by AJ Lancaster
“It is common practice for courts who wish to strengthen ties to share blood, in one form or another. I gather you have many relatives, Lord Valstar. Perhaps some of them might wish to spend time here.”
Wyn froze, and Hetta’s fingernails dug into his arm, as if worried his streak of uncharacteristic recklessness might manifest again.
It was a sadly reasonable worry. Lightning surged in his soul at the suggestion of any more Valstars coming here, and he wanted to fly the present one-and-a-half Valstars as far away from here as possible.
Tayarenn continued, oblivious. “I would be glad to extend an invitation to one of your siblings, even. Perhaps the girl who aided one of my court.” Alexandra. She was talking about Alexandra, who had helped Gwendelfear escape her imprisonment in the Tower Room at Stariel Estate. Tayarenn’s smile broadened. “Or the telepath.”
Wyn hadn’t thought he could get any colder, but the word turned his veins glacial. How did DuskRose know about Marius? He’d known Marius’s abilities would draw interest, but he’d thought them still safely secret.
“No,” Hetta said firmly. “I don’t think I can spare them. But thank you for the offer.”
Tayarenn didn’t seem particularly surprised by the answer. “If you cannot spare a member of your court, then perhaps there is another way you could demonstrate you do not favour the Spires above DuskRose.”
Hetta narrowed her eyes. “I don’t favour any fae court.”
“Then why are you providing refuge to Spireborn?”
“Wyn has long since earned his own place at Stariel.”
“Stariel has claimed me,” Wyn added. “I do not belong to ThousandSpire any longer.” Tayarenn would know that already, he was certain.
Tayarenn smiled. “Prince Hallowyn is not the Spireborn I was referring to. Tell me, if you do not wish to alienate DuskRose, then why are you harbouring one of her enemies?”
“I’m not getting involved in the business between you and ThousandSpire,” Hetta said. “Besides, I don’t think the High King would approve of me ejecting Prince Rakken just so you can hunt him down—didn’t he want peace between your courts?”
Tayarenn’s eyes flashed at Rakken’s name, but her tone remained cool. “It is bold of you to presume to know the High King’s mind or to assume he would approve of FallingStar’s actions, given his history with your family.”
“What history?”
Wyn nearly laughed aloud at the queen’s surprise. Fae did not admit ignorance openly. But the queen recovered quickly, speculation in her expression as she answered carefully.
“The Iron Law. I do not think the High King likes Valstars very much after that business.”
“Will you tell me what business that was?”
“Mortals,” she said wearily. “Information is valuable, Lord Valstar, and you have already refused to accommodate any of my suggestions for showing DuskRose favour.”
Interesting. Tayarenn didn’t know exactly what had happened between the Valstars and the High King to bring about the Iron Law either, or she would have pressed her advantage harder. The High King doesn’t like Valstars. His chest constricted. Maybe Tayarenn was mistaken. If she wasn’t—well, he’d already known the High King hadn’t set them an easy task.
Hetta straightened. “I don’t feel that Stariel owes DuskRose any favours; rather, the reverse.” She removed her hand from his arm and laced her fingers together neatly in front of her. Wyn suspected it was to keep them from trembling, but she held her head high. “I planted your dusken rose, even though a member of your court attacked my consort.”
Attacked was something of an exaggeration, since Gwendelfear had found Wyn whilst he lay unconscious. He wouldn’t have been nearly such easy prey otherwise. It probably wasn’t the time to remind people of this.
“The lesser fae is being punished for her transgression.”
“It’s not sufficient,” Hetta said coolly. “If DuskRose truly wishes to prove that it values an alliance with Stariel, then I demand custody of Gwendelfear.” She looked every bit as regal as Queen Tayarenn, her chin lifting defiantly.
Wyn tried not to look as if Hetta’s request surprised him. So this was the houseguest she’d spoken of; what was Sunnika up to?
The queen considered Hetta through slitted eyes. No fae liked to be told they had an obligation, but still less did fae like debts.
“Very well, Lord Valstar,” she said after an interminable pause. “The lesser fae is yours to do with as you will.”
Hetta shrugged, as if this rather extraordinary development wasn’t worthy of any note. “Then, as an extension of goodwill towards DuskRose, I’d like to extend a personal invitation to you to celebrate my and Prince Hallowyn’s wedding at Stariel.” Hetta smiled at the queen. “Will you accept?”
Wyn recoiled. He didn’t want Queen Tayarenn at his wedding, and in that moment, he couldn’t hide the fact. His reaction got him exactly the response he’d known it would. Tayarenn smiled, looking directly into his eyes.
“If none of ThousandSpire are invited, DuskRose will attend.”
21
The Butterfly Gate
After the longest evening Hetta had ever experienced, she and Wyn waited in the rose garden for Princess Sunnika to fetch Gwendelfear. Neither of them spoke. Hetta burned with a thousand questions, none of which she wanted to ask while they stood on DuskRose lands. She knew how easy it was to eavesdrop within a faeland you were bonded to, and she doubted Queen Tayarenn shared her scruples on the subject. She crossed her arms and shivered, though the night wasn’t cold.
Wyn put a hand on her shoulder. He was wound tight as a bowstring, his attention skittering from archway to archway, unsettled in a way she rarely saw. Understandable, given the tangible hostility towards him tonight, but he was usually so good at letting that sort of thing roll off him.
“Is something wrong?” she asked quietly, though she knew he wouldn’t answer her properly, not while Queen Tayarenn might be listening. Gods, she couldn’t think of any person she wanted at her wedding less, but at least the queen had accepted the invitation. The High King could quibble that that wasn’t what he’d meant when setting his task, and she’d quibble right back about fae technicalities.
Queen Tayarenn thinks the High King doesn’t like Valstars. Well, it wasn’t as if they hadn’t already guessed that might be the case, if Marius I had blackmailed him into the Iron Law somehow. If only she knew exactly how.
Wyn’s eyes burned with the same need to communicate, but he shook his head and pressed his lips together.
A soft sound of pressure releasing had them turning. Princess Sunnika had reappeared. A thin figure leaned on her for support.
Horror coursed through Hetta, bile rising in her throat as she recognised Gwendelfear, or rather the shadow of her. Her poisonous blue eyes had always dominated her face, but now they were the only bit of life in the mask of a skeleton. The pale green of her skin had drained to white except where dark bruises mottled her skin, and the multi-hued greens of her hair were now the dry yellow of dead grass. She held her left arm close to her body at an awkward angle, despite the manacles encircling her wrists.
“Say the words,” Princess Sunnika instructed. Nothing in her expression showed a hint that her handmaiden’s appearance bothered her. Gwendelfear turned those wide blue eyes to her mistress, pleading, but Sunnika didn’t soften. “Say it, Gwendelfear.”
Gwendelfear didn’t meet Hetta’s eyes. “I pledge myself to your service, Lord Valstar, to serve and protect you and yours, to uphold the honour of the Court of Falling Stars.” The words fell soft as withered leaves, a jarring contrast to her usual biting tone.
Wyn squeezed Hetta’s arm. “You must accept,” he murmured.
Hetta swallowed. This was a very faelord sort of thing to do, even if she hadn’t had mixed feelings about the way oaths bound fae in the first place. But Princess Sunnika’s expression flickered, showing a glimpse of desperation, swiftly hidden. I will owe you a favour, she’d said. The
princess wouldn’t have offered that if this hadn’t meant something to her, and her help would make accessing the Butterfly Gate much simpler.
“I accept your pledge,” Hetta said, and something shifted inside her, a lesser echo of how it had felt when Wyn’s connection to Stariel had snapped into place.
Gwendelfear sagged.
“Take off her chains,” Wyn said grimly, and Princess Sunnika did so without comment.
“Tell Jack that you’re there at my invitation and not a prisoner,” Hetta told Gwendelfear. The girl’s eyes snapped to hers for the first time, confusion in them. “And try not to cause too much trouble in my absence.”
Hetta touched the archway that held the Gate to Stariel, and the dusken roses bloomed once again, filling the air with a sweet, heavy scent, underlain with a hint of pine—Stariel’s influence, seeping through. Magic shimmered within the archway, and suddenly there was an image of Stariel’s rose garden, with Jack anxiously pacing in and out of the frame. Ivy sat on a stone bench, reading in the light of a spell-lamp.
“Go,” Wyn said, pulling Gwendelfear to her feet. She gave him a flat look.
“You are not my lord.”
So she hadn’t lost all of her fire then. “Go through the portal,” Hetta repeated. “And tell Rakken that if he hurts you, I will kick him out.” She didn’t think Rakken would still be within Stariel’s bounds, but Princess Sunnika let out a tiny breath of relief at the words.
Gwendelfear looked to Princess Sunnika, and something complicated and bittersweet passed between them. Then Princess Sunnika gestured to the far side of the courtyard, holding out a hand to Wyn and Hetta each. “You will need to be quick,” she said to them. Hetta took one of Princess Sunnika’s hands and Wyn took the other.
Hetta nodded to Gwendelfear. “Go.”
Princess Sunnika’s voice was soft. “Goodbye, Gwen.”
Gwendelfear took a deep, sucking breath that made her cough, nodded, and stepped through the portal on shaking legs.
The world went dark in the same instant, and then Hetta and Wyn were stumbling next to another archway, this one decorated with stone butterflies; they’d teleported across the courtyard. Princess Sunnika caressed one of the stone butterflies, and it transformed into a living creature, flapping its wings slowly as the portal shimmered to life.
“Go,” Princess Sunnika said urgently.
Hetta took Wyn’s hand and stepped through.
They stepped out into a brightly lit meadow, the contrast dazzling after the twilight of DuskRose. The Gate snapped shut behind them. Butterflies as large as dinner plates flapped lazily above the grass. Birdsong trilled, and the air smelled of summer. Hetta swallowed, disoriented and a little dizzy. It took several long heartbeats for it to sink in: they were alone, but for the butterflies. Safe.
She turned into Wyn, hugging him tightly, tucking her head against his chest. Clearly he felt the same need, his body curving to hers, pulling her as close as he could. They were both breathing too fast, and Hetta couldn’t tell if it was just her heart pounding, or Wyn’s, or both of them together.
Gwendelfear’s skeletal face and hunched shoulders flashed across Hetta’s mind’s eye, as did the flat stares of the DuskRose courtiers, eerily like those of the ThousandSpire fae when Hetta had been in King Aeros’s throneroom. How had Wyn borne it, growing up in a place like that, never knowing if someone was listening, never able to speak freely for fear of retaliation? She felt the courtiers’ hostility clinging to her like grease, and she buried her face against Wyn’s neck, welcoming his warm, clean scent, wanting it to banish every memory of both places.
They were safe, here in the warm butterfly-filled sunshine. Safe. Why did she feel on the edge of hysteria, then? She wrapped her arms around Wyn’s waist, the sleek, night-dark fabric slippery to the touch, and her fingertips brushed feathers. A fierce and unexpectedly trivial longing for Wyn’s usual attire went through her.
As if he’d heard her thought, Wyn changed back to his mortal form, wings and horns sliding away. A knot in Hetta’s stomach eased at the tiny bit of normality. Guilt swiftly followed. He hadn’t changed for her, had he? She didn’t mind his fae form; it was only that she was less accustomed to it. And she’d never become accustomed if he kept hiding it from her!
She frowned up at him. “Why—?”
“The magic here,” he said tightly. “It’s…affecting me.”
She tried to feel what he meant, but this place felt not too dissimilar to DuskRose, though less sentient. She picked at the sensation.
“There isn’t a faeland here, is there?” There was a strong presence of something, but she didn’t get the sense of someone looking over her shoulder. That was a relief, after DuskRose.
“No. These are unclaimed lands. But the magic is strong.”
“Well, I can handle butterflies. To be frank, I was expecting Deeper Faerie to look much more sinister.” Hetta held out a hand to one lazily flapping butterfly, which landed obediently on her palm.
“Hetta—don’t—” Wyn jerked her back, but not before she felt the sharp bite as the insect latched itself to her flesh and began to suck.
Elektricity flashed through the meadow, ozone overwhelming the smell of crushed grass and summer flowers. It crackled through the clouds of butterflies between one heartbeat and the next, sizzling on impact. For a single, frozen still-life, the entire meadow lit up, the silhouettes of butterflies dark against the blinding white-blue. Then the lightning snapped out, and the scorched husks of a thousand blood-drinking butterflies dropped to earth.
A hush fell over the meadow.
Hetta looked at her hand. A single drop of blood welled in its centre where the insect had pierced the skin. She looked at Wyn, who was panting, his eyes wide and startled. He hadn’t meant to do that, then.
“Well, thank you for defending me, I suppose, though perhaps that was something of an over-reaction. But your control is better than you think.” She held up their still-joined hands. “You were touching me the whole time.”
Something landed on her foot and she startled before she saw what it was: a blackened butterfly wing. She stared down at it and began to shake. Dash it, it was just an insect! But tears pricked at her eyes, and she couldn’t seem to stop shaking now she’d started.
“Oh, my love,” Wyn said, putting his arms around her and leaning his cheek against her hair. She could feel his heartbeat racing against her cheek.
She closed her eyes. “They tortured Gwendelfear.” It wasn’t a question, but it was so horrible that she wanted to make it one, wanted him to tell her she’d somehow misunderstood. “I was so angry with her for imprisoning you. I was glad to think she’d be punished. I didn’t think—”
“I know, love,” he said, holding her more tightly. “I know.”
“What were those, those rings of bruises from?” She didn’t want to know, but she felt compelled to ask.
Wyn spoke softly. “Magic has an infinite variety of uses, some of them terrible. There are…ways to hurt fae without permanently damaging them, physically at least.”
“That’s horrible.” Her stomach roiled with nausea and frustrated rage.
“Yes. But she is at Stariel now, and safe.”
“That doesn’t change what happened!”
“No. It doesn’t. But it is still better that she’s safe now rather than not. And we are wasting time when we should be looking for Irokoi.”
That startled her—Wyn had never cut her off like that before. She looked up and found him without expression, pupils shrunk to tiny black points in a sea of hard russet.
“Something unsettled you, in DuskRose, when we spoke to the queen. What was it? And don’t be glib.” It wasn’t fair to push him, not when he couldn’t lie, but neither was any of this. “You don’t need to pretend to be all right, just for my sake. I think we can cope with us both not being all right with what just happened because it wasn’t all right, not any of it!”
His expression didn’t change, a
nd she thought he was going to fight her on this, but eventually he sagged and said, “Tayarenn’s throne is made of stormdancer horns.”
“Oh,” she said in a small voice. The metallic spikes flashed through her mind. She’d thought they’d seemed familiar. “Oh. Oh, I hate this,” she said fiercely. “I hate that we invited her to our wedding.”
“I also don’t relish the prospect, though I suspect that fact is exactly why she agreed so readily.” Tired amusement flickered in his eyes. “However, I did enjoy telling her I was glad she wasn’t my in-law, so that’s something.”
She gave a weak smile. No wonder he’d been so uncharacteristically belligerent towards the queen. Oh, the memory of her sitting smugly on that throne made Hetta burn. “We’ll seat her at the very worst table, I promise. Do you mind terribly that I had to disinvite your family?” It felt extremely peculiar to be deciding on guest lists in the midst of, well, everything else.
Wyn spread his hands. “Her pettiness irritates me more than the thought of doing without Rake’s presence for a day, but even if that weren’t the case, it’s a small price to pay.” His eyes softened as he looked down at her. “How are you—” He caught himself. “How many am I up to today?”
“Four.” She looked around. “If it’s still today. How is it afternoon now when it was evening before?”
“Time moves differently in Faerie, and even more so in the deeper realms. And you didn’t answer my question.” His mouth curved. “Four times doesn’t seem excessive to me.”
Hetta put a hand to Lamorkin’s heartstone, still hidden under illusion. “I’m fine. We’re not going to get back to Stariel and find a hundred years have passed, are we?”
“I doubt it. The realms are becoming more connected now that passage between them has reopened. I suspect the disconnect is greater in Deeper Faerie, but the difference is more likely to be hours or days rather than years.” He drew the stone feather out of his pocket and weighed it. “Rake was right about the Butterfly Gate—we’re close to where Irokoi is. The tracking spell leads that way.”
