Whilst they wrestled together in the frost, I scrambled down the rocks, slipping on a patch of ice and falling to a heap below the hill.
The only thing I could think to do was jump onto Swift’s back, like I did to Munro and Malcolm when we pretended to fight back home.
My sudden weight on his back surprised him enough that he released Glen’s throat, giving him a chance to regain his breath and roll away.
Faster than I could believe, Swift reached behind his back, grabbed me and threw me forward onto the grass. The next thing I knew, I was winded and flailing around on the grass like a trout out of the loch.
He resumed his attempts at strangling Glen which gave me a chance to crawl back to the hillside, wheezing loudly as I went.
My panicked mind decided to grab a large rock. It made my wrists hurt to carry it, and I found myself staggering back towards the spot where our, now murderous, guide was attempting to strangle my best friend to death.
I swung the rock towards Swift, who hadn’t even noticed me stumbling back over to them, with every bit of strength I possessed.
The rock met his head with a dull thud, the contact between the two jarring my arm. For a painfully long moment, nothing happened and I wondered if I’d done nothing but injure myself with this plan.
Then, thank the Others, he keeled over sideways and didn’t move again.
T he King did not raise another hand to strike me after the night I met the girl, who looked exactly like Nieve. Perhaps because I spent most of my time recovering in my chambers, doing everything I could to avoid him.
As soon as I was recovered enough to resume my lessons, I jumped at the chance to ask Adair how it could be possible. The most realistic explanation I could think of was that the humans gave the King a child when they had twins, perhaps because he threatened them.
My shadow agreed with my theory but encouraged me to ask anyway. As his job was to stay with me and ensure my safety, we spent the week after I cracked my head open sharing meals and discussing the possibilities. He had asked some of the guards he was friendly with, but they all seemed as baffled by it as him.
Humans just appeared here in Culhuinn as babies. No one had any idea how, or why.
My teacher Adair had the answers, and they were so awful I wished I had never asked. His brother Laird Brochan, whom I spoke with weeks before, was highly respected. I always found him to be crude, so of course the King liked him.
His nephew Tomas lived at their family home and, much to my relief, only visited the castle for festivals. He followed me around every time he met me, asking me to visit him and doing his best to appear helpful and loving. Nieve and I had seen right through him the first time we’d met, he was ambitious and greedy.
Adair’s family lived near the border with the wulver kingdom, Wulvendach, and so were often at court. On one of their visits Adair had been introduced to the King and ended up becoming my teacher. He was kinder than his brother and, as a teenager, had left his family home to explore the land. Despite what his family thought, he ventured south into the human kingdoms and so could tell me all about them.
“I could have sworn it was Nieve sitting across from me,” I exclaimed, finishing my tale of that awful night.
“You are sure the head injury didn’t confuse your mind?” he asked, gesturing to my forehead.
My skin was still painful and healing after its collision with the corner of the wooden table.
“This was before all of that. I know what Nieve looks like, and that girl was the same.”
“She must be the changeling child,” Adair said, as if that was the matter explained.
“The changeling?”
“Ah, of course the King would hide such things from you. Leaving me to tell you about the darker parts of our land once again,” Adair sighed.
When he first began teaching me he was quieter, afraid to tell me the truth about our kingdom and share what he’d learned in the human kingdoms. Soon we grew to trust each other and, though he remained apprehensive, he knew he could speak against the King without consequences from me.
He looked so unhappy about having to explain what a changeling was that I considered telling him to forget the matter.
Perhaps my shadow could find out more, now that we at least knew what the girl was.
“To create workers for this kingdom, the King sends fairies south into the human lands to steal babies from their homes. That much I am sure you worked out for yourself.”
I nodded silently. The thought that somewhere in the south Nieve had a family made my eyes brim with tears. How could the King be so cruel? So selfish?
“Not wanting to risk starting a war between the humans and the fairies, the King looked for a solution. A way to steal babies without the humans realising. He found it in the form of a fairy, gifted with very rare and powerful magic. As you know some people are gifted, some with the ability to see the future, to heal or to create life. Most of those who are gifted with the ability to give life can use it only to revive small plants. At most they can use it to ensure crop growth in certain soils.”
I nodded again, remembering all I had learnt about the farmers and their designated fields.
“One fairy was born with the ability to create life in a human form. Those that know about this fairy speculate that he may be half fairy and half Other. Some say he was born within the standing stones between our kingdom and Wulvendach. No one knows the truth, only that the Others must be involved somehow as only they can give life and take it away.”
“This fairy, he creates the changelings?” I was horrified at the thought of such a gift.
“Yes. One fairy steals the human baby away whilst he creates a replica child from his magic to be left in its place,” Adair looked grim.
“So, the humans don’t know what is happening? They don’t realise that their babies have been stolen?”
“Oh they do, you can tell a changeling from a human. The fairy’s gift may be powerful but it is not without fault. The changelings die young, as the magic is not strong enough to last a whole human lifetime. While they live, they are often missing fingers or limbs and spend much of their lives unwell.”
I felt a surge of sadness for Nieve’s family and her changeling twin. That girl had likely spent her whole life sick and dying, whilst Nieve had been here with me. Her biggest problem being her restricted clothing options.
“Yes, I am sure the Others are unhappy with the King, the gifted fairy and my brother who introduced them. Although they haven’t seen fit to take their lives from them yet,” Adair leaned forward and gripped my hand. “When you are Queen, you can stop this.”
I tried to smile and assure him that I would. Of course, I would do whatever I could to stop this horror from continuing. However, it was hard to smile when the thought of being crowned, and the responsibility for a whole kingdom resting on my shoulders, made me want to leave the castle and never return.
“Why would the changeling be travelling north?” I changed the subject before I could panic further about my future.
“That I do not know,” Adair’s brow furrowed in confusion, “Let’s just hope she avoids the Queens, it is said that one of them hates humans.”
I knew that the changeling girl was not Nieve, she was not the girl I had grown up with and loved more than anything else in my life.
Still, the thought of her being executed by the Queens in Norbroch made my blood run cold. I knew her severed head would join Alasdair’s to haunt my dreams.
As I watched the servants bring out multiple courses of food, I had to fight the urge to scream out everything I knew about the changelings. To tell them all to leave the castle and flee south to the human kingdoms, where they had families waiting for them.
It made me sick to think that every human here had a weak, dying, changeling twin somewhere else. So many stolen babies. So many heartbroken families.
To my disappointment, Nieve had not served us since the night when the King first struck me. Perhaps mot
her had persuaded him not to allow her back, or perhaps he had harmed her.
My shadow and I had had no further chances to spy on Berwin and were never fortunate enough to stumble across Nieve in the halls. Nieve could be dead for all I knew and the thought made my head spin.
Instead I focused on my mother who sat across from me at the table. She was looking older in recent months. Perhaps the pressure of being married to such a disgustingly cruel fairy was finally catching up with her. As a mother herself, it sickened me that she did nothing to try and stop him from ruining the lives of other mothers across the land.
Instantly I felt guilty for that thought. I had failed to protect the one person I loved, how could I expect her to protect all those humans.
The meal was thankfully almost at an end, after one last course of wine and pointless conversation I would be free to return to my chambers with the last two people I cared about, Mae and my shadow.
A servant brought out a flagon of hawthorn berry wine for us and three cups. With his usual dramatic flair, the King poured each of us a drink.
I never cared much for wine and so I took a small sip, whilst father downed his glass in one go. Mother took a few large gulps but not the whole glass. I had noticed her drinking more as time went on. Perhaps to help her cope.
Mere moments after I swallowed, I felt a burning, gnawing pain in my mouth and my stomach. Father dropped like a stone to the ground and the burning intensified, so much so that I found myself sliding from my chair to the floor before I could look at mother.
“William,” I attempted to scream for help.
My voice was hoarse and weak, as if I had just sipped fire itself.
Shakily supporting myself on my hands and knees I retched, my body fighting to expel whatever was poisoning me. I could hear the footsteps of the guards swarming into the room, alerted by my scream, but my body was too weak to move.
“Princess!”
“Poison,” I wheezed.
By now I felt as if the wine had melted my insides, from my mouth right down into my stomach.
William’s strong hands were on my jaw and around my neck forcing me to open my mouth. Then, to my horror, I felt his rough fingers on my tongue and in my throat. I tried to stop him but my sweating, shaking limbs wouldn’t move as I wanted them too.
After an especially loud heave, he removed his fingers. When nothing happened, they returned.
Finally, after what felt like a lifetime it worked. It was strange that, even whilst poisoned and vomiting, I was embarrassed by my behaviour.
William supported my limp frame as I vomited up everything from our large dinner, all over us and the floor.
My vision blurred as he lifted me, then we were moving much too fast and I could no long keep track of what was happening.
I regained my senses much quicker than I would have liked, and almost fell out of the bed as I turned to avoid vomiting all over myself, again. A healer was there with Mae, helping me sit up and cleaning my face.
Their faces were grim as they explained how lucky I had been to have only ingested a small amount of poison, and that William’s quick thinking saved my life. With demands that I should rest and regain my strength they left me alone with him.
“Thank you,” I mumbled. My throat sore from the combination of poison, William’s fingers and my own vomit.
“I’m here to protect you,” William looked pale and shaken. “Freya, you were all poisoned this evening. The King died straight away but the Queen is still alive, for now. They are not confident that she will survive.”
I knew that, if my mother was dying somewhere in this castle, I needed to be with her. She may not have been the bravest, or always there for me when I needed her, but I loved her. She was the last family member that I felt any love for.
William silently led me through the halls and down to the healer’s chambers. A few human servants watched me as I passed, but I ignored them.
We were ushered into one of the rooms reserved for royal patients and there on the bed, looking frail and startlingly old, was my mother.
Her skin was flushed and glistening with sweat. I could sense the sickness in the air. Her lips were stained a deep purple colour and the pupils of her eyes were huge, giving her a wild look.
The healers hurried to explain things I couldn’t understand about plants and poisoned wine. I had never learned about poisons in my lessons, other than that they were something to avoid at all costs. A coward’s way to kill.
William pushed the babbling healer away to let me move to my mother’s bedside. I grasped her hand. It was so hot I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had burst into flames right before my eyes.
“It’s Freya, I’m here,” I told her hoarsely.
Her wide eyes darted around the room for a few moments before landing on me. Her purple mouth opened in a strange smile as she stared at my face, squeezing my hand weakly.
“My baby girl,” she wheezed, her voice weak from drinking the poison.
“Yes, it’s me. I love you,” I told her, kissing her hand.
She smiled but was unable to move any more than that. Whatever poison this was, it worked fast. The King had dropped straight away and realised that I’d seen the man I hated most die.
“Is she in pain?” I asked the healer, who was watching and twisting his hands together nervously.
“It is difficult to know Princess, she is so delirious,” he looked worried about his answer.
I was sure that the King would have punished him for being unable to cure the Queen but I knew there was nothing he could do. Whoever planned to kill us had picked a poison which worked so fast nothing could be done. It was all part of a plan.
It dawned on me that I too should be dead on the floor, my lips stained that harsh purple colour.
Mother made one final rasping noise in her throat before going limp. I watched, frozen, as she stared past me with unseeing eyes. It took me a moment to realise that she was dead.
It felt almost anticlimactic and I wasn’t sure what to do. The Queen was dead and so was the King which left me, the heir to the throne. An orphan.
I should have been hysterical with grief but no tears fell. King Ferchar had shown me nothing but cruelty over the last few years, and my mother had distanced herself more and more as his cruelty escalated. Any relationship I’d once had with them had flickered out long before now.
I was more worried about being the Queen of Culhuinn as the responsibility for the people of this kingdom now lay on my shoulders.
Mainly though, I was numb.
I gently placed my mother’s cooling hand onto her stomach and took a few steps back, wanting to distance myself from the death.
“May she find peace in the Otherworld.”
Earlier in the day I had been sitting in my chambers despising them. Now I was alone in the world with no one to despise. I should have despised whoever poisoned us and worked to find out who murdered them, but I couldn’t rouse any anger.
“Go and inform the relevant people,” I told the healer with a wave of my hand.
I honestly wasn’t sure who should be informed about their deaths first. Everyone would need to know.
“I don’t feel sad,” I admitted once the healer was gone, wanting to know what William thought about that.
“You were not close with them, it is understandable,” he answered sympathetically.
“It could have been me,” I said with a glance at my newly dead mother.
“Thank the Others it was not,” he looked angry at the thought.
I nodded, I was glad not to be dead. Even though my life had lost much of its happiness and excitement, I was still glad to have life in my body.
“I have no idea what to do now.”
“You will be crowned Queen and have the support of everyone in this kingdom. I will stand by your side. I promised you, things will get better.”
And for some reason I believed him.
10 YEARS AGO
&nbs
p; T oday was the day. King Ferchar, his family and their servants would finally be leaving Norbroch and heading south. I could barely hide my happiness.
I think even the servants and guards were glad to see the back of them. The human servants were meek and polite, probably out of fear. This meant that no real bonds had formed during the duration of their stay and very few people would be missed.
That was excluding Lachlann and I, and our love for each other. I never thought I would fall in love, but Lachlann’s arrival changed everything.
It was hard to tell if the King was pleased to be leaving or not, his arrogant expression gave nothing away. Princess Freya seemed unhappy, but Aelwen promised that she could visit again, now that our kingdoms were on good terms. The Princess eagerly agreed, and promised to bring her best friend back with her.
Once our final meal was over, Aelwen winked at me and headed off to find her brood of children. She knew of the plans, and it still surprised me how easily she had agreed to trick the King of a neighbouring kingdom, and steal away one of his servants.
She was not the wholly good and innocent Queen that everyone assumed she was.
I hurried through the halls, to the room where Lachlann and I had spent our first evening together all those weeks ago. Where we drank and shared our first kiss, the first of many.
Tormod hurried along beside me, he knew about our plans and I’d longed for his approval. We had been in each other’s lives for years and I could not deny that I was fond of him.
To my relief, he agreed with our plan and had even assisted us in finding the most suitable location for Lachlann to leave the group heading south. His friend Alasdair would be on the lookout to ensure that he went unnoticed.
I threw open the doors and rushed into Lachlann’s waiting arms. In the few hours that we had been apart I missed him desperately. He held me tight and kissed me soundly before letting go, blushing furiously when he noticed Tormod smirking from the doorway.
He was dressed in his travelling clothes, rather than the plain clothes which he wore to work. King Ferchar did not allow his servants any coin and so they had nothing but the basics, which he grudgingly provided.
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