by A. K. Koonce
Eight
The Cursed Kingdom
Syren
Worn wooden piers jut off the white mainland like jagged puzzle pieces. At least fifteen docks are within eyesight, though the boat we’re arriving on appears to be the only one at sea.
The absence of people makes this place feel somehow wrong. I imagine it was once busy, but now the ghosts of the people who used to work here only makes it eerie. Small pockets of milky gray fog are not helping it feel any less sinister.
A long wooden board leans off of the boat, resting against the dock and waiting for us to exit. My nails dig into the smooth wooden railing. I am tied with rope restraints once again, though it’s just my hands this time. Impatiently, I let out a sigh.
Miranda slings a tan pack over his shoulders, his pirate attire gone and replaced with black pants, a red tunic, and a heavy belt tilting on his thin hips.
I glare past him, directly at Bear, who doesn’t bother to make eye contact with me. I get the feeling he knows I’m looking at him. Wind dances through his brown hair and ruffles his flowing white top.
“Excuse me.” I hold up the spellbound ropes. “Can we get rid of these now? I don’t particularly feel like being dragged around like a dog.”
Bear chuckles, walking around Miranda to pick up the lead of my ropes. “Not a chance.” His tongue slides over his lips before he gives me a dirty smile. “Now, let's get going.”
With his large hands, he playfully tugs the restraints. “Bark, bark.”
It’s a real battle not to roll my eyes. “Amusing,” I mutter under my breath.
My feet drag against the thin wooden board, stuttering at every other step. Getting my land legs back may take a moment or two.
Past the docks, tall unkempt grass sways, hiding beds of wildflowers. The pretty colors dot the white land in a strange way. After that are a few rundown buildings that remain as lifeless as the pier.
“Where is everybody?”
Bear flinches at my question, his big shoulders tensing till they met his ears.
“They moved inland.”
Moved inland? Why would they do that? The coast is where trade would be the most prosperous, with other lands likely coming here for their rarest goods. Fishing should be plentiful here as well. What would cause people to move inland? More specifically, what would cause the entire town to move?
Miranda walks at my side, his gaze focused on the ground. Together, we trail behind Bear, leaving the wooden pier and the ship behind.
“Can’t you just fly us in with those fancy wings of yours? I’m not sure I’m made to do this much walking.” According to them, it is at least a day’s walk from where we docked at Nalerpera, the capitol of the Northern Kingdom.
Stepping through the tall grass, I wonder how these beautiful plants survive so well in such a cold environment. As if on cue, a shiver places goosebumps along my skin, and I tug the thick wool jacket Bear gave me tighter around me.
Bear was right. The terrible spot of cold we encountered has passed. It’s still much too cold for me, but it’s bearable. I thankfully don’t need to huddle with Bear for warmth.
A blush heats my cheeks as my thoughts dabble in the memory of his body pressed so close to mine. I wasn’t supposed to enjoy that. I was supposed to be disgusted by it, repelled by him, even.
So why does a small piece of me wish he would wrap me up in his intoxicating warmth as we walk? I don’t want to think about that.
“You think I want to carry both you and Miranda?” He glances over his shoulder at us.
I roll my eyes and keep walking.
I wonder if the city looks as I remember it? Has it changed too much for it to feel even remotely familiar? Something I’m bound to find out within the next twenty-four hours.
“Wait. When I visited the capitol with my father as a child, we docked our ship right on the outskirts of the city. Why didn’t we do that?”
“Are you going to jabber on the entire day?” Bear kicks at a small toy boat that litters the ground. It’s a vibrant blue, a stark contrast against the withering grass near the empty shops.
Avoiding giving him any more of my attention, I look at the buildings with their dusty signs. Or is it frost that covers them?
Veronica’s Seafood Bar and The House of Spells and Ocean Mist are some of the names that still remain without large “closed” signs slapped over them. Yet not a single sound could be heard other than the beating of the waves and our footsteps on the dirt path.
“Are you gonna avoid my questions all day?”
“Yes,” Miranda answers for him.
Bear stops, twisting his heels in the dirt. “Some people don’t want to see your future husband on the throne. You should be thanking me for the extra safety precautions, princess.”
“Bear, thank you for forcing me to walk through this ungodly ghost town and that dreary-looking forest when you know I don’t give a damn about my own life or its safety. You are truly too kind.” Mockingly I curtsy, the oversized boots he gave me making the movement awkward.
“So,” I continue, “what else can you do besides expel those hellish wings?”
“You’re still talking?”
“I’m trying to pass the time.”
“What can you do?” Miranda looks my way with intrigue. His hazel eyes looking like large saucers underneath his raised eyebrows.
I open my mouth to speak but someone else beats me to it.
“She can breathe underwater.” Muscles shift under Bear’s shirt as he fiddles with the weighted sword on his hip.
Bear doesn’t try to act like he is impressed. He should be. Breathing underwater is fucking impressive.
“I can do that among other things,” I eventually say after giving his backside my darkest glare.
“You breathe underwater? Like a mermaid.” Miranda hooks his thumbs under the straps of his bag, leaning closer to me. “How?”
“She’s no mermaid,” Bear says. “Just has fish lungs on her neck.”
Fish lungs? Oh, my goddess! I can’t be more offended if I tried. Saying it like that makes it sound gross. I am anything but gross.
With his entire body leaning toward me, Miranda reaches for my tangled blue hair. He pauses.
“May I?”
We both stop walking, and I give him a short nod. Careful not to even so much as brush my skin, he pushes the strands over my shoulder to reveal my neck.
Deep in thought, Miranda’s mouth parts, allowing him to chew his bottom lip. He stares at the scaly blue gills a second longer before he steps away and follows Bear.
“Well, I’ve never seen that before.”
“Yeah, and I’ve never seen fire wings before.” I stumble forward as Bear jerks the rope.
“Actually,” Miranda holds up one finger, “they are called incarne. One out of every five-hundred fire fae are born with these special gifts. Fun fact, the gifts tend to skip between one to four generations, but almost always stay within the family.”
“Keep moving,” Bear grumbles.
Slowly, the dusty shops lessen, giving way to abandoned homes. I try not to stare at a pair of shoes strewn across the empty roadway as if someone ran right out of them.
“Goddess. It looks like the world ended, and we are walking through the aftermath.” My hands tighten around the small bit of rope I hold between my palms. If I don’t keep it from hitting the ground and catching on things, because Bear won’t do it, then my wrists will be bloody and raw.
“For some people, it did,” Miranda says solemnly.
“Why did they leave?”
Silence is the only response to my question. Bear continues stomping forward, passing houses with upturned chairs, broken windows, scattered personal items, and other chaotic pieces of the life that once existed here. Not once does he spare a glance. His face is forward, and his gaze held to the distance.
“Did Bear know the people here?”
Miranda, finally unable to avoid my questions, watches Bear’
s back as he speaks, keeping his voice low.
“He thought of a lot of people who lived here as family. A great sickness swept through, killing hundreds of the town’s occupants. The people left because the illness spread so fast, they had to quarantine the area.”
Unable to hide the disgust on my face, my lips tug downward, my eyes rotating over the scene again. I wonder what the chances are that I can get sick just by being here.
“Don’t worry,” Miranda adds. “The sickness has been long gone here. As long as you don’t try to eat the dirt or go around licking the household utensils, I think you’ll be fine.”
“You two won’t be fine if you don’t shut your goddessdamn mouths. Stop talking.”
Closing my mouth, I narrow my eyes at Bear. Even if he can’t see me with his back turned, I pray he feels my hatred.
And to think I almost kissed his broody lips.
Miming, Miranda pretends to lock his mouth with a key and tosses the imaginary item over his shoulder.
The edge of town grows closer and closer. The chill of the ocean and the white frost slip away with every step we take. Tall evergreen trees, looking anything but green, tower over us. Either the late afternoon sun is casting the darkest gray-and-black shadows over this area, or whatever illness that left this town abandoned also affected the plants.
I expect to hear the sounds of scurrying animals and the howls of hungry predators, but even the animals seem to have managed to leave this place behind. My heart pounds heavily in my chest. Thud-unk, thud-unk.
The silver blood running through my veins even seems to whisper that something bad happened here. Bad, dark magic happened here.
Next to me, Miranda holds onto his pack with white knuckles, his eyes taking in everything all at once. I have yet to see Miranda really wield a weapon. However, his keen gaze and confident steps are indication enough that he’s not worried about sinister magic like I am.
The thought makes me tense all over. Muscles I wasn’t aware I tighten more and more with each breath. The large boots under me leave footprints that suggest that three large men walked through this dangerous woodland, and not two highly skilled fae warriors and a very annoyed princess.
Clearly, Bear is the princess.
Thud-unk, thud-unk. Thud-unk, thud-unk.
For the entirety of our travels through every inch of the black forest, my heart rattles my rib cage. I try to ignore the way my body screams to break into a sprint. Even Bear notices that I quicken my pace, keeping only a short distance behind him.
His bitter, narrowed gaze tells me he senses me there, and he doesn’t like it. So I inch closer. It’s for my own protection, really. Or at least, that’s what I'll say if he voices his concern for why I’m stepping on the heels of his boots.
Time drags with nothing to do but watch the shuffle of Bear’s feet before me and pray that one of my many fears doesn’t emerge from the shadows. The sun travels across the sky, acting as my only clue that time truly slips by.
The first sign of life comes from the scattering sound of a flock of birds departing from their perches. Even their own gray speckled wings become part of the dark ambiance. It startles me enough that I gasp.
Bear raises an eyebrow, giving me a telling smirk. The asshole.
“This forest used to be the home of many dryads.” Bear breaks the unbearable silence. I have puns for days.
“How did this all come about?” The question has been burning through my thoughts on more than one occasion.
Pain radiates through my arms, my feet slipping in the extra space in the toes of the boots. My entire body falls forward until I right myself to stand toe to toe with Bear.
“The curse of your goddess brought a plague to our lands. Your absence only made it much worse.”
“Guess the king should have married me in the first place, huh?”
“Say whatever you want to say, but this is your fault,” he growls out.
“My fault? How is this my fault?”
For every three trees there were, there is now only one. The others lie rotting on the ground, inky glimmering fungi taking over the graying bark. The sun shines faintly before it dips down to leave us for the night. In the dim lighting that remains, the edge of a cliff comes into view.
“If you could have behaved properly like a princess, then maybe the king would have married you. He wants a wife to unite kingdoms, not a spoiled brat that he will have to babysit.”
I scoff, grinding my heel into the ground before I speak. Words never break my lips, though. Not when cinders of fire drift through the dark skies. I should have noticed it sooner, the black that tarnishes the sky, but until now I thought it was more of the cursed forest.
Bear and Miranda exchange an unreadable glance. My hands tremble in front of me before I ball them into fists to conceal my uneasy feeling.
The beautiful, shining kingdom I’d visited as a girl is covered in ash.
Nine
The Cursed King
Syren
King Iri, both cruel and unyielding, doesn’t bow to reason. This was the rumor I had not shared with Bear. The whisper of that one little truth carries across kingdoms. The words were spoken throughout the soot-coated streets of the Northern Kingdom, in the markets where people traded more than just goods, and in the holy temples of both Goddess Nature and Goddess Celeste.
A newly-crowned ruler who carries both the titles Crimson King and Cursed King never seeks advisors before he acts. King Iri always acts on his own to deliver swift punishment, refuse an offered alliance, or change someone’s fate with a banishment.
His unusual gifts and his knack for making choices that baffle his counsel make him quite the topic of conversation across the kingdoms.
Though the gossip could be wrong. I hope. We travel down the bustling street of Nalerpera. Fae like to say that I am a kind person when most of the time I am anything but. My kindness, as they call it, is purely the cheap bargaining for their love. The love that got me released from my banishment.
A shame I didn’t realize sooner that banishment was exactly what I wanted. To think I’ve wasted so many polite words on foolish leaders on behalf of my people. I did care for them, though. Someone had to.
According to the grapevine, King Iri and I have some things in common. Every action has its purpose. It happens that most of his acts are violent, bloody public displays, while mine are quiet conversations away from the public eye. Each of us strikes deals that come with more strings attached than the jester’s lyre.
Bear watches me carefully from underneath his velvet hood. A similar cloak drapes across my shoulders as well as Miranda’s. On the ashy streets, we don’t look out of the ordinary. Most, if not all, of the people with their charcoal-streaked faces wear capes just like mine.
This most certainly does not look like the magical city that lives in my memories. This place is the twisted skeleton of its former lavish lands. Soot coats the standing buildings, a reminder that one day, they too might be destroyed.
The three of us weave through the ever-more-present shelter of nightfall between the wavering light cast onto the pavement by the sporadic oil lamps. I’m not sure when the dirt trail we followed became flagstone. At some point, the city begins to look as though it is trying to put itself back together again.
Miranda acts as though he is taking inventory of our surroundings. His attention drifts from small clusters of people drinking and laughing outside a local pub, to young fae watching each other greedily over their playing cards, then onto another fae who walks the opposite direction holding an untouched applewater.
Onyx stone reflects the stars, casting each tower in crystal constellations. Before, I remember the castle having a much lighter color. Maybe it was covered in the dust of the fire that King Iri seems to have set over his kingdom.
Ash becomes less prevalent, but a sick deathly scent grows stronger as we reach the outer courtyards of the castle. Through the manicured green lawns—the only green I’ve s
een—a large fire lights up the sky and shines off of the castle.
The magical color of it, the flicker of the deep flames is a beautiful thing. But it’s also sinister sight to see. The alluring emerald fire eats away at jutting arms, toes, twisted necks, and bruised up legs.
Dead bodies.
The smell strangles my nostrils, churning my stomach in the worst way. A gag wrenches my lips. My fingers instinctually rise to cover my mouth and nose. The air feels thick with death.
Suddenly, the castle doesn’t appear as magical. It isn’t a fairytale kingdom at all.
It’s a nightmare.
The staff working the courtyard and the highly trained guards in their auburn uniforms allow us to enter. They are all likely hand-chosen by King Iri himself. I’ve never heard of him being someone who trusts easily. I have no doubt that the king personally knows each fae living within these walls. At the very least, he has something to hold over them.
Blackmail works wonders. Though it doesn’t sound like his style. Murder is his style. Over-the-top theatrical displays of brute force are his style.
Clearly, no one has told him that he will get further with sugar than salt.
My wandering eyes make note of each burnished sword and jewel-encrusted hilt sheathed securely to the guards’ belts. Some even wear thick black leather gloves made specially for the fae who can start and contain a fire within their palms. Others with less power but more skills have shining swords strapped in X’s across their backs.
Here and there, a servant or other staff member pauses their busy work, their boots stopping firmly in the ice-coated yard. Then they choose to salute or nod or occasionally, bow. Bear doesn’t acknowledge them. Both Miranda and I give each person a smile or nod of our own in return.
Are they expecting me? I start to wonder if they recognize me, but then as I glimpse down at my feet still in Bear’s ridiculous boots. I doubt they do. What princess comes to a new kingdom dressed like a freshly drowned cat?
A banished one does. But they don’t know that.
