by Elise Kova
“Stay away,” I manage to say. “Don’t come any closer.”
“Or what?” He adjusts the shadowy scarf that swoops across his shoulders and upper chest. I was right, it is the same as the one worn by the woman from the woods who attacked me weeks ago. “I don’t know why he dragged you here, human, but let me assure you that you are far out of your depth.”
Like I don’t know that. He continues approaching. I hold out a hand and repeat, “Don’t come any closer.”
“I’m waiting to see how you’ll stop me.” He shakes his head with a sinister smile.
I turn back to Davien. He’s my best hope. But the moss around the shoulder the spear tore through is already stained a deep red. I shake his good shoulder lightly and plead, “Get up, please.”
“He’s not going to get up. He’s the last loose end that should have been tied years ago,” the man snarls. His white hair shines in the moonlight as he holds his spear aloft. He takes a step forward and adjusts his weight to throw.
“No you don’t—” Shaye shouts from a distance. I can see her and the others trying to close the gap. But they won’t be fast enough.
I have to stall. I have to do something. “I said don’t come any closer!” I scream a final time. My fear and rage grows within me. It’s a swell that can’t be contained. Emotions and wants that have burned so hot they’ve become something…tangible.
The power bursts forth from my palm, turning into a wall of light. It rushes toward our attacker with deadly force. In an instant, he’s enveloped. Silence fills the air as the man is turned into a reverse silhouette—a solid outline of white that’s too blinding to look at. Then, he explodes.
The force of the magic has me knocked onto my back at Davien’s side. The shock wave rushes through the woods, violently shaking loose limbs from the trees and shearing the moss from the soil and bedrock underneath. My ears are ringing as the forest goes suddenly dark and eerily silent following the blast.
I sit, realizing the pains from my body are as gone from this earth as our attacker is. I blink at the epicenter of the blast—where he was standing just a moment ago. There’s nothing but a singed bit of hard rock. I stare at my hand.
I… I did that? How? A thousand questions swirl in my mind, immediately coming to a stop the second I hear a soft groan next to me.
“Davien?”
His eyes crack open. “What just happened?” he murmurs.
“I think I killed a man.” I return to staring at my hand, waiting for the realization that I just killed a man to sink in.
“He was a shit stain on this earth. Good riddance.” Davien sits, rolling his injured shoulder. He pauses, looking to the wound. Poking his finger through the torn and bloody hole of his shirt, he runs it along unbroken skin and sighs. “It seems you healed me, too.”
“You…don’t seem happy about that?”
“I’d be happier if I was the one to heal and protect myself.” He stands with a scowl and stalks over to the center of the singed earth. Davien digs the toe of his boot into the only remnants of the man, spitting.
“Well, you’re welcome.” I stand and go to draw my robe around me; my hands hit something wet. Davien might be healed, but his blood is still all over me. I cringe at my own filth.
“I shouldn’t need to thank you,” he murmurs without looking at me with those distant and unfocused eyes.
“Excuse me? I saved your life, and because of that I now have to live with the fact that I killed a man. So maybe a ‘thanks’ would ease that process a bit?” My hands are shaking. There’s the slimy, sick feeling I expected that comes from knowing I ended a life.
“I shouldn’t need to thank you because I should have been able to do that myself!” Anger overflows from him, an unbridled, unyielding rage that is far greater than anything I could’ve created on my own. “You stole the power of our kings—and took it for yourself. Just like your kind took our lands and our songs and stories. You took what should have been mine.” His hair falls, scraggly, in front of his face. His breathing is ragged.
I can only stare in shock at his misplaced rage. I didn’t ask for any of this. I certainly don’t want it. But the anger is radiating off of him as waves of power that still my tongue.
“Davien, that’s enough.” Oren breaks the silence. The group has arrived. “We should keep going. The king’s Butchers are on our trail.”
“We walk through the night,” Davien declares after taking a moment to breathe and collect himself. “We don’t stop until we cross the Crystal River and are in Acolyte land.” He looks back at me. “I’ll carry you myself if I have to.”
“I’ll be fine.” I fold my arms and watch as Oren leads Davien away with a hand on his back. Stern words are being exchanged between them, mostly from Oren. Giles and Hol are close behind. Shaye lingers.
“Are you coming?” she asks.
“Not like I have any other choice,” I mutter and drag my feet.
She grabs my arm. I try and yank it away, but she holds fast. This close to her for the first time, I notice faint golden tattoos that swirl up the side of her face. They almost blend in with the brown of her skin.
“Walk with your head held high, human.”
“I have a name.”
“Walk with your head held high, Katria.” Her obliging me with the use of my name gives me pause. “You have the power of kings within you. Do us all the courtesy of not shaming it.”
“What does that even mean?” I don’t know why I ask; she’s not going to give me an answer.
Yet, she circumvents my every expectation when she does. “The ritual we performed in the wood last night was to draw out the ancient power of the lost royal family of Aviness from the last living heir.”
“Lost?”
“Assassinated would be more apt,” she clarifies, voice and expression taking a dark turn. “They ruled for centuries, until Boltov the First killed King Aviness the Sixth. After that…the fae land was torn apart from the inside, the Boltovs usually ending up on top. But the only way they managed to keep control and rule of the fae is by systematically killing every last one of the Aviness bloodline—anyone who could possibly reclaim the mighty power of the first kings to truly rule the fae.”
Shaye points to Davien. “He is the closest thing our people have to that lost ruler and the power they carried in their veins. That ritual was to restore his power to him as the sole remaining heir of Aviness…the last limb of the family tree that Boltov hasn’t severed at the neck.”
“His birthright,” I whisper.
“Yes. And you stole it by stepping into the fire when he was supposed to be the one to. So until we find a way to wring it from your fragile human bones, give our history a modicum of respect and at least act like you walk with the power of ancient royalty.” She finally releases me.
I rub my arm and begrudgingly nod. She rolls her eyes and begins trudging along. I follow closely behind.
“May I ask you something?”
She glances at me from the corner of her eye. “Go on.”
It’s strange. Shaye has been the farthest thing from friendly toward me…but she doesn’t strike me as cruel. I’ve spent years around those who are genuinely cruel. There’s a certain manner to a person when they’re looking for every possible way to tear you down.
Shaye doesn’t seem like she’s hunting for ways to be mean for the sake of it. Naturally abrasive? Somewhat, perhaps. Cautious might be more apt. But however those natures of hers seem to manifest, she doesn’t appear to delight in my misery.
“How does the last living fae heir end up in my world?”
“Because that was the only place he could go that he would be safe.” Shaye sighs. “A little more than twenty years ago, the Boltovs and their Butchers—”
“Butchers? Like the man who attacked us tonight?”
“Yes. They’re either murderous fae who swear to defend the Blood Court the Boltovs have made, or poor souls who are born into the Butchers and are nev
er given a choice. Butchers relish in bloodshed and engage in its sport.” She cringes, an expression I share. “The Boltov Butchers have made it their life’s work to eradicate any who would threaten the Boltov claim.”
“Can women also be Butchers?”
“Why couldn’t they be?” Her answer is guarded, expression unreadable.
“There was a fae that attacked me in the woods…but she seemed like she was really after Davien. She wore the same shadowy cowl as the man tonight.”
“Your assessment is right; she was a Butcher.” Shaye scrambles up a shallow ridge and then, to my surprise, offers a hand to me. “We tried to patrol those woods as often as we could—on both sides of the Fade—but some of Boltov’s men and women would slip through from time to time.”
I take Shaye’s hand and she hoists me up with ease. Her biceps are wider than the limb I struck on my fall. The woman could likely break me in two if she tried and after years of manual labor, I am not frail.
“So he was hiding in my world to get away from the Boltovs and their Butchers?”
“Oh, right, I never finished.” Shaye sighs and shakes her head. “I hate this story.”
“You don’t have to tell me.” Though I do desperately want to know now. Kings, evil knights, runaway royalty, it has all the makings of the storybooks Joyce would read to Helen and Laura. The ones I would hear by pressing my ear to their doors at night before I’d creep back to my bed and tuck myself in.
“You want to know, so I’m going to tell you.” Shaye takes a breath and continues the tale. “King Aviness the Sixth’s death sparked a seemingly endless cycle of people vying for power. There are three things that give a king control over the fae: the glass crown, the hill on which the first king was crowned—which is also where the glass crown resides—and the magic of the ancient kings. If a man controls all three, he controls the fae.”
“I see. So just one of them isn’t enough?”
“No, though any one of those three things holds immense power. So any family tangentially related to Aviness tried to exert their claim to the glass crown and powers as the true rulers of the fae, but the Boltovs always got to them before they could get anywhere near the crown, much less the hill of the first king on which the High Court sits.
“Most retreated into these woods for protection, some abandoning their bloodline altogether, not that it made any difference. The Boltovs saw that the trees were watered with their blood, systematically hunting out any of the Aviness lineage who could lay claim to the dormant, old magic of kings. Davien was only tangentially related to the bloodline, but it didn’t spare him from the hunt.”
“Tangentially related? What does that mean?”
“His mother was a widow. She remarried…poor thing didn’t even know that her new husband was the last, distant survivor of the Aviness family.”
“How could she not know?”
“He was only related through a number of marriages and cousins removed, a rogue twig on the family’s branches.”
“It sounds like the man Davien’s mother married hardly had the blood at all,” I say.
“Indeed. The last true Aviness by any significant measure was put to death nearly thirty years ago.”
“And if Davien was born before his mother married, he has no blood relation to the family at all, merely marriage.”
“Yes, but that’s enough of a link to make the Boltovs nervous.”
Davien’s story is eerily similar to my own in some ways. I can’t help but think of Joyce, widowed and with child, marrying with the hopes of security and secret ambition. “Does he have any siblings?”
“No.”
At least no one suffered like I did. “So I take it the Butchers killed his father?”
“And mother, even though she had nothing to do with the family other than a marriage band and vows.” Shaye pauses as we pass through another town of ruins. The sun is beginning to creep over the horizon and the morning’s first light paints the stones in a ghostly hue. “Oren, Davien’s butler and nanny from birth, took Davien and retreated back to an old Aviness stronghold on the other side of the Fade. One that still had some of the old wards. It was the best chance for Davien to reach adulthood beyond Boltov’s reach—when he would be strong enough to return and fight for us all.”
That explains why it looks like a castle. “Why would a fae stronghold be on the human side of the Fade?”
“Because the elves find perverse delight in taking our land and when the world was cut up, some of what was ours went to you humans.” She wears a look of disgust. But in a positive display of her character, she doesn’t seem to direct it toward me. More at the circumstances…and those long-ago elves.
“So Davien was raised in the human world?”
“Yes. Cut off from our people and the magic of Midscape…he’s lived a lonely life of struggle. The only thing that’s kept him going is the obligation to free us from Boltov’s tyranny. Because their grip becomes tighter on these lands by the day. And if he dies—if the last with a claim to the power of Aviness perishes—then nothing will stand in the way of Boltov finally unlocking the full power of the glass crown. The power of kings will no longer be tied to the Aviness bloodline and will be free for the taking.”
Chapter 13
What once felt like a forest of magic has now become a haunted graveyard. After Shaye’s tales, we walk in silence for most of the morning. Every forgotten house, left to ruin and rot, is now a tombstone in my eyes. Every tree is a marker of some fallen fae, butchered in their beds so that this Boltov family could rule unquestioned.
There’s a deep ache in me I can’t explain. Human. Fae. Suffering is universal. It’d be impossible to look on this barren landscape and not feel sorrow for the horrors that have been wrought.
Maybe it’s those stories and their uncomfortable truths that helps me at least compartmentalize what happened with the Butcher. It wasn’t as if I meant to kill him. The magic acted on its own. Moreover, if I didn’t take his life, he was certain to kill me. And…it doesn’t sound like he was someone innocent of atrocities, either. Maybe by ending his life, I saved another? That’s a dangerous logic. But I need to keep my sanity together somehow right now.
I don’t really have hours in the day to allocate to having an emotional breakdown. Too busy surviving.
As dawn breaks, the little motes of light rise from the moss and begin to dance among the trees once more. They illuminate the air, buzzing around me with a happiness that is now muted by the truth. I wonder if they are actually spirits of murdered fae. But that’s one curiosity I won’t indulge.
We move without incident throughout the day. Everyone remains on alert, scanning the horizon lines at all points. Giles and Shaye have taken wide sweeps of the woods around us, remaining within view, but far enough that they can see around distant trees and look across ridges that might be too high for the rest of us.
Hol, Oren, Davien, and I remain in a pack. Oren and Davien at the front, Hol and I behind. Though there isn’t much conversation happening.
Just like Davien promised, we hike all day through the woods. My stomach is practically roaring by nightfall and my feet are aching. It doesn’t matter how soft the moss is, the support of a pair of shoes would make all the difference for my throbbing feet.
“We should break for dinner,” Hol says, loud enough that it gets Davien and Oren’s attention.
“We need to keep moving.” In contrast to his words, Davien stops. “We can’t rest until we’re in Acolyte territory.”
“I’m not saying rest. I’m saying stop for food.” Hol glances back in my direction and then back to Davien with a pointed look. “Just a short break.”
Davien’s eyes settle on me. I purse my lips as I can feel him assessing me from the top of my head to the bottoms of my feet. Shaye’s earlier words stick with me and I try to hold my head high, even though I know I currently possess all the dignity of a disheveled raccoon.
“Do you need to stop?
” he asks me.
“I can keep going,” I force myself to say when all I want is to shout, Five minutes please! I’m not going to slow them down. And the faster I help him get this magic out of me, the faster I can go home and get out of this deadly situation that I was never meant to be in.
“Good, we carry on then.”
“Davien—”
“Your true king has spoken.” Davien cuts off Hol with a glare. “If we keep walking, we should cross the Crystal River by dawn.”
“Very well.” Hol folds his arms.
“Sire, true king, permission to speak freely?” Shaye has perched herself on the top of a rock we’re passing by. She’s been close enough to overhear the whole conversation.
“Granted,” he growls.
“You’re being an ass.” Shaye smirks. “That is all.”
Davien huffs and puts his back to us, storming off. I think I see Oren give the slightest bit of a chuckle. There was no smoke attached with Shaye’s comment…which means she was telling the truth about him being an ass—at least as far as she sees it. I bite back a snicker.
But a few hours later, I don’t even have the energy for playful amusements. Right foot. Left foot. That’s all I have the strength for.
Right foot, left foot, I echo in my mind as I move. I’m telling my legs to bend while begging my feet to hold me upright. I thought I knew the depths of strength I could draw from—what I was capable of accomplishing when forced to. But this is shattering every previous notion and putting more to the test.
All at once, the trees break and the sound of rushing water assaults my ears. I blink, standing at the edge of a riverbank unlike any I’ve ever seen. It’s lined not with sand, or rock, but crystal. Hundreds of thousands of shimmering shards reflect the moonlight like glass. Magic swirls underneath the water, split into a thousand fractals by the stones.
“This must be the Crystal River,” I murmur with relief.
“It is,” Shaye affirms.
Without warning, she scoops me up into her strong arms. I wrap my arms around her neck like I did with Davien. Even my arms feel tired. Though who knows how… I didn’t even use them at all today.