An Heir to Thorns and Steel

by M. C. A. Hogarth

I adjusted my spectacles and then looked again, but the sight persisted, stubbornly absurd. Its lowest bricks spiraled upward in a stair-step pattern, growing a coat of white plaster until they culminated in a gray and silver balcony. Stained glass windows threw off the light of the sun in shimmering reds and cobalt blues, rising in elegant points toward a conical roof. The edifice seemed to swirl out of nothingness and hang there, unmoving, several stories above us. The shadow it cast on the grass seemed particularly incongruous as there were no buildings surrounding it, none at all. Just this one bit of a tower floating in the middle of a shaded lilac grassland.

  “How do we enter?” I asked.

  The hunter kneed his mount forward. As we approached, I saw a circular path on the ground, formed of some substance I couldn’t identify.

  “Here,” he said, pointing at where it was broadest. “Sit here.”

  I slid—fell—off the horse and managed to huddle on the flat surface. It felt like stone... like warm stone. But so thin! Perplexed, I brushed my hand across it as the hunter reined his horse away. I turned to ask him what material had been used to fashion it when it broke free of the ground and coiled into the air, sinuous as a snake. I grabbed for its edges, afflicted by vertigo and nausea simultaneously, but before it could take me entirely the path stopped, connecting with a snap to the edge of the balcony. I stared at the join, wide-eyed. I could find no seam. On either side of the not-stone I could see the distant grassy ground and the toy-sized hunter on his horse.

  Pride warred with terror. Terror won. I crawled to the balcony, then used its rail to clamber to my feet. As I watched, the path collapsed, trapping me, and a wave of weakness engulfed me. God, not here, not now! Not another seizure. I slid to my knees and gripped the bars as if they were the door to a cage and set my forehead against one, cool, hard, textured like wrought iron. My throat was so dry I almost couldn’t swallow, but I tried. The nausea and the actinic sparks in my limbs warred with one another and I waited to see which it would be, vomiting or convulsions. I wondered if the tower’s owner would be distressed if I left a mess on the elegant stone balcony. Probably.

  My body had not yet decided how to fail me when I felt the presence, the one from Amoret’s manor. The void so great it devoured everything around it, a clinging, aching, stretching darkness that caressed my burning skin and set me to shaking.

  “Will you jump?”

  His honeyed voice was so intimate and yet so detached that I twitched away, feeling as if I’d been stroked merely to have my reaction assessed. My shoulders twisted and I clenched my jaw. I would not, would not fall in front of that voice. Being on my knees was mortification enough. But the longer I remained there, the more my limbs tightened. As I slumped to the balcony floor, too wracked even to fear the edge, the presence approached, bringing its bleak radiation with it, until when at last the seizure took me all I saw was black, oil-and-ink-and-dried-blood black.

  I found the hem of a silk robe near my face when I fought my way back into my body... aubergine with strange sigils in flame-red and orange. The fabric rippled in a measured rhythm, like a metronome; I realized after a time that it was so thin it was responding to the breathing of its owner. And so I looked up at the void and saw that it had the face of an elf, a narrow, pointed face with cool and predatory eyes, long-lashed and an absurdly delicate lilac. Strands of glossy violet hair interrupted his brow and cheeks, cutting his face into puzzle pieces I could only barely fit together in my fugue. He was very tall, I thought... or I was very low. I couldn’t decide which.

  “So,” he said. “Interesting.”

  I’m certain I was, kinked into a tortured ball at his feet. I thought of the stories of fairy queens and the offerings left at their flowered altars to appease them and wondered what sick story would involve a crippled invalid of a folklorist as a gift. Probably one in which the faerie queen drew mortal offense and a bloody rampage ensued.

  “Can you stand?”

  “I’m not even sure I can talk,” I said, hoarse.

  “Sarcasm,” he said. “This must happen to you often.”

  I stared at the nearest flame sigil. “A habit of mine. Only at the most inopportune moments. To add excitement to my life.”

  The elf crouched then, so close he had to spread his legs to keep from clipping me with a knee. His cool fingers gathered my chin and lifted my face. I was enveloped in that power, so sickeningly intense—perhaps I could be forgiven for not realizing until his lips were almost on mine what he intended.

  “No,” I said, ducking my head as far as his fingers allowed. “My mouth is full of bile.”

  His elegant brows lifted. I was just as surprised. It was not the reason I thought would come to mind first. “Is that also a habit of yours?”

  “Only when I am about to vomit,” I said, beginning to shake. He was everywhere, all around me, the density of an aura like lead. The world cramped around him.

  “And you are about to do this now.”

  “I’m considering it,” I replied.

  He pulled my glasses from my face. “It would be a pity to lose these over the edge of the balcony.”

  “How civilized,” I said. “Thank you.” And then I wrenched away from him and lost my dignity and my meager breakfast. The elf did not move, but watched me until I collapsed against the bars, my heart fluttering from the violence of the episode.

  “Fascinating,” he said. And then, “Are you done?”

  “I think so,” I said, my voice gone raspy.

  “Can you stand?” he asked, his curiosity mild.

  I wanted to say ‘yes’, but I opted for the truth. “Not at all.”

  “Mmm,” he said. For the first time, some emotion crept into his voice. Regret? “Alas, my dice are inside. Pick a number.”

  “A what?” I asked, perplexed.

  “A number,” he said. “Between... oh, one and five.”

  I stared up at him, licked my dry lips and finally said, “Three.”

  “Ah,” he said. “I suppose I’ll have to carry you, then.” Before I could object he slid his arms beneath me and lifted me up against his chest. I almost fainted from the sudden proximity of that power. As it was I had nothing in me to flinch, to protest, even to hang on. As he carried me into the tower, the fingers pressed against my back slowly brushed against me, another of those casual intimacies that made my skin want to shrivel away from the air.

  I’m not sure what I expected from the lair of an elf who lived in a floating tower. Perhaps anything would have been a disappointment. Certainly the stained glass windows that served the study as its doors lent it a sublime quality, but... it was still a study. Two chairs before a low table, a desk, shelves with books, and only some anomalies: a full-length mirror in one corner, a few pillows here and there. But aside from being a rather tall and elegantly shaped space, colored by its lighting, it was still... just a study.

  He did not set me in one of the chairs, but instead on one of the fashionable ottomans. I could not possibly stay upright, and wanted to say so... and then my hands sealed on the velvet edge and I found myself hunched but seated. I could not pry my fingers loose and I glanced at my right hand to find thorned vines orbiting my wrists, gossamer as smoke and as pregnant with menace as a distant thunderhead.

  “Well, this is rather rude,” I said finally.

  “Would you rather I drape you across my bed?” he asked. I couldn’t shake the feeling that his curiosity was honest, that he didn’t care one way or the other what I decided.

  “No,” I said, “but a chair with a back would have been sufficient. This flagrant display of power is rather vulgar.”

  “But then I couldn’t see you entirely,” he said. “Which will become important.”

  “Forgive me if I show no excitement,” I said. He set my glasses back on my nose and took his time about it, and after the first instinctive distaste I found myself fascinated by the care with which he smoothed back the hair and made sure the legs were properly wound behind my
ears. I had never liked anyone to handle my spectacles, much less to put them on me, and I certainly hadn’t expected him to be the exception, and yet... “Will you kiss me now? I assure you, I taste even worse than I did before.”

  His smile was faint. “You have no idea.” He left his hands on my face and caressed my cheekbones with his thumbs. “Such a work you are.”

  I could not escape the sense that he was not looking at me. “Pardon?”

  He withdrew and slid onto the edge of the desk, balancing himself there with the other foot. How did the room hold him? The cold coming off his body suffused the study, engulfed me.

  “Amoret,” he said, mostly to himself, “is a fool. Tell me, O prince. How long have you had these... body issues?”

  “Body ‘issues,’” I said and laughed bitterly. “Such a genteel phrasing. Very well, then, I can pretend. For as long as I can remember.”

  “Naturally,” he murmured. He reached over his desk and poured himself a glass of something red as garnets.

  “You called me the prince,” I said.

  “Of course,” he said. “You are no more human than I am.”

  Of course, he said, as if it were patently obvious. “And you know this just from looking at me.”

  “And touching you,” he said. “You are truly a work.” He came off the desk like a great cat prowling and lifted my chin, set the glass at my lips. “Clear your palate, O prince, O beauty.”

  The last thing I wanted was wine from his hand, much less fed to me like an animal. But my throat was so dry and oh... it was good wine. Dry with so many touches of fruit and just a hint of something high and spiced, like cinnamon. So I drank and suffered him to stroke my throat as I swallowed and when he withdrew the cup I even looked up at him.

  “Tell me, Morgan Locke,” he said. “What would you give to have all your pain taken away?”

  I lost my breath, my next heartbeat. He smiled and brushed my cheek with a thumb, still holding my face in his hands. “You heard correctly.”

  I managed a grim smile then. “Forgive me if I doubt anything could possibly take away my pain.”

  “Ah,” he said. “You require a demonstration. Very well.” His hands dropped to my vest and began unbuttoning it.

  “This demonstration requires me to be naked?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “But it will heighten the impact considerably, and that would amuse me.”

  “I see.” I watched his fingers travel down my chest. “You have a facility. Do you undress people often?”

  “You do everything often when you have enough time,” he said. I wondered how he was going to strip the vest from me when my hands were clamped to the ottoman and then he passed it through my arms. I shuddered, tried to pull away as he gathered my blouse at my waist and plucked it free of me, leaving me nude save for my pants and boots and...

  “Ah,” he said, thin fingers scooping the pendant up. “You’re wearing it.”

  “My captors seemed to have overlooked it,” I said. I had forgotten it myself.

  He glanced at me with his heavy-lidded eyes. “No doubt.”

  “So,” I said. “Now you will show me the illusion of a life without pain, is that it?”

  “Ah,” he said, and laughed to himself. “No. No, I will show you the pain of a life without illusions.” He hooked his foot through the base of the mirror and pulled it over. “Enough talk. It’s time you saw yourself.” And then he slipped around behind me, set his hands on my face and pulled, like he had gripped my skin and was yanking it off my body, and everything in me resisted. I would have screamed had I had a voice, but it overwhelmed me, the nausea, the sickness of it, the fingers cutting, clawing, sucking. It was like the room with the elves but worse, a thousand times worse, a violation a thousand times more intimate. I thought I would die—

  —and then it sloughed off and the pain vanished. Completely. I glanced up in wild shock and froze.

  Behind me the elf smiled, draping his arms around my shoulders and leaning down to rest his cheek against my hair and meet my eyes in the mirror. My eyes. My sea-by-storm-and-starlight eyes. The milk and moonlit cream of my skin. My hair draped to my lap like the velvet nap of the finest gown, droplets of water-jeweled light clinging to its edges. My body grown slim and gracile and glass-edged, refracted from the prism of life.

  “My God,” I whispered, a tear darting down one cheek, and it shone.

  “The prince lives,” the elf murmured, and he sounded smug.

  I swallowed. “That can’t... this can’t... this is falsehood.”

  “Your human seeming is the falsehood,” the elf said. “A glamour maintained by the magic in your blood, enchanted to forever feed on itself.”

  “What?” I whispered.

  “You have been wearing a mask,” he said. “A twisting of your own self by your blood to, I suppose, keep you hidden in plain view. But you have grown too large for the mask, and it takes more and more of you to hold it in place, and now it leeches from your body for fuel. The enchantment was put in place before you came into your power. It is destroying you.”

  I stared at myself in disbelief.

  “Would you like to move?” the sorcerer asked mildly. He caressed the thorned gossamer chains, unmaking them. “Lift your hands.”

  I did. No pain. Just the opposite... a gliding warmth, an ease that made me feel as if I was born to movement, as if I was the breath of the world and stillness belonged only to that slight hesitation between breaths, to the peace of death. I swallowed and looked at my palms, turned my hands. They were mine, yes, but far more refined. More finished.

  “Observe,” the elf said. “Your skin can also give you pleasure.” And he set his lips to the slope of my shoulder and breathed on my skin, warmed it, rolled his lower lip against it. I shivered, and when his teeth rasped against the pendant’s chain and plucked at it I swayed toward him, overcome.

  He smiled. “Stand. Move. Try your flesh.”

  I said, hoarse, “I’m afraid to,” and even my voice had changed, had gained layers, like the currents beneath the surface of the sea.

  “Because?” he asked.

  “I don’t want to grow accustomed to it,” I said, another tear streaking my cheek. And then to my horror I began to weep, and even crying felt good, felt fine, as if my eyes had grown soft and wet on their own.

  “But you can keep it,” he said, caressing my hair.

  “If I do something for you,” I said, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand. “Is that right?”

  He considered, then reached past me to the desk. There he gathered a crystal die between his fingertips, rolling it as if to caress its surface. He dropped it and glanced at the number. “I suppose so.”

  “You suppose?” I asked, my voice rising. “Do you make all your decisions by rolling dice?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I do now, anyway. It adds a random element to my life that is otherwise utterly lacking. So now... ah, I suppose I will have to force you to perform a quest for me.”

  I could barely believe him. “Just like that, you have decided on something so important.”

  “It’s important to you,” he said, leaning back behind me and resuming his stroking of my hair. “Nothing is important to me anymore. Which makes giving you a task a burden.” He sighed. “But we must, we must. Let’s see. I don’t want the bother of keeping you here, so I must send you away. To learn or fetch something. Ah, no. There is something that could be of use to me. I had forgotten.”

  “What’s that?” I asked, trying to be suspicious and feeling only a piercing joy so close to sorrow I could not keep my breath, my composure.

  “Your brother,” he said. “I would like you to bring me your brother.”

  I glanced at his face in the mirror, found nothing in it: no avarice, no greed, no hunger. Only the same smooth mask. “My brother. The king.”

  “Yes.”

  “You can keep a tower afloat and strip me clean of an enchantment no one else has even been ab
le to see,” I said, “And you expect me to believe you can’t find another elf and drag him into your lair?”

  “Oh, I could,” he said. “I know where he is. But if I did so, it would precipitate another war.”

  “Another war,” I repeated.

  “I would win,” he said, playing with my hair. “But it would be boring. I’ve done wars before. They hold nothing for me now. And all the pieces in motion now...it is a burden, keeping them all in mind. Adding more variables would be exhausting.” He said, “Besides, I would have to coerce the king to leave with me, and that would be tiresome.”

  “And he would just come with me.”

  “You are his brother,” the elf said. “I am given to understand he holds such things in high esteem.”

  “You probably want to torture him,” I said.

  He considered, slowly winding my hair between his fingers. “No,” he said. “At least, I don’t think so. I’ve seen every possible reaction to torture. There’s nothing interesting about it anymore.”

  I stared at him. “You mean to tell me you don’t torture people because it doesn’t provide you with enough entertainment?”

  “If you torture enough people, you soon discover that one person’s scream is very like the next’s,” he said. “They begin to blend.”

  My new skin pebbled into gooseflesh and—God help me!—even that felt good.

  “Bring me your brother,” he said. “I will undo this thing from you permanently.”

  “Will you promise not to hurt him?” I asked.

  He laughed then, that caress of a voice. “Oh, my dear, dear prince.” He lowered his mouth to my neck and breathed on it, licked my skin. “Haven’t you learned that there is no telling what will hurt someone? I could make such a promise, but what a futile promise it would be. Here I have given you your heart’s desire and you are weeping.”

  I shuddered.

  “Do you want me to stop?” he whispered against my skin, sweeping my hair from the back of my neck.

  Yes, I thought, and also no, and his arms slid around me from behind.

  “Come,” he said. “We’ll dance and you will see what a wonderful gift it is to wear no masks.”