by J B Black
“Twelve kings, hm? Should I expect payment from each? Or do you intend to cover all my costs, Robert?” Fannar drawled as he pulled out a chair to join the twelve at the ridiculous round table where they gathered.
Already, he could smell a curse. The air crackled with possibility. A powerful sorceress hid somewhere in the palace, and she had tethered her destiny - through sacrifices of no less than two dozen murders - to the fate of all twelve kingdoms.
“This is my kingdom. I invited everyone here, so the cost of the fix for the trouble they have found after entry is mine and mine alone,” the old man replied. He was a kind king who adored his wife and children, so Fannar couldn’t fault him too much for the way he threw his weight around, and from the glower of some of the other kings, this was truly King Robert’s fault.
Fannar hummed softly. “You are lucky your father collected magical artifacts.”
“You may have your pick. Please, Warlock Fannar, help us save our sons,” Robert pleaded.
Drumming his fingers on the table, Fannar nodded. “What do you know?”
Sitting down in his own seat, King Robert gestured to his spymaster. The tan man with dark eyes inhaled slowly, and before he spoke, Fannar knew there wasn’t much to tell. “The twelve crowned princes of the twelve countries are under an enchantment. Something is draining their life force.”
“A sorceress,” Fannar told them. “She’s connected herself to their destiny through human sacrifice.”
“Sacrifice!” one of the other king’s - Harold of Rhine exclaimed, fanning himself as he pinched his nose in disgust.
Folding his hands upon the table, Fannar gave them his best encouraging smile. “While her efforts have secured the course of the curse, I have no doubt I can redirect the end. However, this would mean your sons would be bound to a single woman for the remainder of their lives.”
“Is there no other way?”
Fannar tilted his head, glancing through a small looking glass he wore as a ring. “Unfortunately, no.”
A number of the kings murmured about giving their realms to their second sons, but at least three of the twelve had no other children. War hummed in their futures. However, no one offered him payment to prevent future warfare. They only asked him to save their sons.
“Bring the sons here. They cannot speak of the curse to anyone, but we can at least see if there is a single woman who would be best suited,” Fannar instructed, but at his words, the kings all hesitated. “You don’t wish to include your sons in a discussion of their fate?”
“What good would it do?” Harold asked.
Robert nodded solemnly. “They all knew they would not marry for love.”
“But a single woman,” King Thomas groaned, burying his face in his hands. “This will be a disaster.”
“It is easy enough by magic to tell what son was sired by whom. They could all twelve rule their kingdoms, and by having all twelve countries combined under a single mother, you would have the peace you so desired,” Fannar suggested, knowing without a doubt that the men before him had no intention of such an uncontrolled future. It put too much power in the hands of a woman, and not everyone in the room understood that to be a reasonable endeavor.
When the men continued to quibble, refusing to call the princes and dragging their feet, the spymaster stated, “Perhaps it would be best to simply kill all twelve.”
“How dare you!”
“That is my son!”
“Those are words of war! I have never been so insulted in all my -”
“Then call for your sons, or I can predict the woman through whom the greatest peace may be achieved,” Fannar offered, and he knew immediately which they would select.
Murmurs came about the table until Robert lifted his hands and silenced the other eleven kings. “Please, Warlock Fannar, who would you suggest.”
Twisting one of his rings, Fannar murmured the spell, watching the strings of fate shimmer into form. They multi-colored hues of twine wove a tapestry of fate across the world, binding people one to the other. Entire kingdoms tethered the men around the table, and each tangling string meant something, and the invitation to study their fates revealed so many interesting secrets.
Putting those aside for the time being, Fanar focused on the lines of the curse. The future fogged. Many of the lines led to at least half the princes dying. Even more ended with all twelve dying shortly if not immediately. Watching the numerous possibilities unfold underlined exactly why Fannar had no interest in conceiving a child. Luckily, there was a single possibility which led to a long healthy life for all twelve princes.
“Salina de Lioncourt,” Fannar announced.
While the majority of kings stared in confusion, Robert and his spymaster recognized the name. Both tied to her with different strings. Fannar leaned back in his chair, studying the two through narrowed eyes. Though her connection to King Robert suggested admiration and her position as his subject, the binding between her and the spymaster was more complex.
“She’s an apprentice, I take it?” the warlock asked, cocking a brow.
When the spymaster inclined his head, the table erupted. For her to have made it to an apprenticeship with King Robert’s Spymaster, Salina’s loyalty had to be absolute.
However, politics were the problem of other men. Hired only to find the best solution, Fannar had completed his end of the contract. Standing, the warlock smiled when the kings immediately fell silent.
Terror contorted their features. How unnatural. These powerful men rarely feared for their own lives. Horror did not belong to the commoner, but the idea of a single man standing capable of destroying them existed beyond the realm of their usual perception, so when the realization struck them, they cowered without any of the skill of someone who had experience protecting his own life.
“She is their best fate. The sorceress wove her life and fate into this spell. Send Salina to follow. She will kill the sorceress and take her place,” Fannar instructed as he stepped away from the table. “It would be a kindness to inform your sons, but if that is more than you can bear to give them, I can assure your future peace will still be possible...but not necessarily the way you envisioned.”
“None of this is what we ‘envisioned,’” Harold grumbled petulantly.
With a shrug, Fannar adjusted the clasp of his cloak. “This is the fate your sons have. She is their fated one.”
“Humans don’t have fated mates,” the spymaster pointed out.
His desperation to have the point confirmed only made Fannar chuckle. Desperate men. “Everyone has a fate. Humans are fickle. Each choice narrows the number of paths, and the sorceress cut down almost every single one.”
“A decision made so grand in its design that only one path forward remained,” King Robert murmured. His head lowered under the weight of what was to come. “Like a lycan’s bite.”
Nodding, Fannar smiled. “But unlike a fated mate which one might avoid, the curse demands the path be followed.”
They could be as displeased with the reality of their circumstances as they wanted, but they remained true nonetheless. Blinking away the sight of the strings, Fannar turned, leaving the men to their wallowing. He had a price to collect.
With permission granted in exchange, Fannar could have magically taken what he wanted, but there was power in striding through the halls of King Robert’s palace. None of the guards reached for their swords although their minds screamed with the chaotic desire to do something. No matter how helpful he proved to be, they viewed him as an abomination. Good. Fear was another source of power.
Throwing open the doors of the study where King Robert kept his prized magical artifacts, Fannar surveyed his gains. If he were petty, he could take the lot, but the less he took now, the better his chances of another contract when King Robert truly had something worth taking. Item by item, he picked his haul carefully. Books took first priority. After that, an amulet or two to help with divination. He could easily make anything el
se the man had.
Content, Fannar left the study, but his satisfaction waned in the face of the man waiting for him. “King Aethelred.”
“Warlock Fannar.” With his bushy white beard, the man looked far older than he actually was, but after so many decades with his own unchanging face, Fannar had troubling judging age. Regardless, his knowledge of Aethelred’s reign was greater than he might have preferred. “I believe it is time we speak.”
“Really? I don’t see much reason to,” Fannar retorted, shutting the doors to the study behind him.
“You murdered King Fabian, destroyed the royal city, and left his kingdom in ruin,” Aethelred stated as if he needed to remind Fannar of his history.
Tilting his head, Fannar narrowed his eyes. “All this paved the way for you to expand your kingdom. Are you annoying me to thank me?”
But the man shook his head. “The kingdom of Reig still belongs to you. As the last surviving heir, it is yours - even if you aren’t entirely human.”
“My father wasn’t human,” Fannar retorted. “He was fickle like one, I’ll give you that, but he had a fated mate and a love of gold which went beyond its monetary value. Some even said his dry skin looked like scales.”
“Regardless,” Aethelred exclaimed. His face reddened as if the thought of a king being inhuman was so distasteful. “The kingdom is yours to claim.”
Fannar laughed, shaking his head. Humans would never learn. Letting his magic swell behind him, the warlock smirked when the king cowered. “I would rather people fear me than pay tithe. A king is chained to his throne. His privilege and greed blind him to what he cannot have until he makes an offer of gold for a church but calls it kindling.”
In a blink, Fannar teleported away, leaving Aethelred trembling where he stood in the hall. His blood pooled in his feet and seemed to turn them to lead. The oppressive weight of the warlock’s magic weighed upon him even when the source vanished, and to add to his misery, another portal opened.
Shimmering like a star, a fae stepped into the hall. His golden hair fell about his face, curling about his sharp features. The bright purple of his eyes scanned the hall, and tilting his head back, he sniffed the air. A soft sigh escaped him. His features smoothed, making him all the more radiant. Then his eyes turned upon Aethelred, and anything beautiful about him faded under the fury of his glare.
“Where is he?”
Aethelred gaped, desperately trying to collect the words, but the harder he thought about the warlock, the quicker the words about him faded. “Who?”
Nose wrinkling, the fae loomed closer. “The warlock. Where has the warlock gone?”
“What warlock?”
With a roar, the fae slammed his fist into the wall. Beneath his fury, the stone crumbled. “I told you to keep the warlock before you as long as possible. My instructions were clear!”
Blinking, Aethelred tried to recall who the being before him was, but his mind fogged. Everything hurt when he tried to think about it. “Who are you?”
Grabbing the king by the front of his robes, the fae lifted him from the floor. His magic honed in on the curse enveloping the other’s mind, fighting it back as best he could. “Know me.”
“Prince Idris!” Aethelred gasped. Clarity overcame him, but he could feel the fires of the warlock’s curse working fast.
“What was the warlock’s name?” Idris demanded.
Though he could now remember a warlock had been here, the face of the man blurred. No name came to mind. “I-I can’t remember.”
The curse worked too fast. Idris could not overcome his beloved’s skill. Tossing aside Aethelred, he raced through the castle, throwing open the doors to the room where the rest of the kings gathered. They startled, and a man dressed in formal black shielded one of them. All at once - before he could even ask - the kings grabbed their heads, falling to the floor in pain.
“Damn it!” Idris raged.
The man who had stepped before the king frowned and drew his sword. “What have you done to them, beast?”
Clucking his tongue, Idris waved his hand, shattering the sword. “There was a warlock here earlier. What was his name?”
“Warlock?” the king the man protected murmured. “There was no warlock.”
A soft laugh escaped the protector. “Huh...this is the curse, isn’t it? That means you must be…”
“Yes! I am his fated mate. If you can recall, speak his name now!” Idris demanded, but the man - undoubtedly that particular king’s spymaster - shook his head.
“If I can remember, it is a sign I would never tell you, isn’t that right? I have sigils and wards to protect me from curses, but my king has ones just as strong. I have no intention of forgetting someone who could one day be a threat,” the Spymaster informed him.
Sneering, the fae approached the man. “But you would make an enemy of me?”
“I would prefer not to do so,” the man admitted, but he did not back down. “Shouldn’t you give up? If your fated mate doesn’t want to be found, he won’t be.”
The fae’s power flared. His shimmering aura expanding, consuming the room as he raged. Beneath his onslaught, the kings trembled. Where the pain of the warlock’s curse itched at their minds, draining their sanity the more they fought, the fae’s magic stole the air from their lungs, leaving them to grab uselessly at their throats.
Golden hair glimmering, Idris clenched his fists as he roared, “I have loved him from the moment I laid eyes upon him. He is beautiful. Clever and perfect and mine! If that bastard hadn’t interfered, I would have had him that day. If I could kill my uncle a second time for the lies he fed to my fated one, I would. Do not stand between us!”
Though the weight of the fae’s magic caused his knees to buckle, the spymaster forced himself to remain upright. “Are you certain it was all lies?”
Violet eyes narrowed. “How dare you.”
“The truth could very well have been enough,” the spymaster insisted.
“No one would run from being adored. He would have been my equal - king consort. Beloved and cherished by the most powerful being in nine realms,” Idris proclaimed, pressing a hand to his chest, but the spymaster didn’t waver. Glaring at the stoic mortal, the fae hissed, “Who would run from that?”
With a slow inhale, the spymaster met the desperate gaze of the creature before him. “The most powerful man in the tenth.”
Chapter Three
Secluded in his cabin, Fannar worked on his potions, gritting his teeth when his cases of ingredients went dry. Ronan often provided him with freshly collected herbs, but the warlock recently had troubles of his own. As attached at the other warlock was to his familiar - and as useful as Ronan often argued Ciar was, the brown-haired man elected to honor a request for human form.
“He’ll just come crying that he’s been left again,” Fannar murmured as he put aside the glass bottles. “And without Ciar, he’ll probably come and bother me ten times as much.”
Or - his mind gagged at the possibility - Ciar would proclaim his undying love. The familiar cared for Ronan as his warlock, but the possessiveness always struck less as a familiar and more as a lover. Given a body which Ronan could approach, there was a chance Ciar would try to push the original boundaries of their connection. With Ronan’s desperation to find true love, he might even give into the pursuit. Maybe they were even fated.
“Disgusting…”
Even if the end result was less frustrating than the two extremes, those were problems to be dealt with in the future. The reality that Ronan wouldn’t be providing ingredients any time soon remained, and the inconvenience of shopping or collecting his own balanced before Fannar.
Ruffling his dark hair, he selected the path of least inconvenience. Collecting avoided towns. No towns held a higher chance of no people. Getting dirty would be worth it.
Fannar grabbed a belt with compartments to hold the bottles and a collection of pouches as well as scissors and a pocket knife before leaving his cabin to
head into the enchanted forest which surrounded his hidden home.
An enchanted forest looked similar to an ordinary one. If some of the trees walked around when bored, people rarely paid enough attention to notice. They would often get lost instead, so on the rare occasion his walks stumbled across another person, Fannar extracted a price for teleporting them out. Unless they were truly annoying. Or young. Children and the annoying found themselves outside the forest without charge. Anyone else should have known better.
When he arrived at one of the more consistent groves, Fannar clipped items here and there, grumbling in frustration when a lavender plant leapt up from the ground to run off rather than have a trimming taken. A tendril of magic brought the plant back, and after taking what he needed, Fannar put it back down. The plant sunk its roots back into the ground as if petulantly pouting.
“Oh! Hello!” a voice called.
The abruptness almost had Fannar jumping, but he narrowed his eyes to glare about the clearing. A man sat up from where he lay amongst the flowers. Surrounded by blooms, he seemed to grow out of the soil and belong in their embrace. Blond hair fell about his face in curls, and his eyes shimmered a dark blue which shifted toward purple when Fannar studied him out of the corner of one eye. A glamor or curse of some kind weighed on the stranger. Tan skin and a slightly round face as if youth hadn’t fully been torn from him despite the broadness of his shoulders.
“Who are you?” Fannar demanded.
Rising, the man came up about an inch shorter, but his perfect posture and fitted clothes in clean whites and golden emblems made him seem taller than the warlock. He put his hand over his heart and bowed lowly. “Prince Idris, at your service. I’m on a quest to find my soulmate!”
Fannar sighed. A headache buzzed across his brain as he rubbed the bridge of his nose. “How touching.”
