Queen of Unicorns

by Jennifer Ellision

  “Thank you,” a deep male voice said with some amusement.

  I bolted upright and whirled to see Jay leaning over the stall door, eyes gleaming with laughter. “I knew I'd find you here,” he said. “I’m sure it comes as a complete and utter shock to you to hear that the palace is in a state of uproar looking for you. I hear tables are being overturned in case you’re hiding beneath them.”

  Guilt twinged at me, but I tamped it down with a self-righteous flare. If my mother hadn't kept me prisoner, there would have been no need for any uproar.

  “And did you tell them you were looking here?” I asked.

  Jay snorted. “And risk your wrath when I led them here before you were ready? Please, give me some credit. I’m not an idiot. I like to think that all these years of friendship have taught me better than that.” His eyes were soft and sympathetic as he looked at me. “Besides, I figured you wouldn’t have done it without good reason. I guessed that you needed a minute or two.”

  “Thank you,” I said gratefully.

  He waved a hand, brushing that aside. “It's nothing.” He grinned. “And I mean that literally. I did… absolutely nothing.”

  He stepped inside, and the stall suddenly felt warmer. The heat pressed in upon my cheeks. Jay wasn't as big a man as Luka had been… but he wasn't a small man, either. I gazed up at him, but his eyes weren't on me anymore. They were on the baby in my arms.

  “Gods, Eliana,” he breathed. “Is this her?” He couldn't take his eyes off Fae. And who could blame him? Luka and I had made one cute baby.

  “No,” I said flatly, but with an undercurrent of mirth lacing my voice. “I left my newborn daughter in the palace, and swung by the palace nursery to give some other baby her first glimpse of a unicorn instead.”

  The dry look he leveled my way let me know that he didn't much appreciate my cutting sense of humor.

  He gestured in the open space between us. “Can I...” he trailed off, awkwardly forming his arms into the shape of a cradle.

  “Of course.” I shifted Fae into his arms and adjusted the position of his hands so that he cradled her correctly. “Support her neck,” I instructed and stepped back.

  Jay and Fae stared at each other with wide eyes, and it was as though I no longer existed, so spellbound were they by each other.

  Jay was utterly entranced by my baby daughter in his arms. I expected him to tell me how sweet she was, how much she looked like me, that she was the spitting image of her mother. That wasn't what he said.

  “She looks nothing like you,” he said. I blinked. That… hadn't been what I had been expecting.

  “I mean…don't get me wrong,” he said hastily. “She's beautiful. And you’re beautiful, but they’re different kinds of beauty. She has something that's all hers.”

  Then, as if I wasn't even in the room anymore, he stared down at her and began to sing. He had a lovely singing voice, and I floated away on the sound of his melody as he wove a blanket from a tune, singing of the stars and the gods who watched over us.

  Fae blinked sleepily up at Jay as he continued singing his song to her.

  And I melted. There was no other way to put it. The sight of the two of them together, my daughter safe in Jay's arms. It did something to me inside. Twisted the reality of what I thought I knew. Maybe I was wrong to keep Jay at arm’s length. Maybe it would be good for Fae to have a father figure in her life.

  I winced, wishing I could take the thought back the instant it inserted itself into my consciousness. I wanted to banish it because it felt like a betrayal of Luka.

  What was more, it was unfair to Jay. I knew what he wanted from me. Pure as his intentions were, if I let him be a father to Fae, in any way, there would always be a part of him that wanted more.

  Jay looked up at me and smiled. “I think she's asleep,” he said in a whisper.

  I moved to take Fae from him but hesitated. His eyes met mine, and my breath caught in my throat.

  "It's a nice night," he said, lifting his chin up toward the glass ceiling where a blanket of stars glittered down at us from the blue-black sky above. “There's no need for the two of you to rush off. Why don't you stick around for a little stargazing?”

  His gaze was expectant. Hopeful. And that scared me more even than the possibility of being locked in my room for the rest of my days. I swallowed hard and held out my arms.

  “I’d better get back to my rooms. Mother may not have any hair left from stress at this point.”

  “Right,” Jay said. He shifted Fae into my arms, unable to hide the dejected look in his eyes.

  My heart twisted. I’m sorry, I thought desperately. I wished that I could make it better for him. But I didn’t know how to do that in a way that stayed true to what I was feeling. I wasn’t ready to think of being with another man besides Luka.

  But as I looked at his face, I knew I didn’t want to leave. I should leave, but there was something holding me back. Maybe I could stay a little longer… as a friend.

  It was a thought that would never see fruition, as the cry of “Princess!” rang into the staviary like a bell clanging through the air.

  I closed my eyes. Well, I’d known it would have to end sometime. They’d found me.

  The guards were hardly rough with me, but it was humiliating to be escorted back to the palace like a criminal—or worse! Like a child caught doing something wrong, like sneaking a hand into the cookie jar before I’d had dinner. At least they let me walk into my chambers alone. My only companions were my daughter and the white-hot rage in my heart. I was able to hold my head high, my posture stiff with the anger that was my sidekick far too often these days. I found my mother inside, pacing a tread into the carpet and wringing her hands over a kerchief. A sob escaped her throat when she saw me, and she rushed toward me to enfold me into her arms. My body stiffened as I held Fae like a barrier between us.

  “Eliana,” she said into my shoulder. “They found you. Thank the gods. I—”

  I broke away and headed toward the bassinet to put Fae down.

  There was uncertainty in my mother's voice when she spoke again, a trembling, “Eliana?”

  I speared her with a look. “Not now,” I said. My whisper was quiet but steely. She and I would have it out—but not in the same room as my sleeping daughter. My mother wrung her hands together as I placed Fae into her bassinet and quietly walked to the sitting room where my mother had retreated, shutting the bedroom door behind me.

  The words burst out of my mother like a dam had broken. “Thank the gods you're all right,” she babbled, dabbing at her eyes as tears streamed from them. “Why did you leave? Where did you go? Please, please don't ever do that to me again. I don't know if I could take it.”

  “Don't ever do that to you again?!” I couldn't believe she'd just said those words to me. She had some nerve. “I should be asking you not to do what you just did to me again. It's like I'm reliving my childhood all over again, and I thought those days were behind me. In the past, where they belong. Where they should have stayed,” I added pointedly, glaring at her.

  “I understand how you might feel that way, but I—”

  I ignored her, cutting her off, my voice rising. “As for where I went, I didn't even leave the palace grounds. You're being strangely overprotective, and while I don't understand it, I didn't flout your commands by hopping on to a unicorn and flying off to the next kingdom over. Which we both know I could have easily done.”

  She looked at me helplessly. “I'm just trying to keep you close,” she said quietly. “To keep you safe. You don't understand. You're not a—” Her teeth clamped down onto her tongue, and her eyes darted to the bedroom door.

  Not a mother, she'd been about to say.

  It had been her excuse constantly as I'd grown up: You couldn't understand. You're not a mother.

  But now, I was a mother. And I did understand. Love for Fae had grabbed me in its hold the second I held her in my arms and her eyes looked up at me. I knew I'd do anything
to protect her.

  But not at the cost of her living her life.

  “Not what?” I asked. “Not a mother? But I am now.”

  “It's not the same,” she said.

  “You're right. It's not. I'll keep Fae safe, but I won't pull her in so close that she's desperate to get away from me. The way that I am with you.”

  My mother reared back as if I'd slapped her, but I wasn’t sorry for it.

  “My daughter is going to live her life,” I said quietly. “And so am I.”

  I jerked my chin toward the door. “You should go. Rest easy tonight. I won't be going anywhere. But you should know that this isn't over. I'm tired of guards dogging my every footstep. I won't let you keep me here forever.”

  Shockingly, she didn't argue, only shot me a wounded look. The barest tinge of guilt wavered in my heart, but I stood firm and pointed toward the door. “I think you should go.”

  When she didn't move, I did instead, going into the bedroom with Fae and firmly shutting the door behind me.

  She didn't follow.

  27th April

  I squinted into the light of day as sunlight pried its way through a crack in the curtains. It was quite an unwelcome guest. I wasn't ready to get up yet, not by a long shot. I'd slept last night, though fitfully, between late-night feedings and diaper changes. I struggled to remember the dreams that had woken me constantly, but the thoughts slipped through my fingers like smoke. I only managed to grasp the impression that Luka had been with me last night. The memory of his face fluttered like a cloud passing over the sun. Ephemeral. Fleeting.

  Our daughter gurgled in her crib, but I knew that it would turn to a full-fledged wail of hunger soon. Blearily, I pried myself out of bed and over to Fae's bassinet, lifting her into my arms and cradling her against my chest. A piece of hay that had fallen from my clothes the day before caught my eye on the otherwise clean rug. It must have come from the staviary, somehow trapped on my clothes since I saw Jay yesterday, only falling off when I changed into my nightwear the night before.

  With that thought, the events of yesterday came flooding back. My fingers trailed the edge of my sleeve.

  Confused feelings tumbled through me when I thought of Jay. A warmth and a quickening of my heart that wasn’t entirely unpleasant. I’d always fought any hints of attraction to Jay. Attraction was not the same as love—as a romantic and chemical connection. And if that was changing… well, was that right? It still felt like a betrayal to feel anything for another man, even one I'd known as long as I’d known Jay. Luka was barely cold in the ground; he hadn't even been dead a year.

  And then… there was the not so small matter of my mother.

  Not so small… I scoffed at myself. That was the understatement of the century. Mother was damn near insurmountable. This wasn’t just the quarrel of an adult daughter with her mother. There were layers to my struggle. The familial relationship was one, to be sure, but it was not the only one. There were our political positions, too. She was the queen, and I was but a princess. She held all the power, and so she held all the cards.

  I heaved an aggrieved sigh. She had a way of getting under my skin like no one else, a way of making me act like a prepubescent teenager rebelling against her parents. I was hardly going to pierce my nose and stay out all night drinking and imbibing illegal substances, but she reacted as if I was. As though I was stepping out onto an active racetrack with my eyes closed. I was not so reckless as she made me out to be.

  But despite all of her frustrating actions, I did love my mother. And I regretted telling her that I was desperate to get away from her, especially blurting it out in a heated moment the way I had. Saying that I wanted to flee from her wasn't quite the truth either. What I was desperate to escape were her ever-watchful eye and her stifling protection, but that didn't mean that I didn't want to spend time with her or never see her again. Maybe it would be easier if that was the case. Then I could have snuck away in the night to kingdoms and lands unknown, and I would be troubled no longer. I’d have my freedom.

  But I loved her. I loved both my parents dearly. And Vale. And that was part of what made all of this so hard. My mother almost loved me too much.

  Fae started grunting, and I absently undid my blouse so that she could feed. I brought her to my breast, and she made cute little noises as she suckled. I stared at the ceiling in thought, my eyes tracing the spirals and whorls of the elaborate golden chandelier over my bed.

  We couldn't go on like this. The constant irritation and anger that clutched at my heart was no way to live. I didn't want my daughter to grow up in a cage, but living under a cloud of negativity wasn't what I wanted for her either.

  I couldn't see a way out of this situation without hurting someone that I loved.

  My bedroom door creaked open, and my mother's head cautiously protruded in. "Knock, knock," she said quietly when she saw us sitting up and awake. “May I come in?”

  At the sight of her, a lump rose in my throat. I didn't trust my voice, so I motioned her inside.

  She hadn't slept well either, that much was evident. The dark circles under her eyes tattled on her and revealed all. Her hair wasn't up to its usual standards either. Usually, her golden hair was smoothed back, curled, and held in place by an assortment of hairpins. Today, while she'd taken the time to comb it, it was loose, falling to her navel, and frizzy; she hadn't had her handmaidens apply the typical amount of product required to tame it. And her skin looked duller, somehow. Like she hadn’t bothered with her ordinary skincare regimen. I’d never known her to neglect her self-care. My mother wasn’t vain, but she did believe that appearances mattered.

  As a child, she had brushed my hair and told me sternly that while we “mustn’t truss ourselves up like dolls, we must take pride in ourselves as well, for the people need to have pride in their monarchs. And how can we expect them to if we do not lead by example?”

  So to see her like this now, I knew that our fight had affected her just as badly as it had affected me.

  In her hands was a small box, wrapped with care. Pink and silver paper was folded around it, and purple ribbon crisscrossed over its surface, winding itself into a bow that decorated its top.

  “I have a gift for Fae,” she said. Her voice was soft and hesitant. Like a foot testing the ground beneath it, unsure whether or not the surface was stable.

  Fae’s feeding had stopped, so I turned, covering myself for the sake of modesty, and repositioned her while I buttoned my top and turned back to my mother.

  “A gift? What for?”

  “Does a grandmother really need an excuse to spoil her grandchild?” Her attempt at levity trembled. “Especially a brand new one like our little Fae here.”

  “No… I suppose she doesn’t.” This was weird, but I guessed it was her attempt at a peace offering. An olive branch. I was willing to meet her halfway. But that didn’t mean I was going to act like all of this was super-de-duper normal when it was anything but. Shooting her a questioning look, I used one hand to tug on the end of the bow until it came loose. I set the ribbon aside, tore the paper open, and pulled the box's top off.

  Inside the box was a worn, stuffed doll. Patches lined with sloppy stitches adorned its cheeks where the thread had gone bare. It had probably once had a head full of yarn hair, I thought, but now it was half-bald. And the hair that it did have left was dingy. I thought it had once been yellow. But it was gray with dirt now.

  In short, it was the ugliest toy I'd ever seen. I bit my lip, about to ask why Mother had given this… possibly disease-carrying toy… to Fae. But I stopped short when I saw her expression. She was staring at the doll with the softest look on her face. My mother looked at it with such love in her eyes. Reverently, she lifted it out of the box and held it gently in her hands.

  “This was mine when I a girl,” she said softly. “Her name was Eliana.”

  I started, and she laughed. “Yes, in a way, you’re named after this doll. I thought it was such an elegant na
me. No one I knew had a name like that.”

  She stared at the doll, eyes distant now, like she was seeing something past it. It was as though she was seeing the life she'd had before.

  I didn't know much about my mother's life before she was the queen. Often, she refused to speak of it. I had gathered it hadn't been a happy upbringing. But somehow she'd met my father and they'd fallen in love. She'd put the past behind her.

  Or so I thought.

  “You never met my father, did you?” she asked, stroking her hand down the doll’s threadbare hair.

  I blinked. It wasn’t a question I’d been expecting. She’d never talked about her father, my grandfather. And I’d be damned if it hadn’t piqued my interest. Wordlessly, I shook my head.

  “He was a hard man. A miller.” Her mouth twisted, and she spat out her next words. “And a lazy, good-for-nothing drunk most days. It wasn’t so terrible for me while my mother was alive. She ran interference, came between the two of us during his fits of anger. Completed his jobs for him when he spent his time drinking instead of at the mill. When the coin was scarce, it was my mother who halved her meals so that we could both eat that night.” The first unblemished smile she’d worn that day spread over her face as she remembered her mother. “And she loved to spin. She’s the one who taught me how to do the same. I took great joy and pride in that for a time.” She nodded at doll-Eliana. “She’s the one who gave me that doll.”

  The smile vanished from her face, and she looked… drained… and so, so much older, somehow.

  “She died when I was fourteen. And then it was just me… and dear old dad. And when he was too drunk to do his work, the miller’s daughter went to work in the miller’s stead.”

  Her focus drifted as she remembered her history.

  “And that’s how I came to be known around the people of the city. As the miller’s daughter. Never as an actual person. Never with a name of my own. The miller’s daughter, not Renee.”

  Known to many, but never with a name of her own… A moniker of my own echoed in my mind: The Unicorn Princess. “I can relate to that,” I said softly.