by Lucy Tempest
“Me?” I goggled at him.
“Yes, you! I’m having a hard time thinking now, so if you have any theories—I need to hear them.”
“Wh–why would I have any? I’ve never been up against anything like this.”
“You and I both know that’s a lie! You survived ghouls—and helped us survive them. And you knew how to defeat the earth giant. You can do far more than you give yourself credit for.”
But I’d had a lot of help surviving the ghouls. And the earth giant had been a lucky observation, helped with knowledge drilled into me from childhood.
“Just jump off, Robin, please,” I begged. “We’ll go back to the king, and tell him I withdraw my request. I’ll beg him to just give you the information you need.”
“We do this together, Fairuza—or not at all! Now think!”
He would really rather die trying to prevent me from facing my own fate. And he believed I could help. The least I could do was honor his belief.
My feverish thoughts suddenly slowed down, clarity taking over their processes.
Everything was made a certain way to help it survive where it was created. Ghouls had no eyes because they existed underground, and had sharp talons to dig their way to burial grounds. But they didn’t need to be sturdy, since the dead didn’t fight back. The earth giant drew its strength from the soil that had birthed it, but once it was cut off from it, it fell harder than anyone else. So that bull’s impenetrable hide had to be a defense mechanism developed to protect it from its natural predators. But if it had predators, then it could be killed. We just had to discover its weakness. To do so, we had to think if anything else shared its strengths.
I floated nearer to the raging stalemate and shouted, “Any other armored creatures you know of?”
“What?” The bull took advantage of Robin’s momentary distraction, bucked so hard, Robin’s whole body lashed up. He slammed back down, somehow still gripping the horns as he gasped, “You mean—like crabs?”
“Yes, crabs!” I cried excitedly. “How do you kill a crab?”
“I’m afraid—I’m out of giant crackers—right now!”
“Can we get it to crack itself against something?”
I regretted the question the moment it left my lips. That monster had demolished half the city without a crack on its hide.
Robin agreed as he yelled, “Unlikely!”
“Then how else do you get through a crab’s armor?”
“You’re the one who grew up eating that stuff regularly. You tell me!”
I opened my mouth to respond, and another idea burst into my mind. “Maybe it isn’t like a crab, but a clam.”
“What’s with the seafood tangent you’re on?” he grunted in pain as he flailed on the monster’s back.
“Just listen! A clam is softer on the inside than any other creature, because it relies on its shell for protection. But we don’t crush it to access the flesh, we open it with the tip of a sharp knife. At the right place.”
“You’re saying—this thing could have a very vulnerable interior?”
“I-I think so. Everything has a weakness. It stands to reason this is…”
“That’s all I needed to hear,” he cut me off as he heaved up to a stand on the bull’s back, before leaping into a backwards somersault.
He hit the ground in a crouch, gesturing me urgently towards Amabel, who’d been trying to join the struggle all along. Her bleeding had thankfully stopped, and she seemed raring to go.
I rushed to settle on her back, stretching my hand urgently to Robin.
He only shook his head. “I know how to kill it.”
“Did you find a chink in its armor?”
“No chinks, but it has cavities.” He readied another arrow in his bow. “I just need it to make it come at me again.”
“No! I thought you’d use my idea to do something while you were still on its back, as I feared it would only trample you if you jumped off. Now you did, we have to run away!”
The bull had finally noticed Robin was off its back, and it lost no time in charging back towards us.
Robin squared his stance, his bow drawn taut, arrow nocked and ready. “If anything goes wrong, you make sure you get that stubborn unicorn of yours to run away.”
He meant if he died while trying to kill this monster. “No, Robin—let’s run away—together. We’ll find another way, please!”
Without taking his gaze off the bull, he smirked. “This is the best way, right here. Just trust me.”
I did trust him. It was fate I had no faith in. And I couldn’t risk him, not to save my life. Especially not to save my life.
“Please…”
But it was too late. The bull was close enough for me to hear nothing but its hooves, see nothing but its mass about to trample Robin. Robin who was raining arrows on its snout, as ineffectively as ever.
They must have still hurt, because it opened its jaws, and an enraged bellow cracked through the square like a thunderclap.
The final arrows went right down its pink, fleshy gullet.
Both Robin and Amabel jumped out of the way as the bull crashed to the ground hard enough to shake it. It slid with its monstrous momentum to collide into the side of a building, cracking its side, and bringing chunks of marble and stone showering down the cobblestones.
Finally coming to a stop, it let out one last butchered bellow, then went deathly still.
Chapter Twenty-Three
In the deafening silence that ensued, fairy people tentatively emerged from their hiding places. But I could see nothing but Robin. The still-in-one-intact-piece Robin.
With the perpetual sun highlighting his messy, sandy hair, he stood up from examining the bull’s expiring body. Giving me a tired, triumphant smile, he approached me and Amabel.
Still reverberating with shock, I stared down at him. “You have a death wish, don’t you?”
He shrugged as he exhaled forcibly. “I knew I could do it, once you told me how. That was a clever conclusion you came to. I wouldn’t have thought to aim there, if you hadn’t compared it to a clam, of all things.”
His praise penetrated my fugue, made me beam down at him stupidly. “You would have thought of it eventually.”
“We didn’t have ‘eventually’—we had mere moments before it managed to crush us.”
My shock finally splintered into spluttering fury. “Crush you! You just stood there in its path!”
“I would have jumped aside if your theory proved wrong.”
“You wouldn’t have had time!”
“But I didn’t need time, since you were right. Now it won’t destroy anything ever again.”
“Aargh…!” I threw my hands up, knowing I’d get nowhere debating his suicidal tendencies with him.
He reached over, slipping his hand through mine over Amabel’s neck, making my heart shudder. “I’m fine, because you came after me. I still can’t believe you did.”
I couldn’t answer, my throat closed, and my heart too full.
He started striding, leading Amabel away. He wouldn’t get back on her, saying she could do without his weight with her injury.
We were halfway back to the palace when he suddenly said, “Where did you learn to ride like this? I know they don’t teach ladies how to ride for hunts and pursuit at court.”
Before now, I would have given him some evasive reply. But now he knew who I was, I wanted to share as many truths about myself with him as possible.
“When Amabel was given to me, in spite of my mother’s disapproval, she would only let me close to her, even if she was miserable staying in the stall. So I would sneak out to ride her, the way she wanted to. When I got older, I began to race her against other horses, namely my brother’s. We always won.” I stroked her neck, feeling that familiar pang of love, and of renewed worry for her. “I now believe it was she who taught me how to ride.”
He grinned up at me, and it was the best sight I’d ever seen. “So, you do break the rule
s sometimes! I thought you said physical work was for men, especially peasants.”
Embarrassment at my previous oblivious declarations crept up, making me mumble, “This is a sport.”
“Not one polite society would train their daughters in, let alone princesses.”
“I suppose the rules can be wrong sometimes.” I eyed his ears, appreciating their shape, something I’d never thought I’d feel.
But everything I now felt towards him was foreign, and confusing, and so intense, I felt it would burn through my very essence. I didn’t know what to make of it, just that I wanted him to keep looking at me like that. Like he was happy he was with me.
“Is that your way of saying you no longer think I’m a menace to the law, and that I had a point?”
“Oh, you’re no doubt a menace.” I avoided his teasing eyes, adding inwardly, to far more than the law. “But I feel if more people had your intentions, and your willingness to help, life would be much better for everyone.” A buzz crept up my face as his gaze drained of mirth only to warm with other emotions I couldn’t name. If it were possible, I would be flushing pink right now. “I don’t know how to thank you, for doing this for me.”
“Fairuza, I couldn’t have done this without you. I’m the one who should be thanking you for coming after me, otherwise I would have failed you. And if you were right about the king’s intentions, and I think you were, I would have failed everyone else, too.”
“Then let’s just agree to be thankful for each other.”
His vivid eyes shimmered with more indecipherable things as they captured mine. “We do make a perfect team. The strategist and the marksman.”
“I’m no strategist!” I spluttered.
“But you are. You would make a great one. The way you problem solve, it’s very uncommon. And you’ve made sure our jobs got done. Now Theseus can’t back out of our deals.”
My heart sang as he spoke of me with such pride. Next moment, it felt like a bird shot out of the sky as it plummeted. I’d forgotten all about the Summer King, and what had brought us here.
This unsavory truth brought more on its heels. I exhaled. “Even if you’re right, a princess would never make battle tactics.”
“Then perhaps you shouldn’t be a princess.”
Whatever good mood had lingered was extinguished under a wave of confusion. “What do you mean?”
He looked up, his gaze suddenly earnest. “You have a great mind, a passion for music, and the drive to participate in solving problems, even if it began with the need to solve your own. You have the potential to be so much more than some king’s wife, and I wish you could get the chance to be all you can be.”
I was again struck mute with the onslaught of emotions I’d never before experienced. For someone else. And for myself.
Before everything had gone wrong in Cahraman, the idea of abandoning everything to chase my true desires was unthinkable. Impossible. I was, like my mother always reminded me, the daughter of a king, the granddaughter of two kings, and would be the wife and mother of kings as well. That had always been my purpose.
But even if I contemplated another path now, another destiny, I couldn’t pursue it. I couldn’t be a singer or the head of organizations of any sort, nor could I participate in his adventures like Marian had. No matter what I felt towards him, or what he made me feel about myself, my life would end if I didn’t do what was expected of me—both by birth, and by the curse.
Unable to say any of that, I diverted the conversation towards him. “Speaking of what I can be, how did you know who I am?”
Awkwardness tensed his movements, though the good humor remained dominant in his tone. “I know your brother well, and saw him go through his curse. When we met in that castle, I thought you looked familiar, but I couldn’t pinpoint the similarity until Theseus mentioned Meira being sent to bless an infant, and she said she amended the curse of the Spring Queen. It all made sense after that—that you were Leander’s sister and were cursed by the same person.”
He knew Leander. Not just as the Crown Prince, but personally.
And all the unplaceable pieces, however I’d avoided trying to place them or rejected them as impossible, fit together perfectly now.
I brought Amabel to a halt, finally voicing the truth I’d always known somewhere deep in my heart.
“Reynard.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
All remaining ease vanished from every line of Robin’s body.
Teeth clenching, and eyes widening, he mirrored my cascade of reactions when I was gripped by the certainty of recognition.
Then he finally squeezed his eyes shut and groaned, “Zafira.”
After long, long moments of silence, I whispered, “Robin Hood. Reynard. Any other names you go by that I should be aware of?”
“None that matter,” he said quietly. “At least this explains another reason why I felt like I knew you.”
“I looked for you everywhere that night, and the weeks after. I had only those days left before the curse overtook me, and I still thought—”
I couldn’t say it, not to his face. How I’d been so certain he was the one.
“Let’s go,” I finally said tightly. “If your theory about a time limit to my sleeping curse is true, I can’t afford to waste any more.”
He seemed about to argue, but I faced forwards, letting him know I couldn’t talk anymore. With a dejected exhalation, he pulled his hood up and took over steering Amabel.
Silence reigned all the way back to the Summer Palace. Within its oppressiveness, my mind churned in bitterness and futility.
Fate had thrown him in my path once, making me believe he was the one. Then it had once more, so I would feel all those impossible feelings for him again, even when I didn’t know, wouldn’t let myself know, he was the same person. It was as if it was making certain I’d feel this way about him, no matter what. And that it would never matter.
It was irony at its cruelest. That the man who’d appeared out of nowhere to save me once, the one I’d spent my last days searching for, was the one who’d appeared as randomly again, to champion the breaking of my curse. And that he’d be the only one who wasn’t for me. With my luck, I should have realized it sooner. I should accept it.
But I didn’t. I was angry. At fate. At him. For sweeping me off my feet, in every way. For connecting with me, then vanishing, making me question my sanity, and risking my survival for him. For appearing again, only for his quest to be for another girl. For not being the one at all, but being the only one I wanted.
But it didn’t matter what I wanted. Fate was making certain I believed this once and for all. Regardless of what I felt, I needed someone else to survive. And that was what I was going to get now. A king. A terrible creature I could never want or even bear.
Somewhere during the storm of misery that had wrecked me over and over, we arrived at the palace. This time, the guards let us through the gates. Robin, or Reynard, or whoever he really was, led Amabel to the platform where our companions, the king, and his sister had remained where we’d left them.
I dismounted from Amabel who was taken away to be tended to. I distanced myself from Robin as Theseus descended from his throne to greet us with open arms.
“I’m impressed! All my guards never slowed that particular beast down. Then you come, a wanted bandit and a cursed spirit, and you actually brought it down.”
Neither Robin nor I said anything. I didn’t want to talk at all. I wanted to cease to exist.
“I was counting on you losing. But you didn’t. And you did do me a great favor. So by my own rules, I have no choice but to honor our bargain. I have already given your companions the information they seek.” Theseus came before me and held out his hand for mine. “What do you wish of me then, Princess?”
Despite being boneless, I felt so heavy. Lifting my eyes from my feet to his face alone took all the effort left in me. I slipped my hand over his, feeling nothing. This should have been the moment
I’d dreamed of for months. This was exactly what I had come here for. I should be happy. Relieved, at least.
I’d never known such misery.
But this melancholy would pass. Happiness was not a requirement for living.
I snuck one last look at Robin. He looked forlorn, but tried to give me an encouraging smile. The others, especially Agnë and Meira, seemed unable to wait for me to get this over with.
Steadying myself, I attempted to keep my voice from shaking. “I need you to declare yourself to me, say that you love me, and promise to marry me.”
With a little bow of his head, Theseus slid his golden gaze over me, and for the first time it seemed he liked what he saw.
Then he cleared his throat, and announced, “I, King Theseus of the Summer Court, love you, Princess Fairuza of Arbore. From here on out, I bind myself to you, and will make you my queen.”
My outline buzzed like my skin was awakening from an all-encompassing numbness. Next moment, I felt myself being sucked away from where I stood, the edges of existence blurring. In the span of a blink, the Summer Palace was gone.
It was working! My curse was breaking!
I was going to awaken in my body and be free, be alive and—
Everything went dark.
It could have been in the next blink or in another lifetime that faint light washed out the gloom.
I found myself standing in a twilit, washed-out field scattered with grey daffodil-like flowers that swayed in an airless breeze.
By me, a glowing purple river ran like curdled blood, and on either side of it, translucent forms floated about, moaning, weeping.
They were—were… Souls!
I was in the Underworld!
Chapter Twenty-Five
There were no words.
There had never been words to describe where I was. Or what I was feeling.
An overwhelming mixture of dread and despair, and a thousand other terrible emotions assailed me as I took in my surroundings. The place I’d been doing everything to avoid.