Summerfall: A Winterspell Novella

by Claire Legrand

  Garen kept his gaze trained on the floor, though Rinka could see the lines of his shoulders hardening with tension. She felt that they were very small—herself, Garen, the other faeries—next to these mighty people in their clean robes. She did not like feeling small. She wasn’t small.

  She was Rinka, daughter of Kaspar of the faery Council, and she would not be treated like this, queen or no.

  As the queen turned to leave, Rinka found herself stepping forward.

  “My queen,” she said, “you must understand we didn’t mean to offend you.”

  The queen turned back in surprise.

  “We are honored beyond words to have been invited here,” Rinka continued, her head held high. “I beseech you, do not let this small mishap color your impression of us.”

  The room thrummed with curiosity. “What is your name, Countess?” asked the queen.

  “My name is Rinka, my queen. And, if you please, I am not a countess. Faeries do not have countesses, or counts, or lords and ladies. Some of us sit on the Council, and the rest of us are simply faeries. The structure of our society is rather fluid, you see.”

  The queen raised her eyebrows. “Thank you, Countess Rinka, for educating me. But while you are in Erstadt, you will abide by our customs. It is a privilege for you to be given this title in accordance with your appointment. Is that understood?”

  Rinka bowed her head, determined not to make any further mistakes or betray her frustration. The queen was nothing like what Rinka had expected—neither welcoming nor impressed but instead haughty and pompous.

  None of this was playing out as Rinka had expected.

  “Yes, my queen, of course,” she said, but before she had finished the words, the queen had left the room in a swirl of emerald and gold.

  Many of the courtiers present remained, however, fanning themselves languidly, smoothing out wrinkled garments. As Leska led the faeries out, and as Rinka half-listened to Garen admonishing her, Rinka felt the courtiers’ gazes on her back like the eyes of birds—coldly inquisitive, and unfeeling.

  * * *

  Thank you, Countess, for educating me.

  Rinka snapped the reins of her poor, road-weary horse, driving him into the foothills behind Wahlkraft with a speed that bordered on recklessness. She couldn’t possibly be expected to stew in her rooms, as beautiful as they were, until the feast that evening. Not after what had happened that day, not with the queen’s words echoing in Rinka’s mind.

  How could she have been so careless?

  She had let her eagerness to prove herself, her shock at their reception, get the best of her. She had simply not been able to endure the queen’s rebuke without some attempt at passionate apology. That was one thing Rinka had always loved about humans, in the books she had read—like the faeries, they were governed by their hearts, by their passions. Their love of food and beauty, their love of country and home, even their love of love itself. Humans were nothing like what Garen and her father had become over the last couple of years—serious and solemn, weighed down by rumor and suspicion. Nor were humans anything like the coldly intellectual mages, holed up in their studies gazing at the stars, noses to their books, passions withering by dusty candlelight.

  Although if this girl Leska was any indication, perhaps Rinka had been unfair in her judgment of mages. Earlier that afternoon, Leska had given the faeries a cursory tour of the castle, and she seemed kind enough. But of course, that might have been an act. Garen certainly seemed to think so.

  “Watch out for that one,” he had breathed to Rinka, his eyes on Leska as she walked ahead, pointing out the common area where the faeries could dine privately, if they wished. “She seems particularly interested in you.”

  “Is everything a conspiracy to you?” Rinka had snapped.

  “When we have been required to pledge that we shall not use our magic during a visit to a castle crawling with others who can and probably will . . .” He gestured at Leska. “Can you blame me?”

  Rinka, fuming, had moved away from him. She would not acknowledge such unjustified suspicions.

  Now, hours later, Rinka’s temper had not yet cooled. She pulled her horse to a stop at a small brook and fingered her pendant absently, trying to focus on her anger rather than on this crushing sense of disappointment. How had everything gone so wrong so quickly? This was supposed to have been a perfect day, a day of destiny, the culmination of everything Rinka had dreamed of—

  A low, harsh cry to her right snapped her out of her self-pity.

  She turned her horse toward the sound, and when she found the source, lying by the water, she forgot her humiliation at once.

  It was a man—a human—and he was hurt.

  Rinka dismounted and went to him. “Sir? Hello?” She took him gingerly by the shoulders, and turned him in order to see his eyes.

  He glared up at her, brow knotted with pain. “Unless you’re a healer, get your damned hands off me.”

  She did as he said, but didn’t move away. She had touched a human; she was kneeling beside a human. Her earlier disappointment faded, and she let her eyes rove over this man hungrily, noting the small, rounded ears, the ruddy skin, the presence of him. He was young—around Rinka’s own age in human years, she presumed—and tall; leanly muscular, clean-shaven, with dark hair flying everywhere. But for all his youth he held himself like an older man, even with that wound. He was the sort of person who filled a space without meaning to. The clearing in which they sat seemed to pale and shrink around him.

  “I’m not a healer,” she admitted. “But I can help you get to one, if you’ll let me. Where are you hurt?”

  He motioned to his midsection, where a patch of his surcoat gleamed dark with blood.

  Rinka hissed in a breath and attempted an expression of pity. Gawking at the sight of red blood would not, she assumed, be appropriate. His fragility entranced her. She found herself wanting to examine him.

  “Salt of the seas, that looks painful.”

  “You don’t say?” he said wryly. Then he paused, as if thinking over her words, and then he really saw her—her pointed ears; her white hair, which she had unbound in a temper before storming out of the castle, unwilling to feel the constraints of her ribbons; her eyes blue like a stormy winter sky.

  “You’re a faery,” he whispered, and something about the awe on his face, something about how his dark gaze drifted across her cheeks, her lips, her throat, made Rinka shift where she knelt beside him. Her skin prickled as though he had touched her with his hands. “You’re one of the faeries who came today.”

  “Yes, and I hope you’re happier about it than the queen was.” She said it sharply, unthinking, to mask the sudden feeling of something slow and hot within her awakening. He was watching her with raw fascination, as though she were a marvel. He was drinking her in. She shifted in delight.

  This was what she had been waiting for—a human as intrigued by her as she had always been by them.

  “I hate to admit it,” the man whispered, “but I’ve actually never been quite this close to a faery before.”

  And then he was reaching for her. His fingers traced the curve of her ear, brushing the ends of her hair.

  His dark eyes shot to hers, and Rinka should have moved away from his touch. She should have been insulted at his blatant stare.

  But she understood that feeling of wonder, and was flattered by it. She nearly reached for him herself, in fact. That color in his cheeks, and his fragility, despite his height. To see a human like this, to be allowed to stare . . .

  “I take it you’ve never seen a human this close, either?” he said, smiling.

  Rinka felt herself released from the spell of the moment and gathered her skirts. The color rose in her cheeks, and that seemed only to entrance him further.

  “Perhaps I’ll leave you here to rot in pain,” she said, unsettled at how easily he had flustered her. “You don’t look likely to die of that wound any time soon. It’s hardly a scratch, even by your standa
rds.”

  “All right, don’t get snappish,” he said, and sat up slowly, though his eyes lingered on her face. “I was only making an observation.”

  “Where is your horse?” she said, leaning down to help him stand, trying not to steal curious glances at him and failing.

  “He ran off when the wildcat attacked us.”

  “Wildcat?”

  He gestured irritably at the mangled carcass a few paces away. “I was hunting.”

  “Not very well, it would seem.”

  He snapped his head up to look at her, and yet again she felt that pleasant, faint awareness in her belly. He was leaning on her and his arm was around her shoulders, his fingers falling near the open collar of her tunic. His hair was unkempt, as were his clothes. There was something unfinished about him, and Rinka liked it. She liked that there was mud on his face and he did nothing to clean it.

  Then he smiled. “You say whatever you think, don’t you?”

  “To my detriment,” Rinka answered, and guided him toward her horse. “Now, if I help you, can you ride?”

  He eyed the horse dubiously. “There’s no saddle.”

  “I don’t use saddles.”

  “You faeries are a strange lot.”

  “And you humans are clumsy.”

  His eyes danced—danced!—as if he had no other care in the world than to be amused by her. This was not a day for dancing eyes. And yet Rinka relished the sight of them. She turned away to hide her smile, but he caught it anyway.

  “Well?” he said, laughter in his voice. “How will you help me, then?”

  She knelt, laced her hands together.

  “But I’ll hurt you,” he protested.

  “Nonsense.”

  He laughed outright. “Fine, fine. I’ve heard faeries are strong. If I break your hands, though, don’t blame me for it.”

  But her hands were fine, and then he was on her horse’s back, straddling it awkwardly. Rinka tried not to laugh and mostly succeeded, and then climbed up behind him. As she slid her arms around him to take the reins, he stiffened.

  “Are you uncomfortable?” Rinka said, trying to remain dispassionate. It was difficult—the heat of his body pressed against hers was exhilarating—but he was wounded, after all. She could be patient.

  “Not at all,” he said, though she thought his voice sounded strange.

  As they returned to the castle, he recounted his tale of the wildcat attack, with much bluster and grandiose gesturing that Rinka pointed out would exacerbate his wound. He directed her to the stables, and she thought nothing of it. He was a huntsman, perhaps, charged with bringing back meat for that evening’s feast.

  He began to pontificate on the likelihood that his horse would return to the stables on his own, or if he would have to send out a groom to retrieve him—and Rinka thought nothing of it. She was thinking, instead, of this man’s warmth, and how he smelled of earth and sweat and leather.

  It wasn’t until she helped him dismount in the stable yard that everything became clear. He slid off, lost his balance, and stumbled into her arms. Rinka stood and held him; one of his hands was on her arm, and the other rested at the curve of her back. His head bowed over hers. Their gazes met, and locked, and simmered, and Rinka’s breath came high and thin, and her blood buzzed beneath her skin.

  And this was what Rinka had long ago given up trying to feel for Garen: This pull, this bend, this sense of quiet astonishment and at last.

  This was what she had been yearning for—a moment of connection with a human.

  She just hadn’t expected that connection to be quite so . . . charged.

  At a rustle of movement from behind Rinka, the man glanced over her shoulder, stepped away from her, and grinned. He took her hand and kissed it, his lips lingering against her knuckles. It was innocent to Rinka’s mind—faery greetings even between strangers were typically much more intimate—and yet the color rose in his cheeks.

  “Countess,” he whispered. Then he limped past her, and as Rinka turned to watch him, she saw them—a stablehand, a groom, and two guards.

  They bowed to him, accepted his claps on the back and his warm greeting. They murmured, “Your Majesty,” and glanced back at Rinka curiously.

  Once again, Rinka found she could not breathe. She tingled with the echo of his lips on her skin; her body hummed with the memory of his body bending over hers.

  The king’s lips. The king’s body.

  She had nearly kissed the king.

  Or, he had nearly kissed her.

  She wasn’t sure which was worse.

  4

  FOR THE NEXT TWO WEEKS, Rinka managed to avoid another private encounter with King Alban. In fact, except for the formal feast that first night, she had seen nothing of him at all.

  It shouldn’t have been so easy, as she gathered with the other faeries, Queen Liane and her advisors, and the Seven mages every day to discuss the growing tensions at the border. But apparently the king hated attending to such matters. He hated paperwork, he hated playing politics, and according to some of the more shocking rumors Rinka heard during her early days in Wahlkraft, he hated the queen herself.

  One morning, Rinka considered this last piece of information as she readied herself for the day’s first meeting. Her attention was divided between her reflection in the mirror and Leska, who moved about Rinka’s chambers, tidying. The day after the welcome feast, Leska had been assigned to Rinka as her personal attendant—apparently upon Leska’s request. Garen had immediately declared her a mage spy for the king, but Rinka wasn’t so sure about that. Leska had sharp eyes and an even sharper tongue, but there was an openness to her expression and the way she carried herself. Rinka wanted to trust her.

  “But why would the king hate his wife?” Rinka asked Leska, fiddling with her braids in the mirror. “He married her, didn’t he?”

  “Yes, but he really had no choice,” Leska explained. “The Drachstelle family has been itching for the High Throne for some time now. When King Emerik died the year before last, Alban came under tremendous pressure to marry Liane and appease the Drachstelles for a while. They insisted having Liane as queen could only help Alban, as it would gain him favor with those loyal to the Drachstelles, who have become more and more popular in recent years.” Leska shook her head. “You can imagine how these machinations seemed to a sixteen-year-old boy, his father recently dead, thrust into ruling so young. His wife so obviously nothing but a puppet of her family.”

  Rinka had read about King Emerik’s death, of course, and Alban’s coronation, but being here, in his city, made the situation seem much more immediate.

  “I suppose, under those circumstances, I would hate her too,” Rinka mused, inspecting her reflection in the mirror. She could not seem to get her braids to lie quite right. Irritated, she tugged them out and started again.

  Leska cleared her throat. “You’ve been asking many questions about the king.”

  “Oh,” Rinka said, waving her hand, “I was only wondering about this king who apparently can’t be bothered to rule his kingdom. Always off hunting or visiting his mage friends in the mountains or who knows what else. He may not have wished for any of it, but he has a duty; that’s what happens when you’re born a prince.”

  Leska excused herself and went to gather Rinka’s linens. Rinka was glad for the moment alone to compose herself, because the truth was that she did find King Alban’s situation sympathetic. She imagined it must be overwhelming to be king, and lonely as well, with a father recently dead, a mother who died during childbirth, a loveless arranged marriage. Rinka found herself wishing she could comfort him, and then glared at her reflection, willing away the foolish thought. A king could take care of himself. He was no concern of hers outside the political realm.

  And yet . . .

  She had not managed to banish the memory of last night’s dream. In it, Alban had kissed her fingers once again as he gazed at her, there in the forest, his eyes darkening, and then his fingers had skim
med down her body, drawing down her gown, and then his lips—

  “Countess,” Leska said, hurrying back into the room. “The queen is here, in your sitting room.”

  Rinka stood. “What? Why?”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea. Hurry, let me help.”

  Together they hastily tied Rinka’s braids and finished lacing the ribbons at the sides of her gown. With a quick glance at the mirror, Rinka hurried out.

  “My queen,” she said, sinking into a deep curtsy upon entering the sitting room. “What an unexpected pleasure to see you.”

  “I’m sure,” the queen said, poised and unruffled in the high-backed, brocaded chair. Two of her handmaidens stood near the door, their faces still but their eyes seeing all. Rinka felt exposed before them, and wrongly dressed. The queen’s handmaidens wore modest gowns, lovely and rose-colored, high-necked, and Rinka . . . well, faeries enjoyed beauty and gloried in their bodies, and the design of their clothes reflected this. Rinka had brought her more subdued gowns with her from Geschtohl, aware that human modesty was much greater than that of faeries, but even the most demure faery fashions seemed scandalous in comparison to those of Erstadt. Rinka’s gown today was of a sheer, stormy blue silk, embroidered with delicate golden birds that shimmered as she moved. The neckline was low, the sides tied with gossamer ribbons, the back open, fabric pooling at the curve of her waist.

  “My queen,” Rinka said, determined not to show any sign of discomfort, “may I offer you some refreshment?”

  Liane declined with a slight wave. “Countess, I wonder if I might ask you something?”

  “Anything, my queen.” Rinka poured tea for herself, wanting something to do with her hands.

  “It seems my husband is quite taken with you.”

  Somehow, Rinka managed to keep from staring at the queen in astonishment. She inclined her head, hoping her expression was more serene than her thundering heart. “I’m honored, my queen. But what is his interest in me? He barely spoke to me at the feast.”