by Lucy Tempest
“Nothing accurate, I’m sure…” Clancy stopped when Leander batted a hand at him. “But do describe what you saw.”
“Sh-she was standing before a massive gate, attached to a towering, white wall, and there was sand everywhere.”
Jessamine stopped pouring the tea. “Sand? Where in Faerie do they have sand?”
“The Summer Court, presumably.” Leander tapped his nails on the arm of his chair, a nerve-wracking noise in my state. “From what I’ve heard, the days are longer there while the opposite is true for Winter, where time moves faster.”
I sat up, hope flaring in my chest. “I need to get there!”
“NO!” The sharp objection made me jump. Not a growl from Leander or a bleat from Clancy, but a squawk from Jessamine. “You can’t leave again! You promised!”
“Miss Quill.”
At Leander’s gruff warning, Jessamine ducked her head, avoiding all our eyes. “Sorry. It’s just…” She trailed off, raised a glass bowl in shaking hands. “Would anyone like cookies?”
Clancy jumped at the chance to break the tension, took one, then turned to me. “Now, what were we saying?”
Not wanting to upset her further by discussing leaving, I shook my head.
Leander watched me as he brought his cup to his lips. Visibly irritated with his loud slurping, he clattered his cup down. “Would you have gone?”
“What?”
“Had that portal stayed open longer, would you have gone through it?”
I was at a loss how to answer him. I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t have, because I’d been about to leap through it when it had shut in my face. The truth was, the thought of them all had fled my mind the moment I’d seen Adelaide—different, yet alive and well and within reach.
I finally said, “I just want her back. All I could think was to reach her, to pull her through.”
“Or you would have leaped through and gotten stuck on the other side.” I expected Leander to get worked up as usual, that I would have left them to their doom without a second thought, but he only exhaled dejectedly. “But you’re still here.”
Yes, I was. Only because I didn’t get the chance to leave. And Adelaide was who knew where or when, in the Summer Court, all by herself, at that fairy woman’s mercy.
Leander set an uncertain hand by mine, as if he wanted to console me. His nails were becoming the translucent silver of claws.
I shook my head at his silent question. I couldn’t talk about Adelaide anymore now.
So I pointed at the book he’d dropped on the table. “What did you pick for me?”
Blinking, as if he couldn’t process the switch in topic, he picked it up, handed it to me. A smooth, teal hardcover with an embossed pearlescent title framed by a circle of rose thorns. There was no subtitle, no brief description on the first page, just the names Amadeus & Gratia and in a much smaller font Translated by Lady Mullein.
It was a new book. Something a few years old and only ever owned by one person. Him.
I looked up at him. “What’s it about?”
“I wouldn’t want to spoil anything for you, so I’ll only say it’s an old Orestian tale that was recently translated by a former lady-in-waiting of my mother’s, Lady Crisanta Sorley.”
I grasped at the distraction. “Her name here is Lady Mullein.”
“Yes, she’s the Countess of Mullein, but she is a Sorley by marriage. In general terms, she is Lady Sorley, but professionally she is Lady Mullein. The same goes for her husband.”
That only confused me more, which I welcomed now, but Clancy elaborated. “Titles can come from the land or castle one inherits, and inheritance can go sideways if a bloodline dies out. I believe that was how the last Prince of Almaskham came about?”
Leander nodded, something heavy in his eyes. “Yes, Prince Faisal was sixth or seventh-in-line. It’s why he was allowed to marry a common woman. A few disasters and abdications later, he and his Orestian peasant girl found themselves on the throne.”
Clancy grew visibly uncomfortable. “Yes, it was their luck that he ascended after they had several sons. If his succession had happened a few years earlier, he would have been forced to put her aside for a more suitable wife.”
Jessamine clattered the cup she handed him.
I exhaled, shock and disappointment making me unable to read or worry about what was happening between them.
I still said, “Theirs must be an interesting story. A prince marrying a girl from another land, with no expectations or pressures, since he was considered disposable and she was considered no one, only for them to end up being the most important ones.”
“I haven’t thought about it that way before.” Leander seemed pleased with my input. “The most interesting thing was, you’d expect a man unprepared for ruling and his common wife would have been disastrous rulers. But they elevated Almaskham into what we, centuries from now, might call its Golden Age.”
“Did you ever meet them?” I asked, only because he seemed to be expecting more interaction from me.
“Faisal has been dead for over a decade, but I did meet his wife in a diplomatic summit, when I was touring nearby nations to learn foreign politics firsthand.”
“And?” I prodded.
He huffed a reminiscent laugh. “She was a viper, I’ll tell you that. The first thing she said when she walked into our meeting was that we were little boys with wooden swords play-acting at being lords and leaders. Anyone who tried to flatter Dowager Princess Aurelia got ripped to shreds. You either truly engaged her or she tore into you. She was inordinately shrewd and unlike anyone I’d ever met.”
His oddly fond recollection of someone who’d been apparently mean and offensive to him lifted my spirits a little. “So, Faisal chose well?”
“That he did. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was the one in charge during their reign. She reads people so well, knows how to make them do her bidding.” He frowned as he gazed at his warped hands. “If I wasn’t so offended by what she said about me, I would have heeded her judgment, and adjusted my behavior, and I wouldn’t have fully unleashed the curse.”
“I recall you said she was unfairly hostile towards you,” Clancy pointed out. “So you think it was justified now?”
Leander nodded, grimacing at his hands. “Most of it probably was, but once she realized who my mother was, she stopped acknowledging me at all. I felt worse when she ignored me.”
“How many people has your mother offended?” The words were out before I could stop them.
Leander didn’t seem to mind, sighed. “Plenty. But this time, Aurelia’s rancor was more about my maternal uncle than my mother. King Darius of Cahraman married her niece Jumana, who I understand was the daughter she never had. When Jumana died after she gave birth to Cahraman’s heir—the prince pledged to Fairuza—the old woman grew to hate all of us, seeing us as complicit in her death somehow.”
I put down my untouched cup. “How is that fair?”
He slumped with a deflating sigh. “Grief is too strong an emotion to be reasonable. Sometimes people need someone to blame in order to feel better. That’s how my mother is, I suppose.”
“Who is your mother grieving for?”
“Myself and Fairuza. I told you that since the first time my curse manifested, showing her the Spring Queen had been serious, she considered us as good as dead.”
Though he was sort of excusing his mother’s behavior, I didn’t. For a mother to give up on her children like that, to have “replacements,” because she considered them damaged and hopeless, was unthinkably callous.
That was the last discussion of the morning, as we spent the rest of it in near-silence in the library. At lunch and dinner, they attempted to talk to me, but my mind was elsewhere, wherever the Summer Court was.
All my life, I’d fantasized about leaving Aubenaire to travel. But it had been just that, a fantasy, with no consequences. I hadn’t thought how my father would feel, how long I’d be gone, if I’d be in any dang
er, and how I’d ever return. When the possibility of having that fantasy realized had presented itself, it had taken my first, and now only, argument with Adelaide to realize that my choices and actions could affect others’ lives.
Travel had only represented insecurity and danger to Adelaide, and my father was a simple man with no aspirations beyond me and his job, and taking on apprentices, in hope of having one succeeding him as town smith and handyman. He would have likely wanted me to marry his successor and live in our stone house, and have the big family I’d always yearned for. Adelaide would have been happy with any local boy, just to make his family, their history and traditions hers. My desire to leave, to wander anywhere, had rocked the boat of the peaceful future together that they’d both coveted.
Then my wish had come true, ending with us scattered, and with me staring down a new reality. Not the one where the Folkshore existed, but where I had something I’d never had.
A duty.
To my father, to Adelaide, to Leander and to the people of Rosemead Castle.
But I didn’t know how to save them all, give them back the lives they’d had. And I couldn’t bear not knowing. I’d always needed answers. It was why I’d spent my life within the pages of books that could give me those.
Now I wanted to skip to the end of this story and read the ending. But it was only half-written. And for the first time, I wasn’t the reader, but the writer. And it was up to me to write the next chapter.
It now remained to be seen whether I resolved our complicated plot, or rocked the boat harder and knocked us all overboard.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I couldn’t shake the feeling that the portal had reopened somewhere in the castle, and I had missed Adelaide again.
It had made sleep impossible. Giving up after hours of tossing and turning, I sat up in bed, lit a candle, and began reading Leander’s book.
Whatever expectations I’d had for it faded as I was sucked into the story, barely registering the increasing brightness of my surroundings as I turned page after page.
A knock made me jump, and Jessamine entered. “I’d say good morning, but you look like you had a hard night.”
I rubbed my swollen eyes, nodded.
I was about to bend a page when I remembered the book was new and belonged in that phenomenal library. I patted around, searching for something to mark where I’d stopped, and a crimson feather fluttered before me on the duvet.
“Use this,” Jessamine said.
I picked up her amazing feather and reverently used it as a bookmark. “Thank you. But hasn’t your wing suffered enough?”
“It was falling off, and another one was already pushing it out.” Her face pinched in unease. “It’s not like hair that falls off and more grows back without you feeling it.”
“Is it painful?”
Her feathers twitched along her uneven wings, the injured one not folded neatly as the other. “Not really, just itches, like a scab.”
“I never got to ask, but what was it like growing wings?”
She shuddered. “Now that was painful, like I was teething but on a wide scale, and, well, on my back.”
I cringed, feeling a phantom pressure between my own shoulder blades. “I’m so sorry.”
She waved dismissively. “They’re not so bad once I got used to them. The most inconvenience was refashioning all my dresses for them. My legs are the real bother.”
I resisted looking at her gnarled, taloned feet. “Do you like flying, then?”
Her yellow eyes brightened. “That’s the one good thing about it. I used to watch birds and think they were so free, could go anywhere they wanted.” She gazed out my window and down at the city. “Ironic, isn’t it? I get the chance to finally go anywhere, and I can’t, because someone might shoot me down.”
The blood-chilling fear I’d felt when I’d watched her plummet washed over me all over again. I shivered. “But if you could fly anywhere, where would you go?”
She checked behind her, as if she was afraid someone would hear her. “Since this all started, I’ve had this dream of touring the fairy courts.”
That was strange, considering her panicked reaction when I mentioned going to Faerie yesterday. But then she’d thought I’d be the one to go, alone.
I sighed. “I used to have a similar dream. I grew up in a town where the path to Faerie was supposedly through the woods. The more people tried to scare me about going there, the more I wanted to go take a look.”
“And did you?”
My shoulders slumped, heavy with guilt and gloom. “I did. And that was where the fairy that took my friend saw us. If I hadn’t insisted on going in, none of this would have happened.”
“But we also wouldn’t have gotten to know you!”
I couldn’t agree on the silver lining, since I’d done nothing for them so far. So I said, “By ‘we,’ do you mean all of you or yourself and Clancy?”
She moved away, uneasy. “Bonnie, I told you, there’s nothing between us.”
“Regardless of what’s going on, just answer me this: do you love him?”
Her lips trembled as she nodded. “But it can’t go anywhere.”
Knowing she’d evade my questions if I asked why, I went for something else that had been bothering me. “What about Castor?”
Disapproval pressed her mouth into a thin line. “What about him?”
“Was he horrible to you?”
She shook her head. “No, nothing like that. I just couldn’t be the focus of his obsession.”
“What do you mean?”
“You must have noticed how naive he is?” Jessamine rolled her shoulders, unfurling her injured wing. “He thinks life is a children’s book, where he, the noble hero, chooses the fair maiden and goes around saving her from everything, starting with having a mind of her own. He will take her home, dress her in his mother’s clothes, and keep her there forever, having his children, listening to what he says, doing what he wants and receiving his stifling attention without complaint. The instant you show signs of being a real person, he falls apart.”
I nodded. That was exactly my experience with him. “How is he like that?”
“Like all minor nobles, he was raised in boarding schools, and never talked to a female who wasn’t his mother or relative. The only ideas such men have about us are from stories.” She tapped my book. “But this story would shock the socks off Castor, my brothers and every other young man in Rosemead.”
I’d stopped midway, where something very exciting was about to happen. The story of Amadeus and Gratia, as the forward claimed, was that of a god and the mortal woman he fell in love with. Hounded by suitors for her incredible beauty, Gratia tried everything to rebuff them, from cutting off her hair to chucking firewood at them from her window. But some even started worshipping her, considering her the living extension of Aglaea, their goddess of love and beauty. The town’s women then banded together to be rid of her, fearing she would take their husbands or had an evil hold on their sons. Summoning Aglaea, they told her Gratia boasted that she was more beautiful than her and was trying to usurp the goddess.
Enraged, Aglaea sent her son Amadeus, who carried out her mandated love matches, to make Gratia fall in love with a satyr. Unexpectedly, Amadeus fell in love with her himself, and devised a plan to hide her from his mother. Under the guise of an eccentric foreign lord who never showed his face, he promised he’d pay off her father’s debts if she married him and lived with him in his palace on a mountain plateau.
But on that first night, she tried to escape. He stopped her and invited her to a dim-lit dinner, telling her he wanted her to grow comfortable with him first, as the sight of his face could scare her off. This continued until she fell in love with him.
Then one night, a servant played on her insecurity, told her that her husband would never trust her enough to show her who he was. Overwhelmed by her need to see his face, she entered his room with a candle. But to her shock, he was the most beau
tiful man she had ever seen. Shaken, she spilled the melted candlewax, burning his arm, waking him.
It was then the servant shirked her mortal form, revealing herself to be Aglaea. She bound her son in adamantine shackles for disobeying her, and dumped Gratia back in her town, where she was at the mercy of lecherous men and envious women yet again.
Infuriated, Gratia found a temple of Aglaea and vandalized it to get her attention. She demanded to have Amadeus back, but Aglaea told her she wasn’t worthy of her son, let alone of being compared to her. Gratia insisted she would prove she was worthy of both.
That was where I’d stopped.
I was dying to know what happened next. I’d hate for it to be that Aglaea turned Gratia into a pillar of salt or something for her arrogance, with the rest of the book being Amadeus’s widower grief and his vengeance for her death. There were enough dead-wife stories as it was.
I cocked my head at Jessamine. “You’ve read this story?”
She shrugged. “I’ve heard it. Stories travel by mouth for years before somebody finally puts them to paper. It’s why so many take place centuries ago.”
“How does it end?”
Jessamine grinned with a headshake. “Master would have me boiled into chicken soup if I ruined the story for you.”
I smiled back. “All right then—tell me something else. Why have you been thinking about going to Faerie so much, if fairies are so scary?”
She bit her lip. “I figure they wouldn’t harm us, since we don’t look human anymore. We’d be nothing of note in Faerie, so we could live there and be free of this world and its expectations and prejudices.”
So her goal for escape made my previous desire for travel, for curiosity and adventure, feel childish in comparison, if not flat out stupid and irresponsible.
“Why did you come here?” I rose up on my knees, seeking out her eyes. “I sense it wasn’t to escape or spite Castor, and surely the distance you keep between Clancy and yourself has nothing to do with him, either.”
She shook her head, then after a tense pause, she said, “His name was Yewan. And he was the first thing I ever wanted for myself.”