Her eyes narrowed. “Yet you needed my help to fix it.”
“Can you, for one moment, act rationally, Mabilia?” My tone bit, and I clutched her tight. “You’ve been with me two days and have nearly died just as many times. What if I had been a second late with the wendigo? What if you had tried this on your own? I can’t afford to lose you.” I exhaled, closing my eyes. None of us could.
“You’re shaking.”
“I’m always shaking!” I snapped, meeting her gaze and making an effort to compose myself.
She didn’t flinch. “Do villains cry, my faerie?” Her cool hand lifted, skimming my cheek.
I clenched my jaw as she brushed ice off my face, but I didn’t reply.
“You always made everything better. Now, I feel like I don’t know you. Maybe you weren’t lying before—maybe you did want me reliant and confused and everything else, but from here it looks like I’m not the only one who’s desperate.” A weak smile curved her lips. “I’m not one to give up easily. And you haven’t noticed yet.” Pain twisted her expression as she drew herself up Her lips brushed my ear. “I have you right where I need you.”
Magic gripped me, my back going rigid. The breath in my lungs held, and my eyes widened. She traced a symbol against the ground, and a smaller design lit beneath the broken one—we sat directly over it.
Fingers prodded my mind, and I sneered, baring my teeth.
“I want the truth.” She slipped out of my hold but didn’t leave the new circle. Her slow movements betrayed the toll the previous spell had taken, but nothing else conveyed it. She smiled, a shaky, hopeful thing that made tears gather in her eyes. “Just like always, my faerie, tell me a story. And start at the beginning.”
I held on for as long as I could, but the magic was like a cobra slithering around my chest and delving into my mind. My lips parted, and words hissed out between gritted teeth. “What will you give me for it?”
“How are you this stubborn?” Her fists clenched.
A raw grin peeled back my lips as the spell took the answer from me. “For the same reasons you are.”
“Explain.”
The power reached deeper, niggling into every cranny of my skull. I growled. “I will give you your answers if you release me from this and agree to a contract.”
Her head shook. “No. I’ve bargained with you enough already. Consider this one a favor.”
“I would have a favor for it in return then.” From my resistance, pain bloomed, and the threads the spell wove in my mind became thorny vines. She blurred some, but I remained upright. “When the war starts, seek me out.”
“So you can use me as a hostage? Like I would agree to that. My people hate me enough without my showing weakness in the battle we’ve spent over a decade preparing for.” Her gaze shifted down, emotion touching the hardness she had marked upon her face.
“Your true people don’t hate you, though some are wary.”
“You cannot mean my true people are the fae?”
The piercing in my skull drew back when I answered easily, “I do.”
“I can’t believe a word you say, can I?” she seethed.
I snorted. “What use is this truth spell then?”
All her air left her, and were she not already so pale, color would have as well. “How can I be fae?”
“Agree to my terms.”
She placed her hands flat on the ground, filtering more power into the spell. “You are not in a position to make terms.”
My vision swayed, but I choked out a laugh. “We play a dangerous game. My will against your power. Which will run out first? Do you think I’ve not been tortured before? Do you really think this is torture?”
“Why do you need me to meet you?” she spat between gritted teeth, pulling back on her power to conserve her energy.
“If you do not, we all will perish.”
Shock widened her eyes, thoughts flashing behind them. “But,” she whispered, “you have magic. Surely Dale won’t… We can’t be that strong… Everyone?”
The question needed no confirmation, so I remained quiet, and the spell remained tame.
Her brows lowered, and she met my eyes. “I’ll agree to meet you. But I won’t drop my spell. I know I’m willing to believe a lot of things, so I want to be sure what you say is the truth.”
My mind churned, and I narrowed my eyes, but I lifted my hand. “Very well, but when I am done with what I will say, you will release me.”
“As you wish.” Her hand clasped mine, and ice climbed, but she didn’t tense or wince at the chill.
When I released her, the spell had fallen into little more than an insufferable presence. I exhaled. “In my nightmares, I see snatches of the future. For years now, I have witnessed the destruction of my kind, so I searched for a way to save them. The only answer was you. A child born through two miracles, two lives I was able to touch, coming into herself when Winter’s Howl and Celestine aligned.”
“Just because your magic lives in me doesn’t mean I’m fae.” Panic flickered in her eyes, but she held it down. “I’ve lived in iron my whole life. I’m not fae.”
“My magic lives in your parents, Princess. Half a fae soul—half my soul—lives in you.” I watched her face as terror broke through. She dropped her gaze to her spell and knew I spoke the truth; her breaths shortened. I continued, “I tore myself apart for my people so you would be strong enough to save them. I tortured your mother to bend to my will, making sure she met your father. I killed the king when he sought to wed her instead. No villain works without a reason, but the reason does not absolve my crimes.”
“No,” she breathed. “How am I supposed to save…”
“Remember your painting. You have the ability to create worlds. With the right price, you can create a land for us, where we will not be threatened by the future.” I lifted my shaking hands, and her gaze darted to them. “May I?” I asked before touching her head.
Her thoughts battled for a long moment, but eventually, she nodded.
Closing my eyes, I pressed my thumbs against her forehead and called on the memory of my dreams. A small noise escaped her as we dropped through a sky filled with smog onto concrete paths beside paved tar. The iron monsters sped by. Countless screens fizzled with static. Great metal buildings stabbed into the sky. When it was almost too much for me to bear, I pulled away.
She gasped and covered her mouth. “That’s the future of this world?”
“Dale has already bent toward this path.”
Fury ignited in her gaze. “Because of you! What if all this time you started the future you feared?”
“It is possible.” I narrowed my eyes. “But I am not naïve, and humans do not sit still. The advancement of science would progress with or without my actions. The only way to salvation happened to be now.”
Tears filled her eyes, but she didn’t let them fall. “Through manipulation and torture?”
“Dale’s war is with us. Our war is with time. In a war, no one is spared some amount of unrest. Be thankful I harmed so few when your armies would gleefully slaughter us.” My final words came out in a hiss.
Mabilia’s shoulders sagged, and she closed her eyes. “I can’t forgive you.”
“I have never asked you to.” My chest tightened, but I knew I would take my sins to my grave. No one would save me from them. They were the price I began to pay for my people years ago.
She touched my hand, and my heart leaped. Her thumb ran over my skin as the spell around us faded away. The tears in her eyes fell like crystals, splashing against my fingers. “I can’t forgive you, but I finally understand you, at least some.” She rubbed her eyes. “I forgot to ask what happened to your hands.”
Hesitant, I reached forward, cupping her chin. “I suppose it’s too late now.” Besides Mythalzen had already told her most of it.
“You really won’t indulge me?”
Tears traced down her cheeks, and admittedly, it was hard not to. Sighing, I pulled my
hand from hers. “On the third day, to save the would-be princess, a foul monster spun iron into silver at the expense of his hands.” Standing, I clenched them and stared at her. “A hefty price to pay, considering how much paperwork I have to do.”
When she offered me a small smile, I bit my tongue and turned.
“I trust you can return to your room and sleep through the night without my chaperoning your way there?”
“What about this mess?”
I peered at the cracked ground. All around us, books lay scattered from their shelves in the aftermath of her failed spell. I had already cleaned this room once in the past day. “Leave it. We both need rest.” Glancing back at her, I captured the way her hair fell around her cheeks, the dark shade brightening her heavy eyes. “I will see you tomorrow. Goodnight.”
Without looking up, she murmured, “Goodnight, my faerie.”
As I returned to my room, the softness of those words repeating in my mind, I worried that perhaps I had said too much.
Chapter 7
Ink Into Matter
“Show me the singing caverns.”
I blinked at Mabilia, not so much because of what she’d said—or because she had barged into my study without knocking—but because she wore a simple, light blue dress that matched the hue of the sky on a crisp autumn morning. No iron armor.
My gaze shifted to Esme, who stood diligently at her side, grinning brilliantly. It took me a second to realize their hands were clasped.
“Do you remember?” Her head tilted. “I was telling Esme about your stories. She said they were true, and I’ve always wished the singing caverns were real.”
“I remember,” I replied, and blinked again at their joined hands. Esme’s expression turned sly, and she set her chin on Mabilia’s head.
Mabilia proceeded without care. “Take me to see them.”
“It’s hardly morning yet.” I had woken and set to my duties, as usual finding myself buried with work in my study. Mythalzen sat in his normal spot on the floor at my side, but now he peered over the edge of my desk, shock on his face as he ran his gaze over Mabilia’s attire.
I swatted him when that gaze clung a little too tightly to her curves, and he ducked, chuckling.
“After breakfast then?” she asked, smiling too warmly.
My lips parted and closed until finally I nodded. “If you’d like.”
“Great! We can pack a lunch and discuss the kind of world you’d like me to make for you all.” She turned back toward the door. “I’m going to see if I can find something to sketch ideas on.” With that, she left as quickly as she’d come.
Mythalzen’s amusement stopped short when the door clicked. “She knows?”
“There was an incident.” I slipped a hand over my mouth, then looked at Mythalzen. “Just as well. Things should still work out.”
His brows knitted, his golden eyes stern. “Is she so cheerful because…”
I shook my head. “I didn’t tell her that part.” I would tell her the price in the moment when she had to act. If I told her now, I knew she would search for a way around it, if only to avoid killing someone. In her efforts, she would play with even more dangerous spells than she had attempted last night. There was no way I could see around my demise, and I had searched years for another answer. Half a soul was required for the magic we would touch.
“So…she’s just happy to save us?” Mythalzen broke my thoughts, his hands folded in his lap as he pinned them with a pensive stare.
“I imagine for my Mabilia, after the initial shock, the idea of creating a real world is enthralling.” There was something too kind toward me in her gaze, though. She said she wouldn’t forgive me, but she had taken down her iron walls. Nothing could be as it was. We both knew that. Didn’t we?
Mythalzen’s hands broke apart, and he looked up at me. “I know the price has to be as large as giving up half of one’s own ancient soul, but couldn’t multiple other souls equal that? I would gladly—” He swallowed, stopping, and flicked his gaze away. “S-sorry…”
The quiet vehemence on my face was all the sign he needed to cease talking. Exhaling, I pushed the anger aside and set a hand on his head. “Thank you for the sentiment, Mythalzen, but this is my weight to bear.”
Stunned, he watched me for a long moment. A fae’s thanks was not something easily given. He bit his cheek and took a shaky breath. “It won’t be fair to her. Even if she despised you—which she doesn’t—no one will be able to replace you in her life. No one will be able to ease the loneliness losing half her soul will incite.”
This time he didn’t flinch when my eyes narrowed. “I could commend you on your efforts to manipulate me, but I believe I’ve already warned you about including her in your plots to do so. She is a human amalgamation. That humanity will provide her two mercies: first, she will not suffer the ages as I have; second, she is not bound to my half of her soul.”
His nose wrinkled, and he glared at the ground in front of him. “Well, I’m sooo glad you’ve thought of everything. What color should the flowers at your funeral be?”
I sighed and returned to my work, mumbling, “Blue, just like the dress she’s wearing.”
In pure defiance, he grumbled, “I think I’ll make them red instead.”
A SWARM OF BUTTERFLIES with crystalline wings erupted before us, filling the air with fractured rainbows. I waved a hand before my face to keep them from landing on me, but Mabilia stood, staring at them in awe.
Sunlight trickled through the branches above, shedding beams of light on the entrance of the singing caverns. It gaped and glittered, boasting of hidden treasures within.
The singing caverns were unlike the ones my people had carved homes into. They rested untouched by mortal and immortal alike, teeming with magic. We revered them as sacred. I had long ago told Mabilia of the legends surrounding the caves. In fae lore, they were where Winter’s Howl and Celestine met for the first time. Love came unbidden and forbidden. Shortly after, their people tasked them to kill one another.
The price they paid for refusing was still their lives. But the universe honored their love and loyalty, painting them side by side in the night sky forever. Each century, they shared blessings with their kin, forgiving their people for their sins and raining potency upon all magic when they aligned with the full moon.
“Are you thinking about the stories?” Mabilia whispered, breaking my thoughts.
I glanced at her. “Perhaps.”
“I thought I’d wanted to picture the fae as romantic instead of scary and made them up subconsciously.” She met my gaze and gripped the lunch basket she held before her. “Are they true?”
I pulled my attention from her shining eyes and peered into the dimness of the caverns. “Yes. Winter’s Howl, as we know him, was of my people—the winter fae. Celestine came from a court that we have long since forgotten. Ancient tales describe that court as the day to our night. While we are spun of nightmares, they were weaved with dreams. Many humans worshiped them as gods while we became the devils. As perfect opposites, animosity bloomed. I don’t know if they still exist, but if they do, I believe it is because of Howl and Celestine that we have not in many years met.”
Silence breathed for an instant, then the wind stole it away, rushing past the bare, ice-clad limbs and making them rattle. “I want to learn more. About the fae. About this world. I’ve been trapped in Dale my whole life.” She swallowed, rubbing the worn straw of the basket’s handle. “Is it too big a dream?”
“A war brews.”
Anger sparked in her gaze. “It doesn’t have to. It shouldn’t! Why should all our people pay for your sins?” She stilled, realizing what she’d said, and dragged her gaze away.
Something bitter stuck in my throat no matter how many times I tried to gulp it down. At last, I replied, “When you have created a world for all the fae and moved us there, both fae and humans will find peace.”
“In separation.” She approached the cavern and set a h
and against the cool, glittering stone. “Is that the only way you fae are able to keep from killing each other? When powerful forces keep you away from your enemies?”
“It does seem to have worked this long.” I stuffed my hands in my pockets and passed into the shadows of the caverns. The shallow scent of spices whirled about my senses, reminding me of the day not one week ago when everything changed. I was here beside Mabilia still, but I couldn’t let myself think our carefree, stolen moments together were back.
“The humans will forget you like you’ve forgotten your sister court.” Her tone hid nothing about how she felt.
“Not all of them. Some, the ones who can’t help but believe, will remember. There are always those few. Like you and your mother, they peer into places they can’t touch and create things out of shadows. We’ll still be there in those shadows even beyond the planes of their known world.”
“You make running away sound so beautiful.” She smiled, a forlorn little thing.
“It is beautiful.” I lifted a shaking hand to the damp cavern wall as we turned deeper in. The sheets of water skimming the stone turned to glass against my palm. The glass glistened in a kaleidoscope of color. “Instead of fighting a battle where compromise is impossible and death is inevitable, we are creating something new.”
“Compromise is never impossible.”
“We can only survive in a frozen wilderness. If I’m not mistaken, humans would die in days under such conditions. We cannot cohabit. And if we could peacefully segregate ourselves, which population would overcome the other? The mortals or the ageless?”
Her lips parted, then her brows furrowed. “I never hated when you were right before.”
My lips pulled into half a smirk. “A wonder why. Because you thought I was you perhaps?”
“Rub it in. I was an idiot.” She grinned. “I mean, of course I didn’t make you up. You’d have been much prettier if I had. Warmer, too. Like Mythalzen. You? You’re all hard angles. If I had wanted to create someone for comfort, I’d hope I’d have enough sense to not make them out of ice.”
Kingdom of Crowns and Glory Page 31