by D. D. Chance
“Not such a bad thing at all,” I agreed. “Arrange a traveling party to go, talk to Cyril about any traditions of the forest Fae that we’ve recorded in the archives that we have doubtless long ago forgotten in our pride. Leave as soon as you can.”
Niall rose to exit the room, then stopped at my signal. “And while you’re up, get whatever information you can on the mountain Fae, whatever traditions they had before they attempted their coup three hundred years ago, and whatever traditions still remain. There is such a thing as demanding too much from those you rule. It’s clear the ocean Fae, and the family of the High King in particular, have gone too far.”
Niall stiffened. “The mountain Fae will stand with the High King. They wouldn’t be such fools as to deny you aid when you asked for it.”
“I know,” I said. “It’s not the war I am looking at, though by rights I should be. It’s the reparations that must be made after safety has returned to the realm. All Fae deserve the respect of their king, as he deserves their respect in return.”
“Fair enough,” Niall agreed. “Though we have spent so long in battle, it is difficult to imagine a realm that is ours to protect and grow, not merely defend.”
He left, and the meeting of my warriors continued, the growing disquiet I felt no longer sourced by Belle but inside me. How had we allowed the realm to fall into such disarray? My father was an ass, but he was a strategist too, by the Light. How could he have allowed things to get so bad?
The answer came as easily as the question, but I frowned all the same. He had help, I decided, or rather, his enemies had help. Help to keep the High King distracted defending his borders, to allow his natural antipathy for the other clans of the kingdom to flourish. He’d left them to fend for themselves because their problems had never escalated to the point of attention.
Could that be true? Easy enough to find out.
I gestured to Marta, who had finished giving her report on the valley Fae. “Tell Cyril we have need for a history lesson tonight, one that stretches back to before the Hogan witches left our home. And I’ll need a small contingent of warriors to make a quick side trip with me before we go to the forest Fae.”
There were too many things that didn’t make sense. If we were to have a shot at banishing the Fomorians and reinvigorating the realm, perhaps even finding a way to serve the other realms, we needed to go back to the beginning.
The meeting finished, I went hunting for Belle. I suspected I would find her tucked away in one of the reading rooms near the top of the academy. In a building that boasted probably fifty rooms or more, how I knew this with such unerring precision allowed me some satisfaction. I was getting better at tracking Belle. That meant that not only had my spirit recognized her as my fated mate, but hers did as well, whether she fully understood that yet or not.
Sure enough, I found her in a room in a large turret, looking over the shallow strip of lawn not leading to the castle, but to the fringe of trees where her great-grandmother’s cottage sat nearly hidden. Belle wasn’t sighing over the view, however. Her nose was nearly buried in the book she read, one hand lifted as if she were following the instructions for a gesture as well as a spell. I hesitated at the door, not wanting to disrupt her concentration, but she sensed me anyway, her chin coming up, her soft eyes blinking away her distraction.
“Oh, good, I was thinking about trying to reach out to you,” she said. “Did you know that Celia can make gold out of nothing now? She imagined it into being. I keep trying to do it, but I can’t.”
She looked so put out, I had to laugh. “That’s needs magic,” I told her.
“Yes, but, who’s to say I don’t need gold? I mean, just because I’m comfortable doesn’t mean I couldn’t do with a little more gold in my life, and there were a lot of years where we could have done with a lot of gold.”
I shook my head. “That is the magic of wanting something, not of needing it, but knowing that this one thing, pure and right and true, should come to you more than any other person in that moment. Celia’s need is more recent and harsher than yours, so she can access that magic more easily. But that doesn’t mean that you cannot access it. It simply takes practice.”
“Show me,” she ordered, sitting back in disgust and folding her arms over her chest. “I don’t know how to practice something like this when I’ve never made it happen at all.”
I smiled, my heart swelling at the simple ease of our conversation. It seemed a miracle to me, every time I came into the room and she was there—wanting to see me, wanting to talk. How could any of the former kings let their witches go?
How would I, if Belle demanded it?
I cleared those thoughts from my mind and stepped forward to teach my witch some magic.
33
Belle
“If you insist,” Aiden said as he strolled deeper into my office, his tone far too amused for my liking.
I didn’t want to admit how much it irritated me that Celia could easily access a bit of magic that I couldn’t. She was laboring under a spell that made her believe she was a cat shifter, for heaven’s sake. I was a freaking Hogan witch. I was supposed to be the one in charge here, and I couldn’t pull a magic coin out of the air? My annoyance flared as Aiden’s smile deepened.
“This really bothers you, doesn’t it?” he asked. I narrowed my eyes at him. He lifted a hand, and the door behind him shut.
“There! Like that,” I protested, pointing at the door. “Perfect example. I don’t know how to shut doors anywhere but in my own tavern. I’m a witch. I should know how to shut doors.”
“I am a Fae, and this is my castle, even if it is your holding on my grounds. My control over the physical environment of my home is not witchcraft. It is something innate to being Fae. Your tavern was built with Fae wood, so you accept it’s possible, and so it is. Humans long ago left behind the idea of manipulating their physical environment as an innate gift. We didn’t.”
This blasé explanation only served to exasperate me more. “But why? It seems to me that moving our physical reality around would be kind of a neat gift. Why would we stamp it out?”
Aiden lifted a brow. “Because that is the act of a god—or goddess?”
He posed the question so calmly, it pierced all my bluster. I swayed back in my seat again, defeated.
“You’re right. That’s exactly the problem. Once upon a time in the misty history of yore, mortals probably could do all sorts of things, but that defied the edicts of the church, no matter what the prevailing church was at the time. Magic could be accessed by anyone with the right skills, and magic like that couldn’t be controlled. So it had to be stamped out. Even among witches, there’s high magic and low, and only the high priestesses can perform the greatest feats.”
I sighed, then peered at him as he approached, my heart giving a little kick and shimmy that had nothing to do with the misty histories of yore, and everything to do with Aiden’s easy smile, his genuine attitude of enjoyment at simply having arrived on my doorstep. I was unreasonably happy he was here too, and felt my cheeks heat as I tried to keep from grinning at him like a fool. “How’d you get to be so smart?”
“Years of practice.” Having reached my desk, Aiden pulled out a chair and sat. As he leaned forward, putting his elbows on the table, a coin appeared in his hand. He flipped it to me, and I caught it. It gleamed bright and full, and it was heavy.
“Gold,” I decided, weighing it in my hand. “An illusion?”
“No. This is an illusion.” He held up another coin, but it disappeared just as quickly, and I could hear a slight buzzing in my ears, like the sound of, well, laughing fairies.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Are you doing that on purpose? The giggling pixie sound?”
“I have the forest Fae on my mind,” he admitted, settling more easily into his chair. “They are known for their illusion magic, and they have drawn many a human into the woods with dancing lights, glints of gold. Worse, I suspect, depending on the Fae. No o
ne has ever accused us of moral righteousness.”
I grimaced. “Let me guess, you also haven’t policed the actions of the forest Fae in generations.”
“Millenia,” Aiden corrected me. “There was no point. What they do doesn’t harm the realm of the high Fae, it does not impinge on the monster realm. And humans, well, they can be aggravating.” Another coin appeared in his hand. “They also can be swayed by pretty things.”
“Oh, and the Fae can’t?” I challenged, enjoying our banter far too much. “It seems to me that all the trouble you get into can be traced back to the allure of a bright, shiny object.”
He laughed. “You’re not wrong. But perhaps because of the concept of needs magic, we do know the difference. At least when it comes to simple things.” With another wave of his hand, a small stack of gold appeared in front of me, and I picked it up, weighing it in my hands.
“Do you have any idea how many months my mother didn’t know where the money would come from to pay the bills? We were witches. We fixed people when they were sick or injured, we did a little fortune-telling on the side, and we hustled all the time, barely making ends meet when it was a particularly rough month. But we couldn’t make gold out of nothing. And what of Celia? I don’t know what she endured before her mother gave her my great-grandmother’s necklace and cast her into the monster realm, but I can bet you her life probably sucked. So, great, now she has the ability for such magic. I’m willing to bet she couldn’t access it when she needed it whenever she lived in the human realm, assuming she ever lived in the human realm. But she can access it here in the Fae realm—and I can’t. So I’m officially whining about that.”
“Of course you can,” Aiden countered. “Here especially, but anywhere in the monster realm—probably the human realm, though I wouldn’t advertise the fact. Too much Fae gold always draws attention to itself. That and the fact that your great-grandmother never returned to either the Fae or the monster realm explains why your family didn’t have more of it, though Reagan Hogan seemed to keep all her cards close to her chest.”
“I can’t imagine why she would have left us broke, though,” I protested. “Who does that?”
Aiden made a face. I suspected he wondered the same thing. “I tell you plain, Belle, you will never want for money again.”
“But how did we not have money in the first place?” I demanded, knowing I sounded even more like a whiny little kid, but not able to stop myself. “I mean, for fuck’s sake, there should have been enough to go around. My great-grandmother may have flaked on her king, fine, but the Hogan witches have never been rich. We’ve done okay, we’ve gotten by, but if we were the teachers of the High King of the Fae—hell, in some stories Jorgen told me, we were the freaking consorts of the king—don’t you think you guys would have taken better care of us? Were you that terrible people to let us suffer once our worth to you was through? I mean, it’s no wonder we weren’t champing at the bit to return to the job, right? It wasn’t worth it, and I gotta tell you, especially after my grandmother died, if there been any indication that my ma could have improved her luck and mine by teaching you people to get us some cash flow, she would have done it. But all we knew about the Fae was that it was a generations-long requirement of unpaid service. Not super appealing.”
Throughout this musing, Aiden’s face grew stormier. “That’s not possible.”
I frowned at him. “What do you mean? Of course it’s possible. It happened.”
“No. I took your complaints about your lack of benefits at face value when you first leveled them, assuming you exaggerated. But what you’re saying—cannot be true. The Fae pay their debts. We demand others to pay them, but when you can create gold out of nothing, why wouldn’t we keep our promises, especially a promise that keeps magic flowing into our realm?”
“I…” I shut my mouth again. Put that way, it made absolutely no sense. “I get what you’re saying, but that doesn’t change the truth.”
He rubbed his chin, then pointed a finger at me. “This is a three-hundred-year-old contract, and those were different times. Could you have given your lot to the coven?”
“Technically, yes, but…all of it?” I drifted off. Had the coven of the White Mountains really used us as poorly as that? “I’m telling you, we got nothing—nothing at all. Even before my great-grandmother left her post, we lived simply. There was no generational wealth in the Hogan clan.”
“There will be now,” Aiden said, his tone so certain that it made me smile.
It was a smile he didn’t miss, and he stabbed his heavy finger into the desk to make his point. “We haven’t remained in ignorance of human constructs all these long years. There are financial arrangements that can and have been made on many occasions between the Fae realm and those humans with whom we’ve done business. We don’t show up with buckets of gold in burlap sacks if that’s not the most needful means of sharing the wealth. Admittedly, though, it is often the best form for witches.”
I frowned at him. “Seriously? Why is gold the best for witches? And once again, why don’t I know this already?”
He frowned. “Fae Gold is the best for witches because it enhances your magic. In fact, I could see your coven not wanting direct gold payments to the Hogan witches for the reasons we have already outlined regarding their need for control. But in that regard, you should have at least gotten something. My family should have seen to it.”
As his anger grew, so did the pile of gold in front of me.
“You’re right. Those fucking witches stole from us.” I held my hand out to grab a piece of gold, and to my astonishment, a new coin filled my hand before I ever reached the pile. Heavier, but darker than its Fae counterparts. I peered down at it. “What’s this?”
Aiden pointed at it. “That is human gold. If you looked closely enough at the piece Celia generated, it was likely the same.”
“But wait! How did I manage that? I didn’t say any spell. I was mostly freaking furious.”
Aiden laughed. “And now you know the secret of needs magic, sweet Belle. Emotion. Desire. True belief of your need. You do have to have some skill innate to you, and you have to be in a realm where you believe that anything is possible. Sadly, that no longer is the human realm for you, at least not presently. You also have to access an emotion of desire that is dark but not weak. Fear, covetousness, worry, these are all desires and likely the ones most would turn to who wished gold to fill their hands, but they are not as strong as pride, anger, the certainty of entitlement, the indignation, not in the moment, but deep-seated and ongoing.”
I stared at him. “You’re kidding me. All it takes is getting pissed?”
“In a sustained and ongoing manner, combined with utter belief. Your outrage had been brewing for some time when you produced a single gold coin. Were you a true autocrat, you would have produced a pile. You see the difference?”
I closed my hand around the piece of gold. “But this is real? I could take this back to the human realm and no one would know the difference?”
A strange look came into Aiden’s eyes. “I don’t think you understand something,” he said quietly. He leaned forward again, his expression so intent that the very breath stopped in my throat and my heart seized up. His eyes glinted with purpose, and his beautiful mouth formed itself into a grim, determined line. “It’s time I explained myself better.”
This was the king of the Fae, and I knew I shouldn’t take anything he was about to say without a whole shakerful of salt. But when he looked at me the way he was right now…I could barely remember my own name.
The usual explanations rushed through my mind, but more dimly than ever before. Was this all due to some centuries’ old spell between a king and his witch, or was it truly something more?
I didn’t know. But it was getting to the point where I didn’t much care anymore.
“What do you mean?” I barely whispered.
34
Aiden
All my pleasure at Belle’s
newfound skill of manifesting gold evaporated as I realized the underlying need and fear in her eyes. She still didn’t get it, and I was beginning to wonder if she ever would. But I had to keep trying.
I held her gaze and struggled not to pull her into my arms for emphasis. Instead, I blew out a long, steadying breath. “The short answer is yes. These pieces of gold that you conjure up while you are here can be taken over to the human realm and sold. You may have to find a disreputable dealer or someone who deals on the fringes of the magical black market in order to avoid some complicated questions, but otherwise, whatever you create in this realm exists in the mortal realm. You are the Hogan witch of the Fae, and your skills are returning to you every hour you remain in this realm. But you act as if your need for endless wealth would not be met without you being able to conjure needs magic through your own anger.”
She stared at me, clearly still confused. Almost as if she had expected me to say something else.
A moment later, her expression cleared. “Well, until this exact moment, I haven’t had this skill,” she pointed out. “So yeah, I’m kind of excited about it, not gonna lie.”
“But you’re missing the point,” I insisted. Her confusion now served to irritate me more than anything. “Belle, you are my—witch,” I amended at the last second, substituting the word that would keep us on track for this conversation, even if it wasn’t the word I most wanted to use. “Not my father’s or my grandfather’s. You are never going to want for anything for the rest of your life. Your children and your children’s children will not want for anything in all their lifetimes. I swear this to you.”
“You can’t swear anything like that!” she shot right back, her sudden burst of anger startling me—especially since I knew without a doubt that it was covering a deeper emotion. “Aiden, I appreciate what you’re saying, and I believe you when you say it. But I am the end of the line of generations of women who have been lied to by the Fae. Lied to by members of your own family. I believe you when you say you can’t understand that or you don’t know how that could have happened. I believe you. But it did happen. Somewhere along the line, it became okay to not pay your debt to the Hogan witches. And in all truth, money may not have been part of the deal. My ancestors may have been so damned dumb, they agreed to teach the Fae for some price other than money—not even dumb, I didn’t mean it like that,” she said hurriedly, mistaking the anger in my expression. “But something. Maybe it was for love, maybe it was for health and long life, but no matter what the reason, the deal soured at some point. It had to have, or my great-grandmother would never have left. You know that as well as I do.”