Fairy Queens: Books 5-7

by Amber Argyle

  “I’m—I’m so sorry. I . . . oh, Elice!”

  Her mother launched herself to her feet and threw herself into her daughter’s arms. Her body was soft and yielding and wracked by sobs. Elice was so shocked by her mother’s sudden display of emotion, she could only stand frozen for a moment. Then she relaxed and wrapped her arms around her mother.

  Ilyenna was shivering hard, so Elice did what she’d done a thousand times for Adar—she drew the cold back into winter. Her mother stopped shivering and laid her head on her daughter’s shoulder. “You saved me, Elice. All those years of the best parts of me trapped beneath the ice, and all the horrible things I said and did, what I failed to do, yet you never stopped searching for the light within me.”

  Tears streamed down Elice’s face. The hurt and the neglect and the loneliness faded a little. She knew it would take time, but they had a lifetime to make up for what they had lost.

  Ilyenna pulled back a little. “Where’s your grandfather?”

  Fresh tears spilled down Elice’s cheeks. She reached into her pocket and pulled out the two halves of the beaver. Her mother seemed to understand.

  “How will he ever know how sorry I am?” Ilyenna asked.

  “I saw my father. He told me to tell you that you have the same soul. And wherever my Father is, Grandfather is there with him. My grandmother, too. Someday we’ll see them again.” Elice had never been surer of anything in her life.

  The ground rocked beneath Elice. Behind her, a massive explosion of magma and fire tore through the sky. She whirled around as lightning flashed. “But the war is over. The Sundering should be over!”

  She didn’t have time to dwell on it. Another explosion rocked the mountain, sending a slide of magma toward them. Elice wrapped her mother in her arms and pumped hard to glide down the mountain just ahead of an ash cloud. In the field before the village, Elice set her down.

  “I don’t understand,” Ilyenna cried.

  Elice studied the cloud, the fires the magma had started. “The Balance is still distorted. Something is preventing it from righting itself.” What if Nelay hadn’t reached Adar in time? What if it hadn’t worked?

  “Mother, I have to go.”

  Ilyenna gripped her hands. “Find him.”

  Elice formed a dome of ice so thick she could barely see past it, and then she sealed it to winter to protect Shyleholm and her mother from the magma. She could only hope it would be enough. Then Elice shot to the sky and headed south, winter wind propelling her forward at tremendous speed. But not so fast that she missed the volcanoes spewing ash and magma, the smoke choking the air, the sea surging past its boundaries, wiping out everything in its path. Rivers diverting from their natural course to plough through villages.

  Everything was in commotion and upheaval. Everything was shattering and breaking. Suddenly a hot desert wind that smelled of growing things and fire collided with Elice’s cold winter wind. Black storm clouds spread across the sky. Lightning raced across the heavens.

  What if Adar was already dead and this was Nelay’s rage? What if the Summer Queen blamed Elice and came after her and the war began anew? The world wouldn’t survive. She knew it wouldn’t.

  Then, through the darkness of cloud and ash, a brilliant beam of light shot across the horizon, so bright Elice had to pull up and shield her eyes. At first, she thought it was a flash of lightning. Only it didn’t fade away, but grew brighter. Blinking against the brilliance, she realized the light was in the shape of wings.

  “Adar?” Elice whispered. She pumped her wings hard, watching his face come into sight. Her eyes drank him in—his midnight eyes and tattooed scalp. Then his wings, exuding light with each down stroke.

  She flared her wings and threw herself back to slow down at the same moment he did. And then they were in each other’s arms. Heat poured off him, mixing with the cold that radiated from her and creating a vortex that twisted around them, churning hair and clothing, and sending scattered rainbows in all directions.

  Thunder cracked and the rain sheeted down, washing away layers of ash and soot and clearing the air. As two pairs of wings kept them aloft, Elice pulled back to look at Adar’s face to make sure it was really him. That he was really alive. He took her neck in his hands and kissed her like he’d found something he thought he’d lost forever. Between them, her pendant of fire and ice flickered blue.

  She was sobbing with joy. “You’re alive!”

  Adar took her face in his hands, his expression anguished as he wiped the rain from her cheeks. “Did you kill her? Did you kill your mother?”

  Elice smiled up at him. “No. I didn’t have to. She named me her heir and gave me her powers.”

  He gazed at her in wonder. “How did you know that was possible for either of us?”

  “I think my grandfather figured it out first. He called me winter’s heir, and then the fairies asked me why I would have some of my mother’s powers and not others. As soon as I made my own wings appear, I knew.”

  Adar’s gaze had caught on something in the distance. “Look.”

  She followed his eyes and saw that the volcanoes were no longer belching smoke and magma. The earth and sea were still and calm. The rain had cleared the air and extinguished the fires. Elice looked past him at Thanjavar in the distance. The city appeared to be mostly intact.

  Adar let out a long breath and rested his forehead against hers, brushing the tears off her cheeks with his thumbs. “I think the Sundering is over.”

  “Yes. But not the rebirth,” said a voice. Elice and Adar turned to see Nagale regarding them from atop her owl. A thousand winter and summer fairies hovered behind her. “Come with me.”

  She led Elice and Adar back to the fields around Shyleholm. A huge lava flow had cut down the mountainside, carving a path through the forest before coming dangerously close to the ice bubble. Elice set down beside the steaming mass and forced a wave of cold to harden it. It crumbled into large chunks that shone like black glass. When she was sure it was safe, she dissolved the ice dome, pulling it back into herself.

  Ilyenna waited on the other side. She took one look at Adar and turned her attention to the fairy. “This was your plan all along, wasn’t it? That our children would fall in love.”

  The rush of a thousand oncoming wings filled the air. Elice turned toward the sound and watched as another group of fairies approached, carrying a person in their nets. Elice recognized their passenger moments before the fairies set her down.

  As Nelay detangled herself from the nets, Nagale eyed the former queen. “And you think you are the most brilliant strategist to have ever lived. I have been planning this moment for eighty years. The Sundering is complete. A new age has begun, different than the one before.”

  Ilyenna took a few steps forward to face the aged fairy. “I know you—I banished you.”

  Nagale gave a rueful smile. “And you are no longer queen.” She turned her gaze back to Elice and Adar. “The magic must change. Choose.”

  Elice didn’t understand.

  Nelay came to stand beside her son. “Choose what?”

  Nagale gestured to the fairies around her. “The rules that will bind the new magic and give it form.”

  Elice shared a look with Adar and the two former queens.

  “But that would destroy you,” Nelay said.

  Nagale stretched out her ruined wings. “We cannot be destroyed. The rules made us into this form. The rules will give us our new form.”

  The fairies hovered silently, their faces void of expression. More came, hundreds of thousands of them, winter and summer fairies alike. Elice turned in a circle, taking in the multitude of fairies—ice, snake, lion, tree, frog, insect. She need only look into their grave eyes to understand this was the end of them. They knew it, but they were not afraid. In fact, they almost seemed relieved.

  But Elice was afraid. “Will I lose my magic too?”

  “That depends on what you choose.” Nagale gestured to the fairies around her. �
��We cannot be destroyed. We are the magic, and we tire of this form. Now choose.”

  “But what if I choose wrong?” Elice asked in a whisper.

  “All magic contains both light and dark. The Balance will see that your form does, too.”

  When you chose the good, you also chose the evil. Chriel’s words flashed through Elice’s mind. Knowing she couldn’t do this alone, she shot a look at her mother. “We all choose. Beginning with you, Mother.”

  Ilyenna took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “No single being should control the magic—it is too much power. It should be spread out among many people.”

  Elice nodded and turned to Adar. “The magic shouldn’t control the seasons,” he said. “It’s too easy for a corrupt individual to cause harm.” He glanced at Ilyenna.

  Elice looked to Nelay, who studied the ground. “No more fairies,” said the former Summer Queen. “Give the magic back to the creatures and let them control themselves. But allow mankind to keep a bit of it, so that we are not powerless against whatever form the new magic takes.”

  Nagale turned her attention to Elice. “And what would you choose, my queen?”

  Elice studied the decrepit fairy, wishing Chriel were here instead. “I would ask for your advice, for you have seen one age end and another begin once before, and I have not.”

  The fairy nodded in approval. “There must always be a price, child. Choose the price, choose the magic.”

  Elice thought about it for a long time and then lifted her head. Outshine the darkness. “Mankind can only use magic to fight evil.”

  The fairy took a long, slow breath and let it out. “So it shall be. Let magic take its new form.”

  Even as Elice watched, Nagale’s body seemed to be softening. She gave a great shudder and then her entire body was covered in pristine feathers of white and black. The spark of intelligence didn’t fade from Nagale’s eyes as she met Elice’s gaze. All around them, fairies turned into their animals. Snow fairies shifted to flakes. Ice fairies to ice. Frost fairies to frost. Some of the animals’ eyes still held far too much intelligence, but something was missing—that otherworldly aura that trailed a finger of warning down a human spine.

  The animals crept and slunk and slithered away. Birds took flight. But the owl remained, her gaze locked on the magma flow. At a sharp cracking sound, Elice whipped around. A perfectly circular rock, nearly the size of her chest, had broken from the flow to land with a thud. As she watched, another popped free, leaving two craters behind. They were black like the rest, but strange, as if they sucked in light and turned it to shadow. The more Elice looked, the more the darkness seemed to consume her.

  She gave a gasp and faced the fairy. “What is it?” she asked, but the owl was already gone.

  Nelay took a few steps forward and crouched before the round rock. “I’ve never seen its like before in all of the Summer Realm.”

  Adar reached down to lift it, the muscles of his arms straining. His brow furrowed. “It’s hot, like it just came from the fire.”

  Elice didn’t know what to make of this—didn’t know what form this new magic would take. She looked behind her to make sure her prismatic wings were still tucked behind her back. Then she reached for winter and felt it just as strong as she had before. “I don’t feel any different, do you?” she asked Adar.

  His various colors of flames danced in quick succession across his palm. “Just as amazing as I’ve always been.”

  Ilyenna hadn’t looked away from the large, circular rock. “Can you break it?” she asked.

  Adar held out his hand for her battle axe. Ilyenna handed it to him without another word. He swung it down onto the rock. The sound rang out, but there wasn’t so much as a scratch on the stone.

  Elice backed away, hoping whatever she’d created wasn’t as bad as the fairies had been. She glanced up to see her mother already halfway out of sight as she trekked down the slope. “Where are you going?”

  Her mother pointed down the hill, toward the village nestled in the arms of the mountains. “I have family down there. We have family down there, and I haven’t seen them in decades.”

  Elice’s breath caught in her throat at a sudden memory of warm sunlight on her face and the smell of crushed grass. She was finally in Shyleholm, the village of her mother and grandfather for as far back as memory.

  “I think we finally made it home.” She reached out to take Adar’s hand.

  He looked back at Nelay. “Mother, you don’t have to come.”

  She let out a long sigh. “I think it’s time Ilyenna and I became allies.” She gave Elice a smile, then moved forward and pressed a kiss to her cheek. Adar hugged his mother and then Nelay hurried after Ilyenna.

  Elice made to follow them, but Adar took her hand in his. She squinted up at him, the brilliance of his wings making her eyes water. “Elly—I can call you that now, right?”

  She smiled and stepped back into his arms. “Only if you marry me.”

  He grinned. “All right, but I get to do the cooking. No offense, but you’re terrible.”

  She cocked an eyebrow. “And to think, I almost let you drown.”

  He pulled her into his arms and wrapped his wings around her, his lips claiming hers. She claimed him right back. Light and color spilled across the valley. Though the wind held the bite of winter, the sun was warm and bright.

  New grass sprouted over the scorch marks left by the volcano. Then a little sapling grew. Every summer its boughs stretched to fill the sky, and each winter it bowed under a heavy mantle of snow. A large home was built on the rise a short distance from the tree. A man and a woman lived there with their six children—three with the powers of winter, and three with the powers of summer. The woman would often stand under the shade of the still-growing tree and watch the stones with a breathless wariness, as if she knew something evil would come of them and was determined to stop it.

  One summer, a boy even burned the name of a village girl in the tree’s bark with his smoking finger. The years passed and the children married and had children of their own. Those children had more children. With each generation, the magic seemed to splinter until each child was born with only one power. For the winter children—the bite of frost, the colors of the aurora, or the calling of the blizzard. For the summer children—the nimbus of the blue fire, the heat of the white, or the growling of a thunderstorm.

  Some even controlled the wind.

  Still the couple lived on. They would come out sometimes and stare at the rocks, now partially obscured by soil and growing grasses, though the snow never seemed to touch them. Until one day, long after their grandchildren’s grandchildren had passed on, the woman and man died.

  They were buried by their progeny under the great boughs of the tree, which spread roots out to curl around them like the old friends they were. But with the couple’s death died their vigilance.

  Hundreds of years had passed. Temples were built, and wars again touched the sheltered valley. The great tree grew brittle and creaked with the wind. It was then that the lightning storm came. Flames licked up the tree’s rough bark, as the flames from the volcano had done to its forbearer. Pinecones crackled and popped, and the air filled with the smell of burning. The monstrous tree fell, landing on a pair of strangely formed rocks. The tree burned bright and hot, its life wood crumbling to coals.

  When the fire had moved on and only ashes and trails of weak smoke remained, the wind picked up, blowing gray ash in little dervishes across the blackened landscape. That wind blew away the ashes of the great tree, revealing two perfectly round stones.

  But though the fire was gone, the stones glowed an evil red that shifted like the beat of a heart. Then one rock cracked and an angular piece fell off. A great yellow eye, slitted and rimmed with spikes, peered out at the beautiful destruction all around it. From deep inside the egg, a dragon smiled.

  THE END

  Ready to try Amber’s bestselling Witch Song Series?

  Start
with Witch Song.

  In Winter Queen, I explored the theme “Strong as stone, supple as a sapling”—that to be strong, sometimes you have to bend or risk breaking.

  In Summer Queen, I explored the theme “To rise from the ashes, first you must burn.” Everyone crashes, everyone burns. Everyone fails. It’s what you do after failing that’s important. When you pick yourself up, learn from your failures, and move on to something better.

  In Daughter of Winter and Winter’s Heir, the theme is “outshine the darkness.” Everyone has moments when they falter. When hope seems lost. When life shatters around them. But the hero always stands up. Even in the midst of hopelessness and despair. The hero always tries one more time.

  And that’s why I love fiction. That’s why I love heroes. Because we all have those moments. When the night is at its darkest and there is no hope of living till the dawn. But you just keep trying. Because giving up is not in your nature. Or maybe because there’s nothing left to do but keep trying. You dig deep and pull upon courage you didn’t know you had. And you triumph.

  I hope my fiction has given you that kind of hope. I pray that my words have touched you. Uplifted you. That in some small way, the courage of my characters will remind you of your own courage. That even if the very jaws of hell gape after you, you can find it within yourself to keep trying.

  Even if it’s for just one more second.

  And then the second after that.

  And the second after that.

  Amber Argyle is the number-one bestselling author of the Witch Song Series and the Fairy Queen Series. Her books have been nominated for and won awards in addition to being translated into French and Indonesian.

  Amber graduated cum laude from Utah State University with a degree in English and physical education, a husband, and a two-year old. Since then, she and her husband have added two more children, which they are actively trying to transform from crazy small people into less crazy larger people.