by Hannah West
“That whole bit was rather startling, wasn’t it?” he asked.
“I found it encouraging.”
He quirked a brow.
“Callista is a famous hero,” I explained. “You saw for yourself that she was noble and good, and she risked her life to save you. The heroes carved in stone and written about in books seem so immaculate, as if they’ve never had to dirty their hands to seize victory. But Callista was ruthless when she had to be, terrifyingly so. Your vision of me depicted bloody deeds. Now I know that…”
“One can be ruthless for good reason?” he supplied. “I didn’t suspect you would act out of malice or evil. Not in the least. But it’s difficult, once I see something like that in someone’s future, to unsee it. I’m afraid for you, what you will endure…”
“Don’t fear for me,” I said, squeezing his arm. He looked down at my hand. If we could rid ourselves of our hounding fears for even a moment, would other feelings race to occupy the vacancy? I studied him, trying to guess what emotion he felt. His hair was tousled and damp. His dark, straight eyebrows and fathomless eyes brought intensity to an otherwise sprightly face. Feeling indulgent, I pored over little details: how the sculpted curves and peaks of his lips offset the strong cut of his jaw, how fine and feathery the hair was that bordered each of his ears. The most thrilling detail was something that had changed, something in his eyes: our linked gazes possessed something mighty all of a sudden, like a glare of sunlight off a mirror.
A vertical line worked its way between his eyebrows, and embarrassment overcame me in a hot wave. I dropped my arm and looked around for Kadri and Glisette. I found them sitting with Rynna at one of many long slabs of gray rock positioned at the far side of the dell. Others were setting platters of fruit, vegetables, and breads on the rock tables along with flagons of wine. I glanced up to see a pink dusk settling in. The birdsongs were giving way to beetle chirps, and a flute seamlessly joined the entrancing ballad of a peaceful spring evening.
“I wish I didn’t have to worry about anything,” I found myself saying.
Mercer opened his mouth to reply, but Theslyn beat him to it as he passed us by. “Then don’t,” he said, flashing me a mischievous look. “Come. I think your friend may forgive us after he sees how we welcome our guests.”
“Shall we?” Mercer asked, surrendering to the allure of food and wine. No one could resist after the journey we’d endured, regardless of prejudices.
Other fair folk crowded around the table, laughing and talking and drinking and sipping juice from succulent fruits. By the time Mercer and I arrived, there were only two seats left to claim, so I nestled between Glisette and Rynna.
“There you are, dark little duckling,” Rynna said, handing me a small wooden cup of nectar. “That should heal your wounds.”
I glanced over her at Kadri, whose eyes shimmered. She bit into a fruit with relish and leaned in to whisper something in Rynna’s other ear. They laughed together and Rynna stroked Kadri’s raven hair. This wasn’t the Kadri I knew—in fact, this was the furthest she’d wandered from her recognizable self—giggling and enamored of someone she had just met, and a woman at that.
“What else will it do to me?” I asked.
“Not much,” Rynna answered, turning back to me. “That’s just enough to bring you to the cusp of euphoria for a short while. You’ll need a little wine to help it last the night.”
I looked across the table to Mercer, who sat next to Lyssa, the one who had bathed him earlier. She offered him a cup of nectar. I doubted he would partake at all, until he gave me an encouraging nod and took a drink. I did the same. It tasted like honey and fruit juice but better than both, sour and sweet and divine. It slaked an inner thirst I didn’t even know I possessed.
The wheel of dour thoughts and worries spinning in my mind slowed and dropped off its axis. Before I knew it, the last taste was gone. I licked it from my lips and heard myself asking for more.
Rynna laughed. “You don’t need more. Look around. You will see and want everything. Oh, let me pull those out.”
She released Kadri and cradled my hand, yanking concisely at the stitches with her fingernails as the bite wound healed. I felt an uncomfortable tugging but no pain as the cut sealed itself into a tight scar. Rynna wrapped her arm back around Kadri and whispered to make her laugh again, a deep and wholesome laugh that suddenly made everything feel all right.
“The lights are lovely,” Glisette said, tilting her head back to look. I followed her gaze to the floating constellations of small incandescent lanterns, anchored by some carefree bit of magic.
It was as if an invisible second eyelid had peeled from my eyes and now I could see beauty in everything. The fruits were cut to resemble flowers, and I bit into edible flowers that tasted like aromatic fruits. The wine was oaky and round. I tore into an open-textured bread filled with berries and nuts and found it softer than the softest pillow beneath my thumb. When I met Kadri’s eyes, she no longer seemed drunk or lost, but alert and rightfully enraptured by everything around her.
It occurred to me that in spite of Fabian’s good looks and charm, Kadri had never claimed to desire him. And Fabian didn’t seem to expect desire. She implied that they had an arrangement that worked for them both. She had not felt threatened by his attraction to other women, but by what the attraction might cost her. And now I saw everything it could cost her: not just a future as queen, but the freedom to be herself, knowing her husband wouldn’t abandon her for it.
Maybe she wasn’t the furthest from herself that I had seen—maybe before this awakening, I had wandered the furthest from me.
When I’d had my fill of food and Theslyn reached over to replenish my wine, I glanced up and saw Lyssa perching on Mercer’s lap, pressing her hips into him and splaying her hands on either side of his face. Her plump lips were a hair’s breadth from touching his, and his broad hands hovered over her. It took several seconds for dismay to cut through the haze of wonder in my spirit, and when it did, I didn’t know how to receive it.
“Aren’t elicromancers forbidden?” Mercer asked, breathless. He was resisting her, but whether it was out of disinterest or a desire to prolong pleasure, I couldn’t say.
Lyssa slid her fingers along the chain holding his elicrin pendant, skimming his neck and chest. How was it that she had so easily and swiftly won the right to touch him? Had I only to try to be permitted? Why did that possibility feel so inadequate and hollow?
“We’re forbidden to copulate,” Lyssa said into his ear. “But not to touch. Doesn’t that make it all the more fun?”
“I told you to stop worrying.”
I looked up and saw Theslyn next to me in Glisette’s former seat. Glisette was dancing under the lights.
“That’s like telling me to stop breathing,” I said, lifting the wine to my lips almost as a reflex. I cleared my throat and twirled a dainty yellow flower between my thumb and forefinger. Theslyn watched me. “Why did Rynna call me a dark little duckling?”
He laughed. “Did she?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know about the duckling part,” he said. “But you are dark.”
I tested my lips for a last taste of nectar and forced myself to study the grains in the gray rock instead of looking back to Mercer.
“There are those who only hold mornings inside them, and they are happy and simple,” Theslyn said. “But you, my darling, hold the night with its wild mysteries and twinkling secrets. If you would wear the cloak of darkness more proudly, you would be surprised at how it augments your beauty.” I noticed that his eyes had taken on a peculiar brightness in the twilight—one of the many ways the fair folk adapted, I supposed.
Theslyn’s warm fingers trailed along my forearm. I closed my eyes and thought of the relish with which I’d broken the necks of the blights. The power had felt exquisite.
Something inside me had changed. But Mercer’s vision had made me fear that change. I had locked it out in the cold, yet it knocked
and knocked, a persistent peddler selling self-acceptance at a price.
Theslyn faced me, straddling the bench. “You are a beautiful human,” he said, using a curled knuckle to tilt my chin. I leaned into his touch, finding myself receptive to it, even eager for it. With my encouragement, he brushed his thumb across the dip in my bottom lip. I blinked my eyes open, entranced by his mystical beauty.
The journey his lips took to reach mine seemed like a century of torment, and even when they touched, his damp mouth, tasting of nectar, barely brushed across mine. “We do not hide our desires here,” he whispered as we shared breath. “We give them the freedom to guide us.”
With another affectionate stroke of his knuckle along my chin, he slipped away, flinging a meaningful glance across the table before joining the crowd.
Breathless, I followed his fleeting look to find both Mercer and Lyssa gone.
Leaving the balmy glow of the feast, I wandered into the trees until the lights from the revelry faded to a soft glow. My steps were unsure, as though I might be floating instead of walking. I found a tree whose mossy, twisted base looked like several nurturing arms inviting me in, and sat down, and curving myself to its cradle.
As the nectar began to wear off, the claw of Mercer’s rejection didn’t just sink into me. It dug deep, dredging up past hurts: Ander accusing me of killing Ivria, his eyes two shields of fire instead of refuges of brotherly love; Rayed setting me up to look guilty of Brandar’s death; my father abandoning me when he could no longer let the palace walls hem him in, and my mother’s subsequent abandonment of me during my grief for the thrill of fresh passion; Ivria touching her toes to the Water when she knew I would suffer unimaginable sorrows without my sister at my side.
I heard the rustle of steps in the soft undergrowth. A few of the fairy lights seemed to have pursued Mercer and bobbed over his head as he approached. I stood up.
“I resisted Lundy touching me like that so many times because…because it wasn’t right,” he said. “And now I—it’s not as if I want her specifically. The touch of a woman is something I didn’t even know I desired so fiercely before, in the midst of the terrors—”
“I don’t know why you feel you need to explain this to me, Mercer,” I said, but when I got around to uttering his name, my rigid tone became unconvincing. It was a savory shape in my mouth, magic dancing on my tongue.
He shut his lips like someone shutting a door in the midst of undressing, embarrassed. “Um,” he said. “I don’t know why, but I felt as though I’d wronged you…perhaps I mistook your…” He trailed off.
A silence yawned, but the nocturnal insects and hoots of owls raced to fill it. “I thought you didn’t like what you saw,” he finished.
I looked up at him and found a steady, heated gaze that could liquefy gold. “I didn’t like it,” I said, my voice quavering with the power of the plain truth. “I don’t want anyone else to touch like you that.”
“And is it because you want to touch me like that?” he asked huskily, propping his hands on the tree behind me. His breath skimmed down my neck and ignited every nerve in my body. “At the outset of our journey, I lay awake at night imagining it, even though I didn’t want to. My dreams of you feel so real they might as well be visions. Tell me you want me.”
“I want you,” I whispered, my breath hitching as the hollow of his hand found its way to the back of my thigh.
“Your wrath withers grass and crumbles stone. Think of what your joy could do….” He grazed his lips against the base of my neck and whispered, “Your ecstasy.”
Unwilling to wait any longer, I crushed my lips against his, drawing him close so I could feel the heat of his skin through the meager fabric of our tunics. We intertwined, one of his arms encircling my waist and the other cradling my nape, his touch like velvet. My hands gripped his face before sliding down, grappling to pull him ever closer. My lips and tongue fought to taste the cool spring of his mouth more deeply, spurred on by his clear desire to devour me.
“Valory,” he whispered, my name a seal of fervor on his lips. “Look.”
I released him just enough to turn my gaze to the surrounding twilight. New, pure white blossoms erupted from the spindly tree branches above. The mossy trunks spurted bright yellow flowers and the enchanted lights danced about them. The trees themselves bowed away from us, clearing a black sky holding a ripe, full moon, which the stars themselves seemed to gaze upon with awe.
Mercer laughed and collected me in his grasp once again. I knew that no matter what came, I would hold this moment forever, unchanging, an ever-burning lamp of goodness to light the path ahead.
CATLIKE stretch worked its way through my limbs, filling me with shivers of delight. Even when the effects of the nectar had waned, every touch and kiss felt like a step into uncharted lands of wonder, at least before sleep caught up with us.
Wriggling a little, I realized I was lying on a bed of leaves. A smoky fragrance flitted along a crisp wind. I curled my arms under my chest to retain the warmth of sleep. But as the musk of a new dawn flooded my senses, I felt that something was not right. This morning was, in some way or other, not what I had anticipated.
It wasn’t that Mercer was far away. I could hear his breaths, somehow distinct. No, it was that I’d fallen asleep engulfed in the perfume of flowers and greenery. But this morning smelled like cool dampness and overripe fruits browning on the ground. The leaves beneath me crackled and whispered.
I opened my eyes, clearing away the fog of sleep as I rolled over. A woman with auburn hair, tapered ears, and golden eyes peered down at me. I gasped in alarm before recognizing Rynna.
“I wondered if you’d ever awaken,” she said, but there was no trace of teasing in her voice. Worry threaded her every word.
I looked up to see Glisette and Kadri sprawled nearby, also stirring. The bedding of leaves beneath me was a fiery mound of scarlet, orange, and yellow. “What happened?” I asked.
“We hid you from the summer fires,” Rynna answered. “Valmarys scoured the northern stretch of the forest looking for you and burned as he went.”
Her gaze glided beyond me. I followed it to a clear border ahead between the healthy, autumnal forest and a gray landscape of scorched earth.
Splaying my hands over the dry leaves, I rose to my feet. The haze of the nectar lingered, but with every step I took toward the destruction, my head cleared while the air grew murkier, stifling. The trees, stark black and white, many of them felled, flaked ashes to the wind. I paused at the border and drew my fingertip across a blackened tree. It left a charcoal stain on my skin.
“Did we sleep through the whole summer?” I heard Glisette demand as I turned to rejoin the group.
Mercer kicked a dry branch and sent it reeling to crack against a tree, reverting to Old Nisseran curses to express his anger. “Was this the plan when you took us in?” he demanded, whirling on Rynna.
Keeping her composure, Rynna answered, “We heard Valmarys had come to the forest looking for you. That’s when we chose to intercept you and brought you to our dwelling, to keep you safe during this bout of his temper. The fairies of long ago, Malyrra included, swore to help you when the time came.”
“But a whole season passed,” Mercer said, his voice echoing in the abyss of shriveled forest. “What other horrors has Valmarys wrought in that time?”
“You don’t have to like it, but we have fulfilled our duty,” Rynna said, trudging back several steps to retrieve loaded packs for each of us. I realized I wore my own clothing, which had been washed and mended. My dagger sat in the sheath at my hip. We’d been unclothed and dressed and lulled to sleep like infants.
“Believe me when I say I wish I could come with you,” Rynna went on, turning a melancholy smile on Kadri. “But I would perish in the burned forest after a short time. We may be immortal, but we are not a hardy folk when our surroundings suffer.”
“My heart feels torn in two,” Kadri said, grimacing against unshed tears. “I feel I
’ve left my home behind yet again, but it hurts far more than before.”
Rynna cupped Kadri’s face. “We had to give you too much of the nectar to keep you alive. That’s where this sadness comes from. It will worsen the farther you go. Sometimes you will forget it. Other times it will pierce you like an arrow. But you are alive.”
“Will I ever be able to come back?” Kadri whispered.
Rynna shook her head. “I don’t know. When this is done, return to the forest. Keep going until you are lost, and continue on. I will do my best to bring you back to Wenryn, but no mortal has ever been permitted to stay. I make no promises.” She slid a beautifully crafted bow and a quiver full of arrows with striped green-and-black fletching from her shoulder. “Theslyn and I made this for you. The other didn’t suit your draw.”
She pressed the fay weapon into Kadri’s hands. The smoke-tinged wind played with her auburn hair as she slid her fingers along Kadri’s jaw and leaned in to bestow a chaste kiss on her lips. “I’m afraid I must leave you here,” she said, pulling away slowly. “I sense the Water lies near, at least whatever remains of it, and two ancient powers crossing can be dangerous.” She looked at me. “We brought you as far as we could.”
“Thank you,” I said, but my voice grew weak as I looked across the wasteland. I wondered how else the realm had suffered. Beyond the forest, did the fairies know what was at stake? I doubted Ambrosine’s uncle and his tolls had even crossed the fair folk’s minds.
I could only be comforted by the indisputable truth that no one in Arna—especially not King Tiernan—could be seduced by tawdry riches. Arnan royals took too much pride in their positions to desert responsibilities for love of jewels and silk.
“Theslyn wanted me to give you a message, Valory,” Rynna said. “He said ‘Don’t forget your cloak.’” With a few doelike strides, she nearly melted into the vivid colors of the wood. “May victory be yours.”
