by Lexa Hillyer
“And I don’t disagree with your assessment,” he admits. “However, the problem you’ve identified is one that can only heal over time, with the careful rebuilding of Delucian society. We will lose thousands of lives in the meantime if we are not focused on aggressive tactics, fortifying the biggest and wealthiest fiefdoms first, along with those most exposed to Malfleur’s path to the palace. We must stall her advance until we can detect a weakness, which we will then go after with clean, swift, vicious action.”
Clean. Swift. Vicious.
Isbe moves toward the draft from a nearby window and slides her finger along the cold glass. William is like a windowpane, she thinks, most of his story withheld, his surface a distraction from the landscape she cannot see. She isn’t sure yet what she thinks of the prince as a military mind, or how to balance what she knows of him already—his alacrity and efficiency, his sometimes overly serious nature, his righteousness, which borders on passion—with the qualities that are still in a state of emergence, like waves of reinforcements arriving from distant lands.
“If you’re not interested in my opinion, why did you seek me out today?” she asks, a mixture of impatience and curiosity coursing through her. The truth is, she hasn’t yet figured out her part in this war. Not that she’d admit that to William. When it comes down to it, she’s just the untrained bastard daughter of a dead king, the product of a meaningless and thwarted affair, the victim of an unjust faerie tithing.
“I am interested. How would you have me respond, though? What would you have me do?” William touches her arm lightly, and she pulls away.
The answer has already been sitting in the room, of course, staring at her like a pig’s head on a platter, an apple stuffed in its jaw, big, obvious, and somehow unappetizing. She turns back toward his voice. “You must marry Aurora, like we planned.”
Not more than a month ago, it had been presumed his eldest brother, Philip, would wed Aurora, and little thought was given to the fates of Philip’s younger brothers, Edward and William. But then Philip and Edward were both murdered on their way to Deluce by Malfleur’s forces, and the alliance relied on Isbe convincing the last remaining Aubinian prince—William—to awaken Aurora and marry her. Only somewhere along the way, William began to doubt his commitment to that plan. He even proposed to Isabelle instead—not once, but twice!
But then Aurora woke up, before Isbe could say yes. And ever since, the prince has been awkward around Isabelle. He has been visiting Aurora’s bedside every day to make sure she’s recovering from her long sleep, and though he hasn’t spoken of a wedding, Isbe figures there is no reason to keep stalling.
The prince releases a breath. “And this will fix Deluce’s ‘attitude problem,’ as you call it.”
She bristles. “Not fix, no. But perhaps it will dull the spike of fear that has them turning against their own land. The people need to feel safe, they need to perceive that we are doubling in size and force.”
“Aren’t you worried a wedding could give the opposite impression—that we’re celebrating instead of strategizing against a common enemy?”
She nods. He has a point, and it’s one she has already been turning over in her mind. “The ceremony should be brief, only a few key witnesses, minimal fanfare. Just enough to make it look optimistic.”
“You don’t sound optimistic,” William says.
Isbe huffs. “What do you want from me, William?” Does he really want her to say the unsayable? Confess to her dreams at night, in which his hands continue to trace patterns on her skin, his breath to dance along her neck, his words to twirl through her veins like silk ribbons, finding their way into her heart, waking something in her? No.
“What do my feelings about this wedding matter?” she presses on, ignoring the tiny break in her voice. “I never suggested anything to you but that you marry my sister in the interest of both our kingdoms.” Her ears burn in anger, in frustration, in all the wanting that she has been pushing down inside her. “Yet you continually question me, challenge me, protest, and put it off. But tell me, is there any good reason to delay further what could be done and over with by week’s end?”
“Over with?” His voice, usually soft, grows hard. “Last I heard, marriage is for life.”
“You know what I mean.” She puts her hands on her hips to still their trembling.
There’s a pause and she hears him sigh. “Then no,” he finally answers, so faintly she’s forced to sway slightly closer to comprehend him. “I see no reason to delay.”
She knows she has no right to let his response—so definitive—disappoint her. It’s what she wanted to hear, what she forced him to say.
Isbe swallows. “Good. Now if you don’t mind, I’ll speak to my sister and begin readying the staff.”
He clears his throat. “Wonderful.”
She pauses, waiting—unable to leave. He’s still standing so near she could reach out and touch him, pull him toward her.
But if he was going to make one last effort, going to beg her to reconsider the proposal he made to her in the wine caves, insist that it is Isabelle and no other woman he will marry, that moment has passed.
She straightens her shoulders. “Excellent.”
She storms off, letting the door gape behind her like an open mouth.
Isbe flies through the stone corridors, dimly aware that only action—violent, halting—will keep her from falling apart, from allowing a scream to erupt, or worse, tears.
By the time she reaches the library, her temper has simmered only a little. Aurora is in her favorite chair, but not reading. Isbe knows this because of the rapid whisper of vellum pages, suggesting her sister is thumbing through them impatiently.
Isbe is not the only one who has changed since the sleeping sickness. Aurora has grown distant or, rather, gathered into herself. Her lack of voice now has a weight to it, the way the soundlessness of being underwater seems to press in on you, enter you and echo, making you less aware of your surroundings and more aware of yourself.
The fluttering stops.
“We must do better,” Isbe tells her sister. She squares her shoulders. “We have to be strong now, for Deluce.”
Aurora stands up, a tiny stir in the stillness of the room. And then she is beside Isbe, pulling her into the room, her delicate fingers pressing words into her sister’s palms.
But how can I be strong for Deluce, when I know that Sommeil needs me too? My heart is in two places, sister, and I cannot bring its other half back.
“Whether it’s split in two places or a dozen doesn’t matter. You must move forward with the half you still possess. Or whatever portion.”
You’ve never been terribly good with math, Aurora teases, and Isbe laughs.
“I’ve never been good at much, really.” She forces the next part out. “I’m quite sure I won’t be any good at all when it comes to planning your wedding, either.”
Aurora’s hand twitches in hers. So there is no way to stall further?
Isbe sighs and hugs her sister. “For what?” she whispers. “Heath?”
Aurora pulls away.
When she first awoke, she and Isabelle had spent hours relaying what had happened to each of them since Isbe ran from the palace. Isbe was shocked to learn that Aurora too had experienced an unbelievable journey. That she’d not just been sleeping, but somehow, another part of her—a part of her that remained awake—had been transported to a land called Sommeil, a world constructed out of dreams by the once-thought-dead Night Faerie, Belcoeur. In Sommeil, Aurora had come close to falling for a hunter named Heath, but she hadn’t had the time to find out if it would blossom into true love, because Sommeil itself was in distress. . . .
Is in distress still. When Aurora awoke, she left Sommeil in flames, and she has pleaded with Isbe since, begging to return. I’ll bring a small brigade of soldiers with me this time, Aurora insisted. We’ll find a way for everyone to be safe.
But it’s not that easy. They don’t know for sure if it’s
even possible to return, or to bring others. And can Deluce really spare a legion to stage a rescue in a nebulous dream world?
There’s a settee in front of the hearth. Isbe flops down onto it. “Aurora. True love—it’s a trick.” She hates the way the truth abrades her throat. “The language of the curse? It was all a terrible lie, a puzzle. The fae are notorious for their deceit. We know this.”
Aurora comes back to her, pushing Isbe’s feet off one end of the settee so she can sit beside her. Maybe so. But that should have been for me to discover, for me to feel. And now I’ll never know for sure.
Isbe is doing everything she can to control her frustration, but the fact is that Aurora’s romantic notions have no place here anymore. They’re no longer little girls. She has realized something in the last few weeks: at birth, we receive our share. Though we don’t always know it, our hand has been dealt. Our lives will have their demands, their inevitabilities—and what we want will have very little to do with it.
She thinks suddenly of the way she and her lifelong friend, Gilbert, came together urgently in the slippery, salt-sprayed chaos of the whaling ship and kissed just once before the sailors wrenched them apart. And then, the same way the stench of the injured narwhal’s blood seemed to permeate her hands and hair and the whole ocean, her separation from Gil infused everything that came after: Her desperate arrival at the Aubinian palace. Her bargain with Prince William, Deluce’s oil for use of Aubin’s weapons. And of course the other trade: Deluce’s princess—and her nation’s gold as dowry—for Aubin’s military alliance.
Isbe picks at a loose thread in the upholstery to keep herself from shaking her sister into reason. “I’m convinced now,” she says, “that love and pain are two sides of a coin, and you would be blessed to be spared both. Besides—” She pauses, the thought coming to her in a sudden, unwanted burst. “There’s no reason to think that, over time, you might not fall in love with William. There are many things to admire in him. He is not as serious as he seems. He has a mind like fire. He—”
Isbe stops, feeling heat rush to her cheeks. She hasn’t brought herself to tell Aurora everything. She can’t—the secret of what happened between her and William is something that even she can’t quite believe, let alone admit aloud. It was wrong; wonderful and wrong. And yet she cannot find a way to feel ashamed of it, which terrifies her more than anything else. She clears her throat. “And anyway, what matters is that we have a duty to our kingdom. We have lives to save, people to rally.”
But the people of Sommeil are real too. What about their kingdom? What about their lives?
Isbe leans back, facing the hearth, listening to the morning fire crackle and pop. All this talk of love and war is overwhelming. She feels like a loose carriage wheel about to come undone, on the verge of dropping her cargo, of letting everyone down, and still so far from their destination. “I can’t tell you which lives to save—or if we can save any at all.” Even our own, she thinks. “All I can say is that we need you here. I need you.”
Aurora stands up then, and pulls on Isbe’s hand. Well, let’s go to the gardens, then.
“Why?” Isbe allows her sister to take her by the arm and lead her out the library door.
Because, Aurora taps, something must be in bloom even now. Maybe the crocuses. And I can’t get married without proper table bouquets, now can I?
3
Belcoeur,
the Night Faerie
Fire, like the open throat of the death faerie—his ash breath.
Sommeil burns.
Servants scream, fleeing the castle amid the acrid scent of smoldering clothes and flesh. Belcoeur crawls out of the rubble, toward the flaming Borderlands. In her palm: a charred thread. Huddled into herself, she pulls. She unravels. Her fingers move deftly, taking the threads of her own dress and rebraiding them, weaving the chaos of her heart by hand until there is no more gown, until she is exposed, nearly naked, skeletal. Old. Dying. This is the true Belcoeur. The world of lies—dreams—that sheltered her softly, like a spider’s web, is coming down in a tremulous haze.
But even in ruin, hope blooms. There—moving toward her—something white. Something gold.
Belcoeur gasps, letting the threads drop from her hands. “You came.”
There is such a thing as wanting something too much—waiting so long and so fiercely for it that when it finally arrives, it cannot satisfy the hole its absence created.
She stares. There is no rush of joy in Malfleur’s return; instead, Belcoeur feels only the halo of loss surrounding her sister, the unfillable gap between wish and reality. She is newly conscious of her own aged body—its protruding bones, covered in a thin layer of underclothing and lace. Her knobby shoulders and hunched back. The unraveled, ashen dress strewn around her on the ground. All lives, Belcoeur realizes—faerie or mortal, long or short—are but an unspooling of the inevitable.
“Sister,” Malfleur whispers, kneeling before her.
And still, hope flutters and starts. “Sister,” Belcoeur chokes out. Fresh tears form at the corners of her eyes. “Will you help me?”
Malfleur seems to take in the disaster around them for the first time—the raging fire, the trapped people, the falling trees and crumbling towers. “I need to know something first,” she says calmly. Her eyes gleam black and cold. Belcoeur remembers, quite suddenly, that her sister does not dream—has never dreamed. Her eyes contain that dreamlessness. It is not a lack, but a gift, a form of power. “What did you do with the child?” Malfleur asks.
“The child,” Belcoeur repeats. The child. The child. Thorns prickle up around her heart, vines squeezing in on her lungs. She tries to breathe, but the smoke has gotten denser, the sky darker. “I don’t . . . I don’t know. I can’t remember.”
“Yes,” Malfleur seems to hiss. “You must.”
“Please,” Belcoeur whimpers.
“What happened to the child?”
“I . . . she . . . I left her. Left her there. Tucked her into bed one last time. I kissed her good-bye. She looked so cold. So cold.”
“You left her,” Malfleur repeats slowly.
Belcoeur nods, the memory sapping all that remains of her strength. Her head is too heavy to hold up any longer. Her arms start to give, and she lowers herself onto the ground, one cheek in the dirt. How foolish, to think her sister had come in time to save her.
She has only come in time to see her die.
“Yes, I left her. My baby. Frozen forever . . .” A sob chokes back the rest.
“Wake up, Daisy,” Malfleur snaps, and for a second, the old nickname shoots one last frantic fumble of hope through Belcoeur’s veins. “You didn’t bring your daughter into Sommeil. You left her behind. And did she live?”
But that was more than a century ago now. And there are some things we cannot have, no matter how badly we wish for them.
Belcoeur shakes her head against the ground. “She died.”
And then Malfleur’s icy fingertips have grasped the back of her neck.
Suddenly Belcoeur begins to cough and sputter. “What . . . what are you doing?” she asks desperately, struggling now, fighting against whatever is happening to her, as an incredible pain sweeps through her bones.
“It’s called transference, my dear Daisy,” Malfleur says. “And I’ve been perfecting it for many years. It won’t take long now, and then . . .”
But the physical torment is so great, Belcoeur can no longer follow the words. She scrabbles against the grit and grass, tearing open the skin of her palms.
“Your magic,” her sister is saying. And then, “It will be mine.”
A wild agony rips through Belcoeur’s flesh, parting her lips in a wail that cuts off abruptly, a snapped string. She is reduced to silence, to the sudden clarity of pure pain. There is no space left for sadness, or loss, or love.
With her last breath, the queen of Sommeil turns up her bleeding hand; the blood sizzles, becoming smoke. Transference.
4
Aur
ora
There’s a knocking at the gate. Aurora sits upright in bed. Her first thought is that the war has arrived, just outside her door. Malfleur and her army of Vultures. Some shadowed, hidden part of her almost yearns for it—for an escape from this new prison. When she woke from Sommeil, her sense of touch and her voice had vanished, just as she’d feared and knew they would. Now this tower, this castle, this life is slowly burying her alive, eating away at her like the moths and termites that destroyed Queen Belcoeur’s tower, turning it into a crumbling relic she could never leave. The waking world hardly resembles the one she left behind. The roar of waves against Deluce’s cliffs sounds alien to her now, full of an anger she never noticed before. It’s the not knowing that tortures her the most—what happened to Heath, and Wren, and Belcoeur, and little Flea. Were they even real? Was what she felt real? And was that love?
The knocking again.
Aurora flips back the coverlet and hurries to her window, but the crisp night brings nothing other than the distant scent of woods . . . and ash. A strange burning scent that brings back, with a flash of horror, the memory of her last moments in Sommeil, and the fire that ravaged the castle, the Borderlands, the whole world, it had seemed.
Thud, thud, thud. The iron locks of the front gate rattle in their sockets. The pounding is inside her, a rhythm to her racing heart.
She lets go of the window curtain and moves toward her door, inviting the escape from her chambers. Tomorrow she will wed Prince William of Aubin, and she’ll finally be crowned queen, a notion too massive and tangled to give her peace. Sure, she knew she’d be crowned when she came of age, shortly following her sixteenth birthday, so long as she agreed to marry the prince—but that doesn’t stop her from dreading both.
It’s not that there’s anything wrong with the prince. No, the problem most certainly lies with her. There’s a restless animal caged in her chest, clawing to get out. She’s afraid if she sets it free, it will destroy her, destroy them all.
