She's wrong.
When I was with Erick, he told me something that shocked me. All those roses I was sending through tiny portals of my own making in the weeks we were apart, all the ones I never thought made it through to the other side, he found them scattered across the castle grounds—in the throne room, in the courtyard, in the stables, everywhere except in his bedroom where I meant for them to land.
Without Nymia's help, I can't make a very good portal, but I can make a mediocre one that will drop me somewhere in the human forest. I'm not exactly sure where, but once I'm across the barrier, I'll figure something out.
I wait for my sister's breath to slow before I roll carefully to my feet. Then I stare down at her for I don't know how long. It feels like hours, though it must be only seconds. I don't know how to do this, how to say goodbye to her. So I don't. I lean down and kiss her brow, and pretend this is a night like any other as I turn around and march into the forest. I pretend half of my heart hasn't ripped from my chest and fallen to the ground beside her sleeping form. I pretend my tears are raindrops, that the ache in my chest is the warm heat of the sun, and that the words catching in my throat are a mere cough. I pretend so hard I almost believe it as I find a spot in the woods to kneel, then call the water and form a portal. I ignore the way my fingers tremble as I hold them over the surface. I ignore how my spirit fractures as I drop my hands into the water and sink through.
By the time I open my eyes in human lands, they're so blurred I can hardly see. So I let go, because for the moment I'm alone in the woods where no one can hear me. At first, I think the tears will stop, that I'll eventually cry this ache away, but I quickly realize that's not the case. Missing my sister is a bottomless pit, an absence in my soul, an abyss I won't be able to escape as long as we're apart. It's just something I'll have to learn to live with—but that's not a lesson I'll learn tonight.
Tonight, I need Erick.
Tonight, I need to feel his arms around me.
Tonight, I need him to hold me until the pain subsides enough that I can bear it, because it's not a burden I can carry on my own.
I sprint through the forest, hardly aware of my surroundings, following the tug on my heart that leads to the caves, even now, even when they're collapsed and hardly there. When I see a man in a hooded cloak, turned toward the rubble, I don't question. I race faster, because it's Erick, and I need him. My mind is too overrun to register the absence of the barking hound who should be announcing my presence, or to notice there's no burning itch deep in my throat warning me not to call out. My eyes are too unfocused to understand the figure is a few inches too short and a few inches too wide. It's not until a strangled cry echoes through the trees that I think to stop.
By then it's too late.
I stumble over my feet, falling full-speed into the stranger before me. He grabs my hand, spins me around, and slams my back into his chest as he seals a metal ring around my wrist—a metal ring no human should even know of, let alone possess.
My connection to the Mother snuffs out.
My magic drains away.
I freeze, helpless, as a snarling voice I recognize whispers into my ear. "Hello, Aeri."
It's Erick's brother, Hakon, and he's not alone. Shadows shift within the trees, emerging into the shapes of men as they step out from underneath the canopy. Their weapons gleam silver—the sharp edge of a blade, the pointed tip of an arrow, the curved rim of a shield. My gaze goes straight to the man with a golden crown nestled atop his brow and a victorious smile plastered across his lips. Erick's father. Two women with the same face stand on either side of him, one wrinkled and one smooth, a mother and daughter. Judging by the hint of sparkling stones visible between the seams of their ebony cloaks, I'm guessing it's the queen and Erick's half sister. They've been waiting. They've been expecting me.
It's a trap.
Yet my mind is slow to process, because I know—I know—Erick would never do this to me, to us. But how did they find us? How did they know to be here, on this night, in this spot? How do they know my name?
Muffled shouts shatter the silence, stemming from a place unseen.
It's him. It must be.
"Where's Erick?" I rasp, unable to find enough air as the arm across my chest tightens securely. I don't struggle. Magic is my strength, and without it, I'm as weak as a phoenix after a molt, ripe for the taking. "What have you done to him?"
"You want to see my brother?" Hakon growls into my ear, voice dripping with haughty disdain. "Why don't we bring him out?"
No one moves, I notice, until the king subtly nods, and then a wriggling body is tossed from the forest. Erick rolls a few times before coming to a stop where the grass turns to stone, only a few feet away. My heart pinches as soon as I see his bloodied face. One of his eyes is sealed shut, purple and swollen, but the other one finds me immediately, pain a comet streaking across his iris. Despite the way his hands are bound securely behind his back, the deep cut on his forehead, and the visible bruises, I know the ache he's feeling isn't physical. It's the hurt of seeing all our dreams come crashing down around us.
We were so close to escaping.
We were so close to freedom.
What happened?
He must have been ambushed, same as me. He must have been waiting here when they came. He struggled, clearly, but against so many he didn't stand a chance.
How did they know?
I think back to that night we said goodbye. We thought the castle was asleep. We thought the garden was private. We thought we were quiet.
Run away with me, Erick had pled, so full of hope. The full moon is in a week. I'll wait for you, the same place I did before.
Someone was awake.
Someone saw us.
Someone heard.
I have a feeling that someone stands behind me now, digging his fingers into my faerie skin and holding me like a prize to be displayed, the symbol of a hunt well won.
The battle isn't over yet.
Ru hobbles into the moonlight, balanced on three legs, and nudges Erick with his nose. A leather belt locks his snout closed and his wooden limb has been stripped away. When he looks up, those sad eyes latch onto mine. The wind howls as though sent from his spirit, sweeping into the clearing and ruffling all our clothes as the branches creak and whine. The bracelet hooked around my wrist shifts, drawing my gaze, and I realize it's not quite the same as the ones I've worn before. It's been cut and molded, shifted by human hands, forged the same way they do their swords, not completely of the Mother. Reaching down into the center of my soul, I touch my power. It's dampened, but it's still there. My magic isn't gone. It's a trickle instead of a steady stream, but it's a trickle I can work with.
"Faerie." The king addresses me as though what I am is also who I am, as though I am a thing, not a person with a living spirit. He takes a step forward, not pausing to glance at his son still splayed across the ground. Those determined brown eyes, so dark they're almost black, are trained entirely on me. I don't see a single bit of Erick in his face. "My son has magic, and I demand to know how."
I force myself to hold his gaze and smile sweetly. "Whatever do you mean?"
A hand slams into my cheek so fast I don't have time to brace for the impact. My face whips to the side, straining the muscles in my neck as my skin burns. The only thing that keeps me upright is the arm across my chest. Erick shouts, but the words are impossible to make out with the cloth tied across his lips.
"I'm in no mood for games."
"I wasn't aware we were playing one." I keep my voice as light and airy as before. Beneath the calm exterior, I reach for the magic aflame within my heart, but it's like trying to pull the sun's rays from the sky. My fingers slip right through, unable to grasp anything. "Indeed, if we are, it's not one I find entertaining."
"Nor I," he answers firmly. "How did you give my son magic?"
"What makes you think he has any?" I flick my gaze toward Erick, swallowing the lump in my throat and keepin
g my expression neutral. "You have him bound and broken on the ground. Surely, a man with magic could've prevented that."
"You didn't."
Hakon snickers and his warm breath spills down the side of my neck, making my shoulders writhe within his embrace.
"You caught me at a bad time," I murmur, trying to cover my unease. "And, well…" Bending my elbow, I hold up my wrist so the bracelet gleams in the moonlight, drawing the king's eye. He smirks. I take the extra moment to study the metal band. It's broken in two spots, with a hinge on one side and a bolted clasp on the other. If I can reach a little of my magic, I might be able to melt the lock away.
"Do you like it?" the king asks, bringing my attention back to him.
"Where did you find it?"
"My younger son isn't the only one who likes stories, though our tastes are rather different. When I was a young man, I heard talk of an island where the banished faerie lived, growing old without their immortality, wearing metal bands that trapped their magic inside their skin. A myth, I was told. A legend, everyone believed, until I found the island. The shore was wrapped in the same protection spell that slices through these woods, but it didn't stop a rope from sailing through. I yanked a faerie woman beneath the waves and dragged her body to my ship. She hardly struggled. In a way, she seemed grateful to be found, after so many years of being so thoroughly forgotten by her own kind. When I put a blade through her heart, her body turned to dust, blown away in the wind. All that remained was the metal band you now wear."
That explains why the humans had to add a hinge and a lock—the cuff was sized to fit snugly around that female faerie's wrist. The only way to fit it over someone else's fist was to first snap it into two pieces. How'd they know the spell would still work? Did they test it on another magical being, on another faerie even? Is that why Hakon was in the woods that night with his hounds?
I swallow the questions away for another time. The answers won't do me any good right now. "That's an interesting story."
"Is it?"
Hate practically seeps from his pores, a loathing I'm not sure what I've done to deserve. Nothing, I guess. But he's a human, I'm a faerie, and the world tells us for that we must be enemies. I wonder if Erick and I are being cursed for daring to see another way. I'm no longer sure what Mother meant with her blessing. Maybe I was supposed to swallow it myself.
The king stands straighter and tilts his head slightly. "Would you like to hear another?"
I nod, stalling.
Magic tingles at my fingertips and I send it into the metal around my wrist, willing the human bits to melt away. Heat pours into my palm, but the cuff remains cool. I push and push and push, but nothing passes through my skin.
"When I was a boy, my father used to tell me of a world where there was no magic. He said he'd seen it, through a seam between worlds and every evening in his dreams. A place where humans ruled the lands and no one dared defy them. When I was ten, he burned to death in a dragon fire that destroyed half our town. The beast was never caught. The faeries did nothing. We were expendable to them. Even after I long forgot the sound of his voice, I remembered the words on his lips. I thought of them often. When a drought dried our crops and my people died of famine, though a land of plenty lived on the other side of an invisible barrier. On a winter night so cold several human hearts stopped beating, though a fire lit the sky only a few kilometers away. As I sat at the bedside of a woman I loved, watching disease steal her final breaths, wondering why she too couldn't be immortal. And I thought of his words a week ago when I woke to the sound of whispers outside my window, then crawled out of bed to find my bastard son kissing a girl with glowing skin, amazed as she dipped her fingers into a fountain and disappeared."
The king steps closer, gripping my chin and holding my face still, so I'm forced to meet his eyes. I suppose I could look away, but I don't. I stare at him as he stares at me, the air simmering with unspoken challenge.
"I've spent my entire life dreaming of a world without magic. But you gave me a gift, faerie." His tone is soothing, loving almost, and it sends a shiver down my spine. "For as I charged out of my rooms, prepared to interrogate him, something incredible happened. My hounds began howling. One broke free of its cage and I thought it would go to the spot where you disappeared, but it didn’t. It went to my son and alerted. So did the next, and the one after that. When I looked into his eyes, I saw magic behind them, and I realized my goal should've never been a world without magic, but a world where that magic belonged to me." His fingers slide down my throat to rest threateningly on my neck, squeezing just enough to let me know it's not the first time he's held a life in his palm. "Now tell me how to get what's mine."
"No."
His hand tightens, nearly closing off my air. "Tell me."
"No." I cough up the word. My chest burns. I call on my magic, but it slips through my fingers like sand, impossible to grasp.
"I will kill you."
Go ahead, I think and seal my lips shut.
His mouth curls in frustration, but I know I've won. I'm a faerie. I'm immortal. No matter what metal he wraps around my wrist, he can't take that away. His human threats won’t work on me. And if he does kill me, he'd better pray my second life begins long after his is over, because I will come back to haunt him. That's a promise.
The fingers around my throat constrict. My last bit of air vanishes. Magic coils in my lungs, trying to produce new breath, but nothing stirs. I'm empty. My vision spots.
A roar pierces my ear, muffled and far away.
Erick slams into his father and the king releases me. I draw in a strangled breath just as Hakon tosses me to the side to lunge at his brother. I roll across the ground, weak and disoriented, tumbling like a leaf caught in a splashing current. By the time I right myself, it's over. The king stands fixing his crown while his older son crouches, pressing a knee to Erick's chest while he holds a knife to his throat. I try to yank at the metal cuff, but it won't budge over my bones, no matter how hard I pull. An unnamed man peels from the edge of the tree line to restrain me. Though I fight with everything I have, he gets ropes around my hands and ties them behind my back with ease.
"Don't hurt him!" I scream, using the only weapon I have left.
The king arches a brow.
Dread pools in my gut and I clamp my mouth shut. But it's too late. The damage is done. The king looks at Erick, then back at me, then Erick, then me. A terrifying spark lights his eyes.
"I wonder," he murmurs almost conversationally, as though he's discussing the weather, and not the life of his very mortal child. "Do you love him enough to choose him?"
I do.
I know I do.
I already gave up everything to be with him.
"Hakon," the king commands.
Unlike Erick, he's his father's son through and through, and he knows exactly what his father is asking without being told. Hakon grips Erick by the shirt and pulls him to a seated position, propping him up so we can lock eyes across the dark clearing. Then he digs his fingers into his brother's curling black hair and yanks his head back, exposing his throat. The knife catches the light of the moon as he places the edge against a pulsing vein, forceful enough to dent Erick's skin, but not enough to break it.
"Tell me the secret to magic."
The spell gurgles up from the depths like vomit, so I must choke on it to keep it from spilling out. These are faerie secrets, faerie words. I can't share them.
The king looks to Hakon.
The blade at Erick's throat digs a little deeper. A single bead of red liquid slips down his neck, highlighting the slight tremble to his skin and the movement of his throat as he swallows.
"Tell me."
I stare at the blood. I can't look away as it lands against his white collar and sinks into the fabric, spreading wider and wider as more time passes. Erick's voice fills my ears, drawn from a memory.
But if he loved your mother, why didn’t he marry her? I asked, wrapped in his arm
s beneath the stars, completely unaware of the true danger to the path we were naïvely walking.
Because he didn’t love her enough, Erick said, matter of fact, as though it were undeniable truth. He loved his status and his power more.
I snap my gaze up to meet the king's, terrified by the determination I see in the shadowed grooves of his wrinkled brow and the rigid purse of his lips. In that moment, I know he'll kill Erick to get what he wants. He'll kill him just to spite me.
"It's a spell," I whisper, as though the softness of my voice could hide the depths of my betrayal. "A faerie spell."
"What are the words?"
The ancient language sits on my tongue. Can a human even speak these words? Can they use them? Am I risking Erick's life on a fear that will never come to pass? After all, I thought the words that gave Erick his magic. I put the blessing in his hand and bid him to swallow. I did all the work.
The knife digs deeper.
Erick wheezes.
The king leans close, staring intently, hanging on my next words.
What if I can use the spell to pull new magic from the world? What if I can use it to circumvent the metal band around my wrist? What if I can use it to fight back?
"Mither, lu da bhuinnich, bodh mo gid thirriong istuich ges da tholguol imich," I murmur, drawing on every bit of power beneath my skin, calling on my magic, willing Mother to listen. "Mither, lu da bhuinnich, bodh mo gid thirriong istuich ges da tholguol imich."
I draw you in to cast you out.
Please, Mother, hear me.
With your blessing, I draw you in to cast you out.
My chest tingles with the stirrings of magic. I breathe it in, waiting for that ember to ignite, to spread into a wildfire ready to consume the world.
It burns out instead.
"Mither." The king's deep voice penetrates my prayers, quelling them. I freeze, holding my breath as he stumbles over a language that should never have been his. I'm an idiot. A fool. "Lu da bhuinnich, bodh mo gid thirriong istuich ges da tholguol imich."
Parting Worlds - A Little Mermaid Retelling (Once Upon a Curse Book 4) Page 14