by Elise Kova
“Speaking of, I think I know how to do it—break the cycle,” I say. He arches his eyebrows. “I think the solution is simpler than we could’ve imagined. It’s a matter of restoring balance between Midscape and the Natural World—like the queen’s garden.” I can see the solution begin to light up Eldas’s eyes as I speak. “I think with something like the fae’s ritumancy, we can assemble the necessary requisites to find equilibrium. Which can make sense—the Human Queen’s magic is more like the fae’s than the elves’…likely because the fae are closer to the dryads and all that.” I believe my logic checks out, since the fae were descended from dryads and the dryads later made the humans, but it’s been a while since Willow and I discussed the history of Midscape.
“Good.” Yet he contradicts his word with a shake of his head as he stands.
“You don’t seem happy.” I watch as he faces the crackling fire in the hearth behind his chair.
“Of course I am not happy,” he murmurs darkly.
My chest tightens. I expected him to be angry. But I didn’t expect how painful it would be. “Eldas, I—”
“My brother could’ve been hurt. You could’ve been hurt.” He looks over his shoulder.
“I didn’t know the extent of the situation, not really. I just thought your brother was in a tough spot. I didn’t think about the politics that might be involved.” I slowly rise to my feet, allowing the world to spin and settle. My magic and body are both exhausted.
“It’s for the best,” he murmurs.
“What is?”
Eldas turns and his expression is unrecognizable. I haven’t seen those frigid eyes since our wedding. “That you’ll be leaving soon.”
“Do you mean that?” I whisper.
“Of course I do. It’s what you wanted, isn’t it? You have an idea and based on what I’ve read of that journal, you’re not far off.” Eldas stares down at me. “You’ll no longer be needed here and you can go—be free of me. No king will ever have to suffer with a Human Queen again.”
“Stop this,” I whisper. Every word is like a physical wound, cutting me deeper than I thought possible. I’m shocked the floor isn’t bloody. “I know you’re upset and…you have a reason to be cross with me. But Eldas, I—”
“What do you feel for me?” He turns to face me as he turns my question back on me. I lean against the chair for stability. Otherwise I may be bowled over by his stare.
“You never answered that either,” I remind him weakly.
“If you asked, then you may have some kind of idea of what I might feel.” Eldas gathers his height. “But I want to know about you, Luella. What do you feel for me? Do you love me?”
Every pore, every raw part of my essence screams, yes! But my lips don’t move. They quiver silently and my eyes burn. Yes, say yes, Luella. But if I say yes now…I will always doubt myself.
“Tell me, Luella, do you love me?” His voice takes on an almost begging note.
I press my lips harder together, fighting every instinct. My mind is at war with my heart. My better sense of duty to Capton and Midscape against an impulsive streak these feelings have brought out in me. Silence is the best thing for us, even if he doesn’t see it now.
“Tell me now or I will wash my hands of you for good.”
How can I make him understand? “Eldas, I—”
“Yes or no, do you love me?” His voice raises a fraction.
I watch as he shatters under my silence and hesitation.
“No. Of course not. Who could?” He chuckles sadly and shakes his head. “I already suspected you didn’t, given the secrets you chose to keep.”
“Eldas, it’s not that simple.”
“But it is.” He skewers me with a look and I can’t breathe. “It’s a simple question, with a simple answer. Your actions and everything you can’t say have told me all I need to know.”
“I wanted to—our situation is—we can’t be certain—I have to go to know—” It’s impossible for me to form a cohesive sentence. The world is rumbling under my feet. I hear the groans and stress fractures spiderwebbing out around me. Make him understand, I have to make him understand. But when I need words most, they all fail me, even the frantic kind. “Eldas—”
He shuts the door behind him. The soft click of the latch engaging strikes me like a drum. I sway and then rush to the door and yank it open. But I already know what awaits me—an empty hall.
He’s gone.
Chapter 35
Eldas returns to Quinnar alone. He Fadewalks without so much as a word to me. I find out through Drestin that he’s gone and that’s really the biggest jab of them all. The carriage back is as cold and lonely as the castle halls that await me. Not even Hook’s presence can ward off the chill. I spend the hours having a long debate with myself on what I could have, or should have, done differently along the way.
When Quinnar’s castle is visible in the distance, rising up in line with the mountaintops and towering over the fields, I’m not sure of what I feel. A part of me is oddly nostalgic for the place. Another part of me would rather be anywhere other than this carriage, drawing nearer and nearer.
Rinni is waiting for me as the carriage comes to a stop before the castle’s tunnel entry.
“What happened?” she asks—no, demands.
“Harrow—”
“I know what happened with Harrow. I am Eldas’s general, so of course he told me about that.” Rinni steps over to me, hooking her elbow with mine and leading me to the doors. Hook follows closely behind. Her voice drops to a hush as she glances back, looking to make sure the soldiers that rode on the outside of my carriage aren’t following. “What happened between both of you?”
“Nothing happened,” I lie.
“That’s what he said and it’s obviously false.”
“Rinni—”
“I’d started to see changes in him—changes for the better, Luella. I started to see a warmer, gentler side of him. It gave me faith and hope in the man that leads us.” We come to a stop in the large entry hall. The grand stairway arches upward on the opposite end, splitting to the empty mezzanine. It brings back memories of when I first arrived.
Incredibly, I think everything was simpler then. When Eldas was nothing more than a king. And I hardly understood my role as queen.
“But ever since he’s been back… He’s his old self again,” Rinni finishes. “And I know that must mean something happened between you two.”
“I can’t change him, Rinni.” I shrug as if the weight of the world isn’t pulling on my shoulders. If Rinni believes I don’t care, maybe Eldas will too, then maybe I will. And somehow this unbearable spot I’m in might become easier.
She blinks, startled. “I’m not asking or expecting you to. He was changing himself because he believed he could be a man worthy of love—your love.”
I can’t take her words. I don’t want to hear them from her. I wanted to hear them from Eldas. No, I didn’t want to hear them at all. It’s impossible, we can’t love each other. Not under these circumstances, not so quickly.
But what do I know about love? What have I ever known about love? Nothing, and that’s why I messed this up so badly.
I need to return to what I understand and what won’t hurt me—my duty.
“Sorry, Rinni, I think you might be mistaken. But I don’t really have time to discuss it. The days are getting cooler and I have work to do. Hook, come along.”
Rinni stares listlessly at me as I start toward my room. She eventually shadows behind me, but I can tell it’s only out of obligation. She doesn’t say anything else as I tuck myself away to plot and work.
I hope she ends up taking Eldas’s side…he needs her a lot more than I do now.
Eldas doesn’t speak to me for three days. By the fourth, he breaks the silence with a letter. Four simple, emotionless lines, nothing more.
It looks like it will snow again soon.
My kingdom needs you to sit on the throne, or break the cycle.
How much longer until you’re done and gone?
Done and gone. He wants to wash his hands of me. Rinni was wrong; he doesn’t want love any more than I do. We’re not built for love. We were made to focus on our work.
So that’s what I do.
On the fifth day I’m up in the laboratory, Willow is with me, stealing worried glances until I can’t take it any longer.
“Go ahead and ask,” I say without looking up from my journal. I almost have my plans outlined. There’s just one more thing to be done. I can spare a word for Willow. He’s been kind to me, and none of this is his fault.
“What really happened in Westwatch?” His eyes are tender, gently probing. “You haven’t been the same since you came back.”
“Nothing changed,” I answer placidly. Nothing did. Eldas is still the icy Elf King. I’m still forced to be his Human Queen. Whatever we found in that cottage was a dream, a moment, as fragile as butterfly wings.
“Something did.” He frowns and sits across from me. “Is it what happened with Harrow?”
“How’s he doing?” I ask, continuing to allow Willow to think that my general malaise originates from the incident with the fae. Since we’ve returned, Willow has taken over Harrow’s treatment. But the youngest prince still hasn’t woken. That’s another thing for Eldas to resent me for. I’ve no doubt he blames me for the non-responsive state of his brother since it was I who first treated him.
“He’s fine, but still no changes.” Willow pats my hand. “I’m sure he’ll come out of it soon.”
“Yeah…” I finish looking over the last of my plans. There’s only two weeks left before the coronation. I bite my lip and sigh. There’s something I’m missing to achieve the balance, I know it. But my thoughts are scattered like dandelion seeds on the wind.
Part of me can only think of Harrow—worried for his recovery and wondering why he has yet to wake. Part of me wonders if I’m making the right choice. I wonder if there’s any other choice to be made. Then, there’s Eldas…
“I need to grab a few things from the conservatory,” I say, slipping out before Willow can probe again. I’ve become too fragile. I’m teetering on the edge of spilling all the feelings I’m carrying at once just so someone else can see them all—so I no longer have to carry them alone. Yet I can’t. It’s better to pretend none of this exists.
The heat clings to me from the second I step into the conservatory and doesn’t let go. I inhale deeply the now-familiar scent—the unique aroma of the plants that grow here, the moss, the earth, the compost Willow fastidiously tends in the back.
“Be good when I’m gone,” I say softly to all of the plants. They seem to rustle in reply.
I wander the rows of planters, looking for what I might want to take with me. I need to find something that will mirror the strength of the redwood throne. Something that can grow deep roots in the natural world and provide a counterweight to the throne in this world. I thought about taking a trimming from the throne itself, but another queen tried that once for other reasons and the throne was impervious to all knives and chisels.
The first Human Queen planted something to make the throne—I believe that’s what the statue in the center of Quinnar is showing. The Fade and throne, made at the same time in a magical process, almost like a ritual. But what can I plant that could possibly mirror the throne in might? What is still outstanding in the balance?
Then a small, bulbous plant catches my eye. I stare at the heartroot, blinking several times. It’s as if I see it for the first time.
“The heartroot remembers,” I whisper, echoing Willow’s words.
There’s the seed of space that my consciousness goes to within the throne. It’s the seed from which the throne was born. In that place I felt the life of past queens, the energy of the world.
Lilian wrapped a piece of dark bark—bark that mirrors the heartroot and that seed at the core of the redwood throne—on a necklace with filament. It was the necklace she hid in the box. A necklace of magic that Eldas couldn’t understand.
She commissioned her statue at the center of Quinnar to have her kneeling. Not because she intended queens to be subservient, but because she was showing the way everything came to be…and how everything would end.
“That’s it.”
The two flowers that bloomed instantly when I first touched the plant seem to wink at me, as if overjoyed that I’ve pieced it all together. Carefully, I scoop up the pot cradling the unassuming plant. I can almost see the phantom memories I first witnessed when I touched it, reaching out to me.
I saw Queen Lilian taking the heartroot and planting it the first time I came in contact with it. This is what she was planting in the statue. I know it. I feel it with every part of me. This was what the redwood throne grew from, and what will help bring balance in the Natural World.
“Did you plan for this all along, Lilian?” I murmur. A human woman who negotiated peace with a warring Elf King. She was clever. She pulled the heartroot intentionally into just Midscape. She made the worlds out of balance. Lilian built in a way out for the Human Queens for when the time was right—when peace was stable and Human Queens were no longer needed as trophies. She left the clues behind—starting the tradition of journals, the statue, using the heartroot that would trap memories of her—hoping someone would find them.
I’m going home.
Rushing back into the laboratory, I put the plant down and sweep Willow up into a tight embrace. He goes rigid, startled, and just as he moves to return it I’m already pulling away. “Thank you, thank you,” I say.
“What?” He blinks.
“It’s because of you, because of the heartroot, because—oh, never mind. Listen, I need you to do something for me.”
“All right.” Willow nods slowly. “What?”
“Take this.” I carefully snip one of the flowers. His eyes widen. “And make it into an elixir for Harrow.” The heartroot has helped in my healing of Harrow to date. The flower will be just what he needs—a merger of the plant’s body and mind properties.
“The flower, but it’s for…” He trails off.
“Poison, I know. I can’t explain why I think it’ll help,” I say apologetically. “Please just trust me because I need to focus on my other work.”
“Oh…okay.” Willow slowly begins to move, doing as I instruct. Meanwhile, I’m running through my plans. I search the laboratory for everything I might need to sacrifice to equilibrium to make the heartroot propagate faster.
My hands pause before the magic pours from them. If this works…I’ll be headed home before nightfall. I’m dizzy from excitement and apprehension.
Then, another thought crosses my mind. If this works, it will be the last time I see Eldas. My fingers tremble and I swallow hard.
The cycle must end, I remind myself firmly and get back to work.
Before I know it, I’m standing before the door to the throne room. Rinni has made herself scarce this past week. Maybe it’s because I’ve been locked away in my room. Or perhaps it’s because Eldas finally told her everything and I was right in thinking she’d take his side. Perhaps, when I’m gone, she and Eldas will try again at romance. The thought makes me ill and I focus instead on the heartroot in my hands.
“You’re late,” Eldas says curtly as I walk in. “I summoned you to sit on the throne an hour ago.”
“I know.” I meet his eyes and my chest squeezes further. Those icy eyes are the same that looked to me in the darkness with such longing…with what I had dared think might be love. “But it doesn’t matter. This is all about to end.”
The cycle.
Us.
“You figured it out,” he whispers, not even a corner of his mask slipping out of place.
“Yes, I’m leaving tonight.” I wait to see a flicker of emotion on his face. There’s a flash in his eyes, but one not even I can read. It could be just as easily relief as regret. And, because I don’t know, that�
��s how I’m certain I’m making the right decision. None of this will be clear to me until I’m back in a world I know, a place that makes sense, and I have some amount of freedom to sort through this mess of feelings trying to strangle me.
“Then I will grant you passage through the Fade,” he says slowly, “and hope that you never return.”
Chapter 36
It’s so late that only the very first haze of dawn has begun to kiss the sky.
Only Willow and Rinni have come to see me off. Eldas allowed me to depart into the night without so much as a goodbye. He dismissed me from that vast, lonely throne room with little more than a wish of good luck. No one else will see me off because this mission is still our great secret. If I succeed, Midscape will rejoice in a security it’s never known; it will no longer rely on a single person for the wellbeing of its lands. If I fail…Eldas will come to collect me before the coronation and no one will know his queen “tried to escape him.”
I am like a lump of coal, slowly being crushed underneath everything that surrounds me. Though I do not know if I’ll become a diamond…or dust.
Willow stares at me with bright red eyes, sniffling. “I thought… I had no idea you were leaving. Not like this… I would’ve… I would’ve…”
I pull him in for a tight embrace, one he returns without hesitation. “It’s all right. I’m sorry I kept it a secret from you. But I had to.” Willow was my one insistence to Eldas and Rinni about this departure—he would know where I went and he would be here. He’s been far too good to me for me to just leave without so much as a word to him. And he’d notice I was gone and raise an alarm otherwise. So keeping it a secret from him wasn’t an option any longer.
“It’s all right,” he says with a quivering voice. “I’m not mad, I—there’s so much more about Quinnar and Midscape I wanted to show you. I wanted you to be here for springtime rites, and then harvest festivals, and Yule.”