by AJ Lancaster
“I don’t suppose you’d let me carry you?” Wyn said, though his tone was rhetorical.
She shook her head. “I can walk. I’m just tired.” The cuts she’d received from Aroset stung, and her wrists ached where they’d been tied, but everything seemed to be working as it should be. She touched her throat and then remembered the heartstone was gone.
When had everything spun out of control so badly? Her plan to get Aroset had worked—more or less—but she hadn’t been prepared for the cost.
Wyn reached for her hand, squeezed. They both winced at the spark of static.
“How long do you think we have?” she asked softly. “Without the stone?”
“It will have to be long enough.”
Hetta had planned to sneak back into the house when they arrived. Of course she’d have to tell her family about the Conclave, but she didn’t see why it had to be right this minute, with her failure as a lord so fresh in her mind. She could still hear the sound of the heartstone crunching into pieces under Aroset’s boot.
However, she hadn’t counted on the Valstars feeling Stariel’s angry response to Aroset’s magic and swarming into an anxious mob in Carnelion Hall as a result. The doors were open, and Hetta could hear them all busily discussing what it meant, raised voices echoing.
“Are you sure you felt something, dear?” Caro’s mother was saying. Valstars-by-marriage had some connection to the estate, but it wasn’t the same as those who’d been born here.
“What if it means something’s happened to Hetta?” Alexandra’s voice, high and worried.
“I’m sure there’s a perfectly rational explanation.” That was Uncle Percival.
“Jack, where are you going?”
An annoyed grunt, the response too low to hear.
She and Wyn exchanged glances.
“I can—” But his offer to deal with the commotion came too late.
Jack froze in the doorway to the entrance hall, his mouth going slack at the sight of her. So much for hiding.
“Hetta.” His brows drew together. “How did you get here? Aren’t you supposed to be at the Conclave?”
Relatives began to crowd behind him. “What’s going on?”
Alexandra’s wide eyes, peering over Jack’s shoulder. “Hetta’s back!”
“How can she be back? She’s in Greymark!”
Hetta blew out a long breath. “It’s a bit of a story.”
By this point, Jack had taken in the full extent of her appearance. Concern sparked in his expression. “Are you well?” Then he blushed, as if just remembering her condition. “Er, I mean...”
Lifting her chin, she gestured for him to move and pushed past him into the hall. Wyn followed her like a sheepdog, as if he would shield her from questions by sheer physical presence. It sort of worked; his wings forced everyone to move and also caused a measure of attention to shift from Hetta to him.
“Yes, yes, as you can see, I’m back.” She made her way to the hearth, clasping her hands together. Her throat stuck.
How many times had she stood here now, making one strange announcement or another to her family? The hall was the only room in Stariel House that could hold all her family at once when they were all home without a squash. Perhaps she should have a lectern and a seat from which she could still see everyone installed for next time. Then she thought of Queen Tayarenn’s dais and horn-encrusted throne and her stomach twisted. No.
Her family had always treated her lordship with a certain amount of scepticism. All the grumbling about her various decisions from fae to finances she’d been able to bear with the knowledge that she stood by her decisions as being best for the estate. It wasn’t as if most of them even really understood the realities of such matters. But the Conclave—they understood that. She didn’t regret her actions, exactly, but it did feel like she’d failed them. It was a hard thing to have to confess.
Better to start with less fraught things. She began with the fact that Aroset should no longer be a problem, and how they’d been teleported here from Greymark.
“You ought to be taking better care of her, young man,” Grandmamma interjected.
“Ah—I am trying, my lady.”
“So the wedding will be soon, then?” Aunt Maude asked, rather pointedly. There was a general, if slightly embarrassed, rumble of agreement.
Hetta lifted a hand halfway to her throat before she remembered there was nothing there to grasp. How long would they have, without the heartstone? “Yes,” she said firmly, because she refused to contemplate the alternative. “But in any case, the main point is that you should be safe to leave the estate now.” She directed her words at Uncle Percival. Thank the gods Caro had persuaded him to remain while they’d been away. At least I’ve managed to keep them safe so far. It wasn’t much comfort, not when they wouldn’t have been in danger but for her.
Her uncle, for once in his life, seemed to be having trouble looking at her directly, a faint reddish tinge on his cheeks. Did her now-public condition offend his cerebral sensibilities? Maybe that explains why Caro is an only child, Hetta couldn’t help thinking. Caro looked both relieved—it couldn’t have been easy, persuading her stubborn father not to leave the estate—and alive with curiosity.
“This really isn’t acceptable, Henrietta,” Aunt Sybil began. “You cannot continue to keep putting off the wedding like this. What must the Conclave have thought—”
Hetta snapped.
“I don’t care what’s acceptable, or what the dashed Conclave thinks! They’re not going to ratify my membership anyway! I care that if I can’t find the High King in time, this baby will die! Now, forgive me, but you must excuse me.” She didn’t wait, striding out of the hall and leaving a susurration behind her.
She ran upstairs two at a time, feeling sick in a way that had nothing to do with her ‘condition’. When she reached her bedroom, she slammed the door and immediately burst into tears.
Dash it! She hated being this weepy creature, and she wasn’t sorry for snapping at her aunt. At least she hadn’t broken down in front of her family; that would’ve been excruciating. Rubbing angrily at her eyes, she focused on practicalities: removing her slashed-up clothing, warming the pitcher of water set by her dresser so she could wash away the blood from the cuts. A deep, foggy tiredness descended on her.
When Wyn found her, she’d given up all notion of soldiering on and had curled up in bed with the curtains drawn, despite it only being mid-afternoon. He didn’t say anything, just came and put his arms around her, stroking her hair.
When she woke, it was dusk and she was alone. She reached out and felt the spark of Wyn flare in response from the Stones. She didn’t want to speak to any of her family. However, she couldn’t keep hiding in her own house.
With reluctance, she dressed and emerged from her bedroom. She was halfway along the hallway to the library when she nearly ran straight into Marius coming the other way. He had a book in one hand and was trying to both read and walk at the same time.
“Hetta! What are you doing here?” He blinked at her, his spectacles slipping down his nose.
She almost laughed. Had Marius been buried in the library all afternoon, oblivious to the various goings-on? He hadn’t been in Carnelion Hall earlier.
“Failing at everything,” she told him bitterly. “And hiding from everyone.”
He took one look at her and said, “The map room, then?”
For lack of a better idea, she let him pull her along the hallway, down the stairs, across the courtyard, and up into the map room in the Northern Tower, where he forced her down into a chair. Hetta watched with some bemusement as he rang the bell for a maid and proceeded to arrange for tea and biscuits to be sent up with uncharacteristic decisiveness. It was only after the maid had bobbed a curtsey and left that he faltered.
“You can still eat biscuits, can’t you?”
Hetta just glared.
“Right. Sorry. And before you ask, no, that wasn’t some magical telepath
ic response.” He frowned. “I can’t honestly tell half the time either way whether I’m, er, mind-reading or not unless I watch people’s lips. But you’re…quiet, compared to the rest of the family. And I’m not getting a headache, which I’m beginning to think is a side-effect.”
It occurred to Hetta that Marius might’ve been absent from the earlier gathering in the hall for reasons other than being absorbed in a book. But at least the shielding she’d instructed Stariel on was working in some part.
“I’ll see if Stariel can shield everyone else too,” she promised.
“That’s not going to help me outside the estate though, is it?” He sat down opposite her. “So, what happened?”
The map room was a cosy circular room, the bulk of it occupied by the large table in the centre, with low shelves lining the two walls without windows and maps affixed to every bit of otherwise clear space around them. It naturally tended towards clutter, and of late this had only increased, thanks to Alexandra’s attempts to map waterways and Jack and Wyn’s sketches of planting plans for various fields. Wyn was a surprisingly poor drawer and tended to leave the actual sketching to Jack, but Hetta recognised his handwriting in the calculations in the margins of the nearest bit of paper. Her gaze snagged on it. Notes about barley seemed both so completely irrelevant right now and so completely the reason why she loved the infuriating man.
“Hetta?”
Hetta told him. When she got to the part about Aroset, Marius swore softly, but she ignored him and continued. She was already tired of repeating the story.
“And so we’ve nearly got everything we need, assuming Irokoi can fetch Torquil as he promised. Assuming we can get to the High King in time.” Her hand reached again for her non-existent necklace. “I don’t suppose you’ve found anything more about him?”
Marius tracked the movement with a frown. “Er, actually I think I may have some light to shed on that.” He held up the book he’d been carrying. It was a thin, battered volume, bound in pale blue leather. “This is a journal. A fae journal.”
“What? How did it get into our library?”
“I have my suspicions, and they have feathers and one eye,” Marius said drily. Hetta thought of the books Irokoi had brought with him from the High King’s library. “Watch this.” He held up the journal to face her. It was stamped with characters Hetta didn’t recognise as Prydinian, but as she stared at it, the characters shimmered and changed until they read: Nymwen.
The name triggered a memory, and she frowned, trying to recall where she’d heard it before.
“The whole text translates itself into Prydinian, if you stare at it long enough, though it’s a bit headache inducing.” Marius rubbed absently at his temples.
Memory rolled back; Nymwen was the name Wyn had said the strange undersea lake whispered. A chill went through her, remembering the heavy sorrow of that place.
“Who is Nymwen?” she asked.
“The High King’s daughter.”
49
Nymwen
Wyn left Rakken to his spellwork once he’d done all he could; or rather, once Rakken waved him off, declaring, “I’ve need for finesse rather than power now. Take yourself away, Hallowyn. Though if you happen to have a map of the leylines on hand, you may bring it to me.”
I could do without being dismissed as a superfluous servant, he reflected. But even Rakken couldn’t dampen his cautious optimism. He flexed his wings, feeling the stormcharge potential running through them, there but no longer overwhelming. It had been so long since he’d felt in control of anything. Perhaps he could take this one small thing as a good omen. For the first time since they’d begun this quest, fulfilling the High King’s task seemed truly possible, imminent even.
Except Lamorkin’s heartstone is broken. That wasn’t a good omen at all. He shook his head and launched himself into the sky. Stariel Estate spread below him, the intense greens of spring growth mixed with the browns of freshly turned soil. Everything always seemed so much tidier from above, perspective and distance smoothing out rough edges.
He landed on his room’s tiny balcony, already reaching out with his leysight to find Hetta. The spark of her blazed more brightly than usual, with a very non-Hetta edge to it that smelled of storms rather than the more usual chilli-pricked coffee he associated with her. His optimism fractured, replaced by the ominous tick of a clock. The charge was building so fast.
He found Marius and Hetta in the map room. An untouched tea tray sat on the map table, and there was something in their manner that set his instincts buzzing with alarm.
“I came to borrow one of Alexandra’s maps. What has happened?” he asked, because something, clearly, had happened.
Marius handed him a book without comment, and Wyn dropped it. Both Marius and Hetta looked at him in surprise.
“It bit me. Magically,” Wyn said sheepishly, for he wasn’t generally in the habit of dropping things.
It lay accusingly on the floor, shimmering with magic. Hetta bent down to touch it before he could stop her and winced as a bit of static jumped from her to the book. She made a thoughtful noise and looked at her brother. “It doesn’t hurt you to touch it?”
Marius picked up the book, tensing and then relaxing as nothing happened. “No.”
“Maybe it doesn’t like fae magic?” Hetta guessed, frowning at her fingertips.
“That would make sense from what Nymwen said. She wanted to be human.”
Wyn frowned at the name rune on the book’s cover. It was in stormtongue. “The name from the undersea. Who is Nymwen, and how in the high winds’ eddies did you come by that?”
“The High King’s daughter, apparently,” Hetta said. “I didn’t know the High King had children.”
Marius’s eyes widened. “He doesn’t. Sorry.” He rubbed at his temples. “You’re projecting.”
Wyn bolstered his mental walls, trying to rein in the shock roiling through him. He ran a hand through his hair between his horns. “That’s…” He couldn’t say impossible, since Marius clearly believed it to be true, but even so… “That sounds as believable as saying the Maelstrom itself has a daughter. What makes you think Nymwen is the High King’s daughter?”
“Ewan Valstar,” Hetta said.
Wyn thought of that dead-end on the Valstar family tree, the young man’s life cut short, and of the old lord’s grief-stricken words: The cursed queen gave her word. It won’t bring Ewan back, but mayhap it will keep the others safe for a time. A terrible premonition filled him.
Marius continued leafing through the diary as if the world hadn’t just upended. “Er, yes. Nymwen and Ewan were lovers. She wrote about him a lot.” The tips of his ears went pink, and Wyn wondered exactly what Nymwen had written. “They met when the High King—well, the High Queen—came to Stariel to witness the signing of the treaty between the Crown and Stariel. The High King left, but Nymwen kept returning to the Mortal Realm to meet Ewan.”
“The ‘fairy girl’ Ewan’s mother wrote about in her journal,” Hetta added.
“How did he die?” Wyn’s voice sounded strange to his own ears.
Marius hesitated. “Nymwen’s not…entirely clear. She speaks about struggling with her powers, about trying to stay in human form. It makes for quite depressing reading. ‘The power surges in me like the sea in storm. It frightens me. I worry I cannot contain it and keep this mortal form, but Ewan believes in me, and I will be human for him. I must.’ And this is the last entry: ‘He’s gone, and I cannot bear it. His blood is on my hands. I don’t deserve to live.’ Ivy and I have tried to find any more from that period, with no luck.”
“That’s an ominous last entry,” Hetta said softly.
Wyn thought of the deep, piercing sorrow of the undersea, the lake guardian’s mournful cry, and ice crystals formed in his blood. He didn’t want to follow his thoughts to their logical conclusion.
He didn’t have to; Hetta spoke it for him. She’d felt that sorrow too. “What if the High King hates Valstars
because his daughter killed herself after Ewan’s death?”
She took his hand, and a spark of static snapped between them. Wyn brushed it away.
“Then he has known all along, but he will still be bound by his word if we complete the task he set us.”
Hetta eyed him warily. “You’re not being as melodramatic about this as I expected.”
“I’m not…thrilled at the parallels to be found with a fae falling in love with a Valstar in a tragic love affair, but then, it isn’t as if I expected a warm welcome from my liege no matter who I was proposing to marry. I suppose my expectations didn’t have far to fall.” He half-furled his wings, trying to disperse his unease. Hetta’s hand was warm in his, and he knew she felt the skitter of charge pass between them. Her scent wrapped around him, subtly wrong, a storm edge where none should be.
“It sounds as if Nymwen blamed herself for Ewan’s death. I wonder why?” Marius mused.
Nymwen’s words reverberated in him. The power surges. I cannot contain it and keep to this mortal form. What had Rakken said, warning him that if he didn’t find the shape of himself, he’d have to survive a storm of his own making?
Oh, Nymwen. He felt a powerful swell of horrified empathy across the years for this fae who’d met such a tragic fate so long ago, if what he suspected was true.
“You think she might’ve been responsible, trying to be human for too long? Sorry.” Marius nervously ran a hand through his hair.
Wyn shored up his mental shields. “Call it a…working theory.”
Hetta’s eyes met his, her face drawn. “Well, it’s not exactly the helpful blackmail material I’d hoped for, but the High King seems committed to peace, if nothing else. I’m going to tell the High King that our marriage will be a symbol of renewed unity on a number of fronts; maybe that will persuade him to agree to a treaty with the rest of the Mortal Realm as well. You never know—maybe this once thing will go abnormally well rather than the opposite.”
