?”
“Just do it.”
“We don’t have—”
He slammed her against him, stealing her breath and covering her eyes with his hand.
The weight of her body seemed to lift from her, so she was only a whisper of herself. Cool, sweet air trailed fingers over her skin, evoking shivers all through her. A faint breeze seemed to murmur in her ears, as if she were running. But, other than a vague sense of floating, she didn’t feel as though she was moving at all.
And then she eased back into the heaviness of her body. The shivers remained, goose bumps pricking over her skin.
Kaelan let out a soft huff as his hands slid from her. He slouched to the ground. She grabbed his shoulder in time to ease his fall.
“Are you—?”
“I’m all right,” he said as she laid him down on the mossy ground.
Moss.
She gazed around. They were at the edge of a forest, upon a tussock, overlooking a meadow. She drew away from him, standing, taking in the starlight falling like silver snow upon the tall grasses and slumbering flowers.
Real stars.
A river of light streamed across the sky. From some distant perch, a fairy flute played a quiet lullaby, and an ache that she hadn’t known she felt abated. Tears slipped down her cheeks as she drank in the wine of the night air. The clean, rich taste ran down her throat and filled her lungs. Her chest hitched and then clenched around her swelling heart.
Finally, she was home.
Her fingers pressed to the smile on her lips as a whisper moth fluttered by her. The face on its wings shone in the starlight. Every beat of its flight shook secrets from the air that murmured like hushed fairy voices.
She held out her hand and the moth lit upon her palm, tickling her skin with its delicate feet before taking flight once more.
Then she noticed Kaelan watching her from the ground, propped up on his elbows.
“Where are we?” she asked.
“I’m not sure,” he said, sitting up fully. “Not far enough.”
She crouched next to him. “How did you do that? What did you do?”
His gaze slid away. “Your Prince could not . . . travel?”
“Well, my Prince is a poor example,” she said. “But I suppose he is Lavana’s Prince now . . .” She sagged. “Poor Riker.”
“Will you go back for him?” he asked, pushing up to his feet.
She rose as well.
An iron weight fell onto her chest. “I can’t. It’s too dangerous. What I don’t understand is why she needs him when she has Endreas. You must be right. The Elf King must’ve given her . . . something. For a Rae to find one Prince is difficult enough, but three?”
“She didn’t exactly find yours on purpose.”
Lifting her hand to tug at her lower lip, cool metal grazed her skin. She was still wearing the gloves. She pulled off one and held it out to him.
“This should fetch quite a price, wherever you go.” She peeled the other off and jammed it into her back pocket.
He took the glove. “Where are you going?” he asked.
“Trust me, Prince. You don’t want to know,” she said.
“For the Enneahedron?” he asked, brow slant rising to a steep incline. “I thought you didn’t want power.”
“I don't,” she said. “But the idea that Lavana will become Radiant . . .” She chewed her lip. “I don’t know what I’ll do.”
In the star shine, she could see every lash framing his eyes, every line etching his lips, and the woven edges of his scar, threads of it twisting like a curling tendril of heart-ivy. Fresh tears pricked her eyes as she gazed at him, at the dark beauty of his face in the glittering light.
Her stars. Her home.
“What’s wrong?” he asked softly.
“Nothing,” she said, smiling and wiping the tears from her eyes. “Everything is so beautiful here. I’d forgotten.” Her throat constricted. “I’ve forgotten . . . too much.” She rolled back her shoulders. She had to find Kirk and Enneahedron before Lavana. “Thank you, Kaelan. For everything.”
She kissed his cheek. The taste of him slid over her lips and melted on her tongue—warm butterscotch and smoky, aged whiskey and fresh-cut grass. But she didn’t linger, though it would’ve been easy to do so.
When she stepped back from him, his eyes were green fire, his cheeks so taut the bones looked as though they might slice through his skin.
“Sorry,” she said, unable to keep herself from smiling. “I forgot you were a Prince.”
His expression faltered, as if he was wondering if he should be insulted.
“I wish you and your nymph all the luck in this and every world,” she said, stepping back. “Goodbye, Kaelan. Fair winds.”
“Fair winds, Magda.”
She tromped down into the meadow, studying the stars, finding the same ones she’d left behind all those years ago.
“Magda,” Kaelan called from the shadow of the trees.
She turned.
He raised the glove. “Thank you.”
The shadows rose out of the trees and surrounded him, twisting like a shroud. When they unwound again, he was gone.
THANKS TO some familiar old ruins near a stream, she soon knew exactly where she was—the edge of Lavana’s family’s hunting grounds, which meant Lavana was not far. So it might’ve been prudent for her to run as far and fast as she could from that place, but she was too exhausted.
So she set about it with all the focus and energy she had left. The Greengast River was not far. North of that were the estates of Damion’s family. And in the Brackwood, deep in the wild heart of the forest, was Tamia.
Primordial trees, ancient creaking dinosaurs, towered above her. Much of the Eastern Cliffs, a narrow province on the massive claw-like continent of the Lands, was hemmed in by deep forests. Their territory touched the high Northern Plains, the primeval woods of the central Heartlands, the southern canyons and golden coasts of the Bright Edge, and their jagged curving peninsula jutted out into the South Gulf, beyond which lay the Elf King’s Realms. If they were not bickering with the Heartlands about the exact boundary or with the Northern Plains over who was required to maintain the crossroads, they were watching the seas for exiles . . . or invaders.