by AJ Lancaster
One of his siblings ruling in his father’s place, ruling the faeland he had abandoned. How would that change things here, in the Mortal Realm? For Stariel and Hetta?
For his child?
“And you, Lord Valstar.”
“I don’t have any feathers,” Hetta pointed out, getting up from the picnic blanket.
Irokoi waved a hand. “Hair will do. This is just to set the initial pattern up—the real connection will be in blood.”
“How reassuring.” Hetta dutifully pulled out a few strands of hair with a wince.
“And now we arrange ourselves ever so nicely,” Irokoi said, skipping back to the Stones and depositing his treasure in the centre of the seven-pointed star. “Is everybody enclosed in their own circle? Good. Seal it with a drop of blood.”
Hetta’s expression spoke volumes, but Wyn had warned her, so she didn’t comment, just sighed and took a small peeling knife out of her pocket. Wyn carefully cut his thumb and let a drop of his own blood fall.
He hissed when the blood hit the spell, the leylines shimmering with potential. Hetta, too, took a sharp breath, her wide eyes meeting his.
Irokoi spoke, soft and intent. “Seven and seven; the price and the cost.”
The spell began as a small thing, lines of connection springing forth between them, magnifying as the currents hit each point of the star, doubling over and reverberating back towards the centre. Building, building, the pull of power towards an insatiable void. He could taste ThousandSpire, a faint, metallic edge on the back of his tongue. Cat had been right; the faeland was hungry.
The spell drew on them all, but for the first time Wyn didn’t fear the depth of his own power. He’d embraced the lightning to defeat Aroset, and that loss of self had somehow given him back control, even in the midst of the most powerful spell he’d ever seen short of the High King’s. Awe filled him as the storm of magic grew.
The storm held many signatures: dust after rain, drenched forests, the sharp hiss of ozone, sea wind, cardamom, citrus, cinnamon, frost. Pine and coffee pricked with chilli. The combination of stormdancer and Stariel magic made him feel…he didn’t know. A warmth in his chest.
Would this mingled storm-and-Stariel be his child’s signature, one day?
Hetta’s eyes were closed, her jaw set, and he knew she was wholly focused on keeping Stariel at bay. He could feel the faeland, scratching madly at the edges of their spell like a dog at a door, trying to find a way in. Hetta’s brow furrowed as she tried to reassure it.
The magic pulled and pulled, drawing deep, deeper than any spell had ever required of him. A new fear sparked in him—that the spell would burn him out, leaving only a husk behind. Had he been too trusting of Irokoi and Rakken?
But the smaller circles around each of them flared to life, the drain on his magic snapping off so abruptly that he staggered, only keeping himself on his feet by sheer willpower. That’s what the additional loops were for; a safeguard against the desperation of a faeland sucking them all dry.
The spell blazed along the unprotected lines with the ferocity of a wildfire, sucking them dry and leaving black, singed lines criss-crossing the hilltop. Only each small circle where they stood remained green.
The spell died.
But something had woken.
Wyn’s knees were weak and trembling. He hurried over to Hetta, who was bracing herself on one of the stones, her cheeks pale. Colour came rushing back, and he knew she was drawing on Stariel’s energy to recover more quickly.
“Did it work?” she asked him.
As if in answer, a portal flared to life between the Stones. It came out on top of one of the prison spires. In normal weather, it would look out towards the city. Now it showed only the storm, driving rain and wind reducing the visibility to nil. The magic ran wildly enough that Wyn felt Stariel bristle.
Irokoi stood to one side of the portal and gave a mocking bow. “Well, do we want to agree to let ThousandSpire settle this, or shall the backstabbing commence?” This remark was particularly addressed to Torquil.
Torquil scowled. “It is pointless to try to force a faeland’s hand.” He marched through the portal without a backward glance, Rakken and Catsmere on his heels. Irokoi followed, disappearing into the driving storm.
Wyn hesitated. They could wait until ThousandSpire made its choice, but—
Hetta took his hand. “Let’s go,” she said softly. “You need to see it done.”
Ah, she understood him even now. He had caused this, in some part; he owed it to his past self to witness this. They stepped through the portal together.
The magic slammed against him as he stepped into what was now a foreign faeland. It was disorienting to stand in the Spires and not feel a connection to it, but even without that bond, Wyn could feel the faeland’s turbulence. Cat had been right; this couldn’t have waited any longer.
The others stood in a loose circle where they had stepped through, already soaked to the skin though it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds. Wyn felt the moment the faeland realised they were there, some residual part of him still attuned to its attention. The wind died in an instant, and the storm simply stopped, fell away like glamour to reveal sullen sunshine and the city below.
Dark, feathered wings rustled from a thousand drakken atop a thousand towers, all of the creatures looking towards the prison spire.
“Oh.” Cat let out a breath and went boneless. Only Rakken’s grip saved her from falling as he bore her gently to the ground. She began to glow, and Rakken hissed and released her.
For a moment, his brother’s soul lay raw and vulnerable in his eyes, and Wyn saw straight to the heart of him. Rakken knew what was happening—they all knew—and he was both triumphant and utterly bereft. He and Cat had operated as two halves of one whole since they were born, different but equal, and now they were irrevocably cleaved apart. There would be no more the-twins, no more Prince-and-Princess, no more Cat-and-Mouse. From now on it would be Prince Rakken.
And Queen Catsmere.
51
The Gate Behind the Throne
So this was what being Chosen looked like from the outside. Hetta put a hand self-consciously up to her hair, which as far as she knew hadn’t started glowing post-lordship. Perhaps that was only a fae thing. Or perhaps Marius and Jack had been too polite to mention it.
The Spires felt different, though Hetta couldn’t put her finger on exactly how. There was still that unsettling sense of being watched. She hoped people unconnected to the estate didn’t feel that at Stariel. Perhaps it was only her own connection to Stariel that made her so aware of ThousandSpire.
Catsmere had never been a particularly expressive person, but she was curiously laid bare now. Hetta had never considered what she had in common with other faelords—Queen Tayarenn and King Aeros had been so alien and remote—but here was someone who knew even less about being Chosen than she did.
“It’s a lot, isn’t it?” Hetta murmured.
Catsmere turned to her, eyes wide and full of wonder, the shared knowledge passing between them. They both knew, in a way no one else quite did, how it was to be so intimately connected to a faeland. How it changed you—well, perhaps not that quite yet, but Cat would find out soon enough.
Catsmere nodded. “Welcome to the Court of Ten Thousand Spires, Lord Valstar.” She spoke with weighty ceremonialism.
Oh. They were rulers of two different lands, technically meeting for the first time. “Thank you, Your Majesty, and congratulations,” Hetta said, attempting the same. “Er, do you want to be addressed formally all the time now? Because I’m quite okay with just Hetta.”
Catsmere blinked but appeared to give Hetta’s words serious consideration. “You may call me Cat.” A pause. “...Hetta.”
Hetta smiled at her. “Welcome to faelord-ship.” Though she had mixed emotions about Cat’s ascension. Given the alternatives, Cat was probably the best they could’ve hoped for. She wasn’t malicious, but she would always come down on
the side of Faerie rather than mortals—and no doubt Rakken would be there advising how they might best take advantage of the Mortal Realm. Which was probably best for a faeland, but not necessarily for the human world.
Well, at least Cat was fond of Wyn. Maybe that would be enough.
“I owe you the weight of an obligation,” Cat said formally. “If you still wish it paid.”
“Yes,” Hetta said, taking Wyn’s hand and wincing at the shock. Hers, not his. “Where is the Gate?” Irokoi had said that ThousandSpire had one to the High King’s Realm, but what if he’d been wrong?
Cat’s eyes went distant, as if she were listening to something only she could hear. Did Hetta look like that, when she was talking to Stariel? “It is behind the throne, as Koi said. It feels…strange. I cannot interpret what ThousandSpire says of it. I don’t know how it came to be there, and ThousandSpire cannot tell me. Or perhaps I don’t know the right question to ask.” Cat’s expression grew troubled. She bared her teeth in a sharp, fierce expression. “You are no longer the newest faelord, Lord Valstar.”
“Perhaps we can share tips,” Hetta said lightly, her heart racing. There was a Gate! “Er, later, preferably.”
Cat nodded. “I will take you there.”
The taking consisted of flying and walking rather than translocation—which gave Hetta some satisfaction, since she hadn’t learnt how to do that straightaway either. Maybe she wasn’t as terrible a faelord as she’d thought.
They flew through a city gripped with the same hushed wonder as Cat. Rakken kept snatching glances at his twin, triumph mixed with anguish.
“This is our city now,” Cat murmured, as the light struck the jewels set into its many towers. Hetta had only seen the city at a distance before, but now they flew through the maze made of its many aerial bridges. Hetta just wished her stomach would cooperate with the rather spectacular view, which she would’ve enjoyed under other circumstances. Not now, she told her churning stomach, wishing she hadn’t lost her engagement ring. She’d gotten too used to relying on Stariel’s anti-nausea properties. She tried reaching to her faeland, but the link was hair-thin without the amplifier of her lost ring. It helped a little, but not nearly enough.
The skies began to fill with winged fae, in as vast a variety of forms as she’d seen at DuskRose’s ball, though there were more feathers here. The fae had no attention for anyone but Cat, watching her with something between fear and hope.
Hetta couldn’t read Wyn’s expression as he carried her through the skies, the beat of his wings a steady rush. This had been his home, where he must’ve flown as a child.
“Maybe we can bring our child here to visit, someday?” she murmured against his shoulder.
It took him a long time to answer, so long that she thought her words had been lost to the wind, but eventually he said in a low voice, “Perhaps.”
The throne room was a mess. Last time Hetta had been here, it had been lined with members of ThousandSpire’s court, full of mocking, watching eyes as King Aeros staged their confrontation. Now it was empty, a monument to ruined ostentation, filled with dust and broken ceramic tiles. All the jewels in the tree-trunk-thick columns and walls had shattered. The wind swept dried leaves across the cracked stone floor.
Hetta hadn’t given much thought to the immediate aftermath of King Aeros’s death, when Aroset had briefly held the Spires. It looked like no one had had time to clean up.
Cat rested a hand on a pillar where all the jewels were dead, looking up to the vast open space where there was no roof over the room. There was something intense and complicated in her expression, and Hetta knew instinctively what it was. Home. Hetta looked away, feeling like she was intruding on something private.
Rakken was staring at the raised dais where the throne stood. The throne had cracked in two, and the sockets that had held diamonds and rubies were empty. A strange, glittering red sand covered its seat. That’s where the rubies went, Hetta realised with a shock. Something had turned them to powder.
It felt wrong to break the silence, but there wasn’t exactly time to dally. “Where is the Gate?” Hetta asked, the vast space swallowing her words.
Cat shook herself out of her abstraction. “This way,” she said softly, leading them towards the throne. She touched her hand to the broken mosaic on the wall, and it sprang open to reveal a concealed passageway.
“Did you know this was here?” Hetta asked Wyn, who was frowning at the opening.
“I…yes,” he said after a beat. “Yes, though I think I had forgotten it. We used it as children?” His voice went up slightly, making it a question.
Cat canted her head. “Yes,” she said, thoughtfully. “Yes, we did.”
Irokoi only smiled.
The passageway led to a pool surrounded by stone walls. The pool was set in stone steps, leading down to crystal clear waters. Lilypad-like flowers with huge pale leaves dotted the surface. The jewels here weren’t dead, and unusually they weren’t the red-and-gold colour scheme that predominated elsewhere in the throne room. They were blue and green, the pattern of tiles like the ripple of water.
“This is the Gate,” Cat said, waving at the pool. She still had an abstracted look, as if she were listening to something far away.
“How do we open it?” Hetta asked, walking carefully down the steps to peer into the water. It only appeared knee deep at this end, but the bottom of the pool looked as if it were slanted, growing deeper towards the middle. Her experience of fae magic so far made her cautious. “Is it safe to touch?”
“I remember swimming in here as a child.” Wyn pulled off his boots and rolled up his trousers before wading in. Nothing happened. He looked expectantly at his sister.
But Cat was frowning at the waters and shook her head. “I don’t have the key.”
“Blood,” Irokoi whispered, helpfully holding out a small knife. Rakken’s eyes flicked from the knife to the pool, narrowing, but he said nothing. He hadn’t spoken a word since Cat had been chosen, Hetta realised.
“Thank you,” said Wyn drily.
“Both of us?” Hetta asked, eying the knife with trepidation.
“His,” said Irokoi. “But you should be in the water too. Speak the High King’s name.”
Hetta pulled off her shoes and carefully stepped into the pool. The water was tepid, not the cold shock she’d been expecting. She and Wyn looked at each other.
“Remember our persuasive speech about unity,” she murmured. He swallowed, gave a nod of acknowledgement, then carefully pricked a finger. The drop of blood welled, hitting the water with a small cloud of colour, quickly dissipated.
“We have done as you asked; you owe us a boon, Oberyn. I call you, Oberyn, High King of Faerie. Oberyn!” Wyn called, his voice low and solemn.
The water began to churn. The world went dark.
52
The High King of Faerie
The world’s disorientation righted itself and left Hetta standing next to a wall in a vast plaza filled with silent fountains. Alone.
Where was Wyn? Hetta whirled, but there was no sign of either him or the Gate they’d stepped through, only fountains of every shape and size, filling the enormous plaza as far as she could see. She searched the sky in hope of wings and gasped. There were two suns, making the light extremely odd and the time of day difficult to determine. Of course the High King’s realm would have the most faerie geography of all.
Giving herself a shake, she peered into the fountain nearest her and gasped again because the water showed not her own reflection but a familiar mountain range: the Indigoes. The pool was a Gate, a Gate to Stariel. How was it possible there was a Gate to her estate that she didn’t know about? So much for having secure boundaries.
Hetta turned away from the image and walked over to the next fountain. A little bit of static jumped when she touched it and she pulled back, her heart in her throat. Where was the High King?
She peered into the fountain, careful not to touch anything. It showe
d a similar disconcerting non-reflection, though this time of an unfamiliar landscape. She inspected several more fountains without touching them and found the same thing. All Gates, all to different faelands. Did every fountain contain a Gate? Did this plaza hold a Gate to every faeland there was? She swallowed. The plaza stretched into the distance in three directions; she couldn’t begin to estimate how many Gates that would mean.
The stone wall that bounded the fourth compass point was too high to see beyond, and the long, smooth line of it stretched unbroken along the horizon with no discernible exits. Exactly how big was this place? The quiet of it was unnatural, giving Hetta an urge to keep constantly turning to check there was no one behind her.
Hetta went back to Stariel’s fountain and leaned over it, thinking. The snow on the highest peaks of the Indigoes contrasted sharply with the dark slopes and the clear blue of the sky. If she clambered into the fountain, she’d be home in moments. She took a firm step back.
There was a Gate to her faeland in the High King’s own realm. It made her feel oddly bristly, that the fae High King apparently saw Stariel as part of his kingdom. And just why had Hetta emerged here, coincidentally next to an oh-so-helpful exit point, and without Wyn? It was hard not to interpret her location as a hint: the High King wanted her to leave. Or perhaps the hostile, prickling atmosphere was merely her imagination.
“I’m not going to leave without talking to you!” Hetta said loudly, just in case the High King was listening. The words echoed into nothing without a response. “And certainly not without Wyn,” she added for good measure, scanning the sky for blue wings without success. Where was he?
The High King values fae lives, Hetta comforted herself, thinking of the lake guardian and how it had avoided harming Wyn. Which meant Wyn must be all right, wherever he was, though it couldn’t be a good sign that the High King had separated them.
