by Lucy Tempest
It was a sitting room, circular with soaring balcony doors that overlooked another part of the city, showing the green river and the shops along its docks. It was decked in cream-and-gold furniture, with pale wood, towering bookcases lining one wall by an ivory piano. It had life-size crystal figures that shimmered like my multi-faceted shoes in the warm light of the tiered chandelier, reflecting mesmerizing rainbow hues.
“Your Majesty!” called Simeon’s muffled voice across the door. “Your guests are displeased at your sudden departure—again. What should I tell them?”
“Tell them to entertain themselves until I return,” Yulian called out, and Simeon seemed to take that as a royal decree, retreating from the door at once.
“You’ll probably need to go dance with other girls at some point,” I said as he turned to me, biting trembling lips, hating the idea.
And it had nothing to do with my mission. The selfish truth had nothing to do with it. I wanted to keep others’ hands off him, wanted to keep him away from the prying eyes of envious girls and expectant nobles. I needed to remain huddled in our personal discussions, where he was beginning to be himself, warming to me with every smile I inspired. And where the agitated heat that burned within me was snuffed by his cool, calming presence.
He shook his head. “I don’t think I need to anymore.”
Though I was thankful he thought so, I couldn’t understand why. “Isn’t that what you’re holding this ball for?”
“It is, but when we planned this event, I thought I’d have to pass through one dizzying dance after another with every eligible young woman until I found one who came close.” He faced me, a soft smile playing on lips that warmed from bluish white to a purpling pink. “But it looks like the Fates decided to be kind to me, as my search ended with my first dance.”
My throat suddenly felt very tight, a chokehold of panic and disbelief strangling my question. “You mean me?”
“No, I mean her.” He gestured to the crystal sculpture of a dancing girl beside us, a glint of devilry sparking blue in his eyes. “Yes, you. Who else?”
Disbelief won out over the panic, almost rendering his words foreign to my ears, that of a language I knew in individual words but unintelligible in a sentence.
Then I finally blurted out, “But you’ve only known me for a night!”
“A night could be a long time here in Winter. It could be a week or a month in other courts, maybe even years in the human lands.”
I’d heard about that before. Tales of people venturing into Faerie always warned of the passage of time, how two weeks across Man’s Reach was two decades or even two centuries on our turf. For all I knew, he felt time differently, and our brief time of dancing, discussion and divulging last night, could have been long enough for him to like me.
For me, a couple of hours with him, plus a dive into deathly waters, had been all it took for me to like him. Enough to feel my heart constrict, my stomach knot, and my gooseflesh rise at the sound of his voice, at the very thought of him. All sensations that had always been negative, distressing…until him.
It had taken a decade for Aneira to realize I had feelings, for Bonnie and her father to bother helping me, and for Etheline to offer me a way out—if I proved useful. But within a night, he’d decided I won out over dozens of true ladies and glamorous fairies, all with grace, class, and families that boasted their worth.
I still shook my head dazedly. “But surely if you talked to others you’d find me lacking in comparison.”
“I have talked to others. I’ve done nothing but socialize with the cream of the crop since I was born, and no one has ever had the effect on me that you did with the first words you ever spoke to me.” The frost-bitten blueness faded from his skin and trickled into his eyes, like the frozen surface of a lake melting as spring began. “Just being around you has done what I had thought impossible.”
“Stirred up painful memories?” I choked.
“Made me feel.”
That statement alone made me feel too many things at once. The opposite of sadness, pain, and dread, the only things I was intimate with. Seeing the way he looked down at me, with honest, intense eyes, made my heart feel like it wasn’t shackled but soaring, beating with ease rather than bruising itself against my ribs
Lighthearted. That was something I’d never felt. Until now, until him.
And until him, I’d never been worth anything, not beyond my usefulness. He made me feel worth everything, just for being.
But this wasn’t what I had been conscripted for. This wasn’t even something I’d considered possible, let alone dreamed of. I was only meant to keep him out of harm’s way.
But what if I could remove another aspect of the harm? His curse?
Suddenly, knowing about it became the most important thing in existence.
“Are you going to tell me about your curse?” I said, heart tripping over its own beats again.
Another urgent knock came at the door. Before Yulian said anything, it was flung open and Simeon and a few dozen potential brides and their families were piling into the sitting room.
“I’m sorry, Your Majesty!” Simeon exclaimed in distress. “I couldn’t hold them back.”
Before the avalanche of clucking seekers could catch up with us, Yulian’s fingers entwined with mine and he dragged me away. “Come with me.”
I ran after him as we exited the room from another door, close to a spiral stairway. After he locked it from the outside, ensuring no one would follow us, he scaled the stairs in threes. I kept up with him, staring at the grace and power of his body all the way, hammering heartbeats as light as the fluttering of butterfly wings, and not from exertion.
As he reached the top of the flight and turned into the next one, he looked back at me, and we giggled simultaneously, like children running to hide from their schoolmistress.
On the next flight, I giddily pointed at the curving wall covered in paintings and silver-framed mirrors. “What is it with all the mirrors in this castle?”
“The people of Winter always favored reflective surfaces,” he panted as he looked over his shoulder, and I could swear his icy white hair was taking on a golden tinge. “It’s why if you don’t keep all your silver perfectly polished, you could get fined. All those pure and pristine mediums and materials, like ice and crystal and diamonds are integral to our identity, I suppose.”
“Is this castle made of ice or glass?” I panted.
“You know, I could never get a straight answer on that,” he laughed airily. “My grandfather claimed it was wholly made of glass. When my aunt ruled, she insisted it was ice. During my father’s regency it was said to be made of diamond.”
“Any idea why they could never agree?”
“I believe each thought their version was more impressive, and had arguments and tales to support their claims.”
“And no one tried to settle the debate?”
“If anyone dared contradict the ruling monarch, I never heard of it.”
“What about you?”
“I think magic is of course involved in the structure of this castle, but it might be made of a combination of all three materials.”
“Don’t you want to find out for sure with an experiment?”
“I’m all ears.”
I held back a quip about his pointy ears, considering I now had my own pair. “If there’s any part of the castle wall you can break off safely, I can help you with a chisel and hammer—if a sample can be scraped off through the magic holding it together. We’ll get either crushed ice or shards of crystal. If we need a pickaxe to break off any part, then it’s diamond.”
His eyes crinkled as he looked at me over his shoulder, decidedly bluer. “Aren’t you a problem-solver. You’ve clearly had experience with breaking ice and glass before.”
I nodded, my curls bouncing with each nod and bound. “I’ve had to break endless icicles off the roof, and clean up endless smashed glass.”
“Inane chore
s conjured up to keep you busy and away from socializing?” he guessed.
“Exactly. But I doubt your soft hands have had to pick up broken glass unprotected. So what chores did your aunt invent for you?”
“Even though you haven’t touched my hands yet, and they’re too cold and hard now, I recognize that as a dig at my upbringing,” he teased, tone permeated with the most humor I’d heard so far. “But, while overseeing my training, she demanded I learn to effortlessly wield our power over weather and water. I had to spin perfect ice sculptures, usually imitations, on the first try. If I made the slightest deviation, she would chuck them at me, each time harder, until she began seriously injuring me. She once threw what she considered an ‘imperfect’ ghost apple at my face so hard it shattered my cheekbone.” His right cheek twitched before he faced forward. “Guess that supports her argument of the castle being made of ice. If solid enough, it can withstand anything—not to mention cause serious damage.”
I stiffened, my injured rib aching in empathy, reliving Dolora’s foot plowing into my side, and all the times she’d hit me with the very things I was serving her with.
Choking up, I gasped, “What’s a ghost apple?”
“I’ll show you once we …” he trailed off as he came to a stop before a certain portrait.
It was of a middle-aged fairy man, something I didn’t think possible given their apparent immortality. I’d thought fairies can die, but never of old age. Though if this fairy showed signs of aging, it could mean he was centuries old or more, with time finally sinking its hooks into his pearlescent skin and lining his flesh.
He had eyes as green as the river below, and shoulder-length hair the color of straw. Everything else, from the shape of his eyes to the point of his nose, was Yulian’s.
“That’s my grandfather, King Feodor,” Yulian said, voice weighed down with some emotion I couldn’t fathom. “He was the last to hold a Midwinter Ball to find a bride.”
Bride. That was what he thought I was here to be.
Did I want that to be the reason I was here? Could I even consider it, when my plan was to be free?
But could my plan remain unchanged, now I’d met him?
We both fell silent as we started climbing again. He seemed to sink into his own thoughts, while mine tangled in a maelstrom of confusions, dreads, and yearnings.
Suddenly, as we approached the top floor of the towering castle, an intense sensation breezed over my skin, raising all the hairs on my body.
But it wasn’t the good kind that Yulian’s presence or the chill emanating off him elicited. It was a heavy, suffocating sensation. Like a furnace blasting from afar, its oppressive heat traversing the distance and sinking into my flesh. Like the weight of malicious intention boring into my back.
This time, I felt certain. I was being watched.
Chapter Eighteen
The disturbing feeling persisted, even grew, with every step up the stairs.
But wherever I looked, the mirrors innocently reflected whatever they were angled towards. No improbable handprints, no blue-flaming eyes watching with the unblinking stare of a predator.
I debated whether I should ask Yulian about it or not. Instead, as we circled the top floor towards an arched, soaring hallway, I asked, “Who did your grandfather pick at his ball?”
He opened the first door on the left and bowed me in before he said, “He was encouraged to pick a princess from another court—Princess Iolanthe of Summer, I believe. But he caused an upset when he chose the mayor’s daughter, Yelizaveta. She was his sister Vera’s lady-in-waiting, worthy of any nobleman, but not a prince. My great-aunt was pleased, everyone else, not so much.”
“What happened?” I asked, already invested, walking in backwards so I could continue looking at him.
He followed me in, leaving the door cracked open, likely to keep an ear out for the goings-on that echoed up from below. “As you can imagine, plenty of courtiers refused to call the daughter of an upstart, elected official ‘princess,’ until the threat of being barred from the royal wedding had them biting their tongues. But the backlash settled into a simmering defiance that continued through my father’s and aunt’s time, which might be why they were the way they were.”
“Who was your mother?” My retreat into the room halted with something hard hitting the back of my knees, making me fall back onto something soft.
A bed! He’d brought me to his personal quarters!
Struggling up to my elbows, I realized he had only to guarantee that no one else would barge in on our conversation, and maybe to show me something. Those rationalizations didn’t stop my heart from sputtering as if it was about to give out.
Unaware of my flustered condition, he continued dully, “She was Lord Simeon’s cousin, Svetlana. Their grandfather was a bona fide lord, a governor of a city here in Winter, a clever choice on my father’s part. It was also the start of what turned me into this.” He gestured to his blue veins.
But they weren’t nearly as bad as they were when I first saw him. And in the light coming from discreet sconces blazing with magical fire, the edges of his stark-white hair were turning into the pale blond of his grandfather’s portrait.
The change in his condition was so arresting, taking my eyes off him was as hard as pulling a tongue off an icicle. I’d know. Dolora had once forced me to lick one.
He walked around the space before the bed, where a furry carpet lay between gilded furniture and before a white marble fireplace that was thankfully dormant. Above it was a painting of a giant elk, a slightly larger version of Oscar, bowing its head to bump noses with a white wolf.
As he flexed his hands, I noticed their earlier stiffness seemed to be melting, and that he seemed agitated.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” I whispered.
He shook his head, sticking his hands in the pockets of his shimmering light-blue coat. “It seems ridiculous to feel reluctant to talk about my condition, considering what we’ve already told each other.”
It was my turn to shake my head. “Discussing our crazy family members and our ordeals at their hands definitely occupies a lower shelf than whatever this is.”
He snorted, not humorous this time. “Tell me about the gold king first.”
I smoothed the soft, thick bedspread beneath me, velvet the color of brandy, as my hazy memories of that tale slowly returned.
I sighed with the surge of nostalgia. “In a land far south of here, where gods roamed among their people, one was born to a human princess. After ascending to godhood following a harrowing death, which destroyed his mortal half, his divine form took root in all he stood for in life.”
He came to stand before me, looking intrigued. “Which was?”
“I’m barely recollecting the fragmented version I heard as a child, so hush.” I waved playfully, and his lips spread wider, his eyes growing bluer. “All my mother’s people gathered was that he was the most in touch with mortals because he used to be one, so he delivered justice and rewards based on their confessions when they got very drunk and very truthful.” I paused to grasp at memories of how exactly my mother had told it. “On his wanderings, he visited a king whose name was probably Gordius, or he was a king of a land called Gordia. You decide.”
He wiggled one eyebrow. “How fun. A fractured, lazily written story.”
“All our stories are like this.”
“I’d have figured that dryads, being trees, would have long memories, fit to remember precise details, such as exact names and places.”
That made my retort stick to the sides of my throat, making me choke on air. I kept forgetting that, of all things, I hadn’t been honest about who I was. And that till last night, I hadn’t known I was the very thing I’d been masquerading as.
But I would, just as soon as we found whoever was out for his blood.
And I had no idea how he’d react when he discovered my initial intention and deception.
I shrugged uneasily.
“It’s a human story, not a dryad one, so if anything, blame their short memory.”
He pulled up a chair and sat before me. “Can I fill in the gaps as you go along?”
My lips wobbled on a smile I couldn’t hold back. “I’m predicting a lot of interruptions.”
“Would you call the filling of a dumpling an interruption of the dough?”
At that, I laughed—and my stomach growled. “I can’t remember when I last ate, now that you mention it.”
Yulian’s brows, now darker than before, rose. “Why didn’t you say so?”
He hopped out of his seat, crawled past me on the bed, eliciting an intensifying shiver as he picked up a hand mirror off his bedside table, and handed it to me. “You can order whatever you want from the kitchens. Look into the mirror and ask for Chef Ignaty.”
Taking the mirror, I held it at arm’s length, confusion mingling with apprehension. “These mirrors come from here?”
“What do you mean?”
“Um, a friend of mine and her…betrothed had a pair given to them by a—lady from the Spring Court, and they used them to see whatever they wished to see.”
He snapped his fingers disappointedly. “That’s what I brought you here to see—and you’ve already seen it. I’ll need to figure out another interesting part of the castle quickly.”
“You brought me here for a magical hand mirror?”
“No, I have a full-length version.” He pointed towards the fireplace. I only then registered it occupied a centered wall, with open spaces flanking it leading to another part of the suite. “Those mirrors don’t just show you things, though, they can be used to communicate.”
“Is that so?”
Could whatever or whomever I’d been seeing be trying to talk to me?
I peered at my face in the oval mirror in my hand, taking in my greenish skin, my pointed ears, longer than Yulian’s, and the stunning fact punched through my mind once again that I was, in fact, a tree sprite—a nymph.
I gulped down the fresh surge of agitation. “What food is there?”