Wicked As You Wish

by Rin Chupeco

  “When did she make these predictions?” Zoe asked.

  “The day Maidenkeep froze. It was the final vision she had of His Highness. After that, she could discern nothing.”

  “We were like, what? Six years old?” Ken muttered. “I didn’t even know where we were gonna live, then, much less know I’d be here.”

  “You remember the war, Ken?” Tala asked.

  “Of course. Don’t you?”

  “Not really. Mom said I was still fast asleep when they brought me away.”

  “The sky is dark tonight,” a new voice sounded by the doorway. “It shall rain hail again soon enough. The poor boy shall be wet before long, I warrant.”

  Tala had been expecting a crone, someone that fit the age-old witch stereotype. What she saw was an elegantly dressed lady, her white hair piled high on her head and expertly pinned back, and amused green eyes, like a cat’s. She dressed like a royal noble about to hold court, glittering gems on her fingers and lace generous across her bosom.

  From across the hall, the harp’s music broke off without warning.

  The count rose, moving to assist the old woman to her seat, but her hands flicked out to shoo him away. “Bother that, Hiram,” she said, her voice Avalonian-accented and soft. “I’m not an invalid.”

  “The Dame of Tintagel,” the count told the others. “My mother.”

  “The Hag of Tintagel, Hiram,” the old woman corrected with a soft, tinkling laugh, displaying even white teeth. “Is that not what they call me? But the boy does not come to the table. He lurks outside at his peril. The sky is dark tonight, and the clouds shall weep soon enough.”

  “I will ask the knights to find him, if you like.”

  “I like for nothing,” the old lady said, with a small sigh. “But I have a soft spot for William. His boy will not come willingly, and he shall be wet and thankless when he does. It is the Nottingham way, to spurn help when help is due.”

  “I presume you know who our other guests are, Mother.”

  “Have I ever been wrong?” She glided effortlessly around the table. “You have grown since I last saw you,” she said as she reached West’s chair. She patted his arm fondly. “Of all who sit at this table, it is your eyes that see clearest, though not even you know the truth of what you carelessly speak. Still as ugly as ever, dear one, but do not fear. All the better for the ugly groom to deserve the pretty bride. But beware of pretty maids hiding in dark village corners. They are not for you.”

  She moved next to Loki. “A tangled web,” she murmured, shaking her head, “tangled and tangled and tangled. You shall break a scepter over your knee and throw away a crown. You will deliver a throne into Neverland’s mercy, and your fathers will be proud. A light shines about you, Loki. There is more to you than outlander-born. And yet you must not let the stump, stump you far too often, lest the girl is lost.”

  Ignoring the perplexed look on their face, she turned to Zoe, whose mouth had been open in indignation on West’s behalf. “Close your mouth, young doe. The swamps shall fill it soon enough.” She chuckled. “Oh, how they shall laugh, my dear; how they shall laugh. To take the shire over the gest, the chaff over the grain; how they shall laugh! But you shall laugh last and laugh long. The dead shall rise for you, little girl. The dead shall rise.”

  Tala had never seen Zoe turn so pale until that moment, but the Dame only tittered again, like she’d told a joke, and then turned to Kensington. He squirmed under her thoughtful gaze.

  “Learn to swim, boy,” was all she said, before turning her attentions to Alex.

  Spindly fingers reached out to touch his face. Alex shrank back. “I just want a closer look, Your Highness. Ah. Yes. The firebird chooses true. The armies of sky and earth and sea shall answer your call. Such a heavy burden for one so young. A dozen times cursed, and also a dozen times blessed. Your dance with the queen shall be long, my dear, but your turn with her shall come soon enough. There will be a choice, that much I can see. A choice made in the castle of brick and ice. One leads to death. The other leads to something much worse.”

  She shuddered briefly, snatching her hands away like she had just been burned.

  “A traitor, a traitor, a traitor. Traitors three. The wolves know, oh how the wolves know, of the traitor, the traitor, and the traitor in your midst. The brave little tailor may lose a leg for you, and the fenking’s daughter may take up arms for you, and the mermaid shall lose her voice. Traitors; one for glory and one for dominion and one for love, and only then will you know of the traitor in your midst.”

  “Are you accusing one of us?” Zoe sputtered.

  “You think I lie, child?”

  “I don’t believe in seers,” Zoe said bravely, though she had not stopped shivering since the woman’s pronouncement on her.

  “Hawks have little taste for deer, as four legs shall outrun two. When you finally seek the comfort you want, it shall be with graves and not with feathers. Run as fast as you can, little doe; you will not run far enough.”

  “Mother,” the count began, his expression pained, but the Dame waved him away with a perfumed hand, her fingernails manicured and trimmed.

  “Strands of fire from the king,” she said. “But not the only braids of prophecy I see tonight. Strands of fire thicken this room. It marks each and every one of you. It comes, I can feel it. Strands of fire, filling the room. Filling it so that I almost cannot breathe.”

  “The winter wars come; it wraps you all in it, like cocoons. The keep shall freeze and the keep shall burn before the keep shall rise. Do you not feel it? Do you not feel them? They shall rise up from the quiet places, to honor that which was broken, and the keep shall burn.”

  Overcome by her own words, the Dame lifted a hand to her temple, turning her head like she was shaking off a blow.

  “Mother!” The count was at her side in an instant. The servants hurried forward. Ken started up from his chair, and West’s eyes were round with fright.

  “Perhaps you should go and lie down again,” the count suggested gently.

  The Dame wavered. Suddenly she looked old, the jewelry and exquisite clothes doing nothing to hide it. “Perhaps I should.” She reached out one last time to grab Loki’s arm, holding on for a moment. “A traitor,” she whispered again, almost pleadingly, before allowing her hand to drop, servants appearing to guide her away.

  “Woof,” Loki said. Only the firebird, now feasting on apples, remained unaffected.

  “I must apologize,” the count said. “This is the first I have seen her so agitated in quite a while.”

  “How long has Great-Aunt Elspen been this way?” West asked.

  “She has been insistent about this coming war for years now, though she was always too vague for us to glean more. This is the only time I have heard her go into this much detail, though for the life of me, I do not know what she means by it.”

  In the ensuing silence Kensington, looking like he’d been cheated somehow, but wasn’t entirely sure of what, spoke up.

  “How in the bloody Burns did she know I can’t swim?”

  A battering of wind screamed through the walls, as outside, the sounds of hail grew louder.

  18

  In Which the Dame Has the Last Word

  With sleep came nightmares.

  Tala stood before two heavy gates against a background of endless, swirling black. One stood to her left, crumbling and in disrepair, of aged bone. The other on her right, white and gleaming.

  “Choose,” a voice whispered, a slow rattling hiss not unlike the ice maiden’s. Alex’s face, pale and exhausted, drifted into her line of vision, but faded from view just as quickly.

  “Choose.”

  Beyond the left gate she saw fire. Screams rang through the raging inferno, and the flames reached out for her, the heat searing her skin. Tala stumbled back, coughing.

  Zoe, K
ensington, and West sat motionless before her with heads bowed, indifferent to the loud roaring from the skies. Above them, several hundred—perhaps even thousands—of creatures made of fire raked the ground with flames. Tala found herself yelling to warn them, pleading with them to run, but a large fireball engulfed the trio, and they disappeared in the smoke.

  She saw Alex kneeling before a curved hook suspended in the air. She saw Cole lying motionless on his side, a sword through his back while wolves made of ice worried at his hands and feet. She saw figures rising from the blood-soaked ground—corpses, crawling and snarling and clawing their way out from black soil—and she saw Ken again, only this time withered and drawn and no longer laughing, leading them away into darkness.

  “Choose,” another voice cackled, and this time it sounded like the Dame of Tintagel’s.

  Beyond the right gate a crystal castle stood. Tala saw the Snow Queen, so lovely and elegant and cold, sitting on an ice throne at the center of a frozen lake. Her eyes were closed, her expression serene.

  She saw Loki, sitting in a chair forged from steel and knives. They swung at a mirror with a heavy cudgel, which broke into thousands of pieces.

  She saw a woman rising from the sea, skin a dark brown and black hair long and flowing. She held a curved dagger in one hand and a bright, shining sword in the other. Her eyes were oddly mismatched; brown in one, and golden in the other. Tala watched as she bestowed both weapons on Kensington, who raised the sword and stabbed himself with the dagger without hesitation.

  She saw another Zoe running across a snowy field, pursued by a magnificent hawk, while just beyond her vision a shadow lurked in wait, biding its time to strike.

  “Choose,” the voices whispered again and again, quickening and overlapping among themselves until a multitude of choruses called down on her. “Choose.”

  Tala took a step toward one of the gates—

  —and awoke, panting, in her bed. It was still dark outside, snow thudding violently against the windows. The curtains blocked her view of the sky, but bright flashes of lightning streaked from behind the thin material. She’d never seen thundersnow in action before, and for a few minutes she remained rooted to the spot, unable to take her eyes away from the horrifying display of nature.

  She wiped the sweat off her forehead, willing her breathing back to normal. She could still remember snatches of her dream, her mind recoiling from the memory, and wondered why it frightened her, though she could scarcely understand what it all meant.

  She got out of bed and stepped into the hallway. The door next to hers was open, the room empty.

  Tala groaned. Hunting for firebirds in large drafty castles was not something she relished, and hunting for best friends who also happened to be heirs to kingdoms under siege an even less welcome idea.

  She slipped into the hallway, careful not to wake the others. She considered sounding the alarm, then decided to make sure if Alex was actually missing. The floorboards creaked slightly underneath her feet, but Tala made it to the first-floor landing without incident.

  A faint light glowed from within the main hall.

  Peering inside, she saw a boy standing before the fireplace, staring sternly down at it like the flames had secrets to unlock. The boy’s shirt and coat, damp and muddy from the hail, were spread out on the floor. Numerous scars lined his back and waist; some small and thin, others deep and jagged and puckered white, and it was all she could do not to gasp aloud at the sight. But it was his right arm that had suffered the most injuries, the fresh marks red and carved deeply over old scabs. He turned at some sound Tala didn’t hear, and she saw that it was Cole. His scythe, the one the count had called the Gravekeeper, lay nearby; its curved blade menacing, even in the gloom.

  He wasn’t alone. Alex stood at the opposite end of the room, arms folded, wearing one of the count’s more expensive, slightly garish robes. The rich-looking material pooled down around his ankles, revealing that he was also barefoot despite the cold tiles.

  Neither was aware of her presence. As Alex stepped forward, Cole’s voice stopped him in his tracks, brusque and low but strangely with none of the harshness he’d displayed back at Elsmore. “What do you want?”

  “That’s not a very polite thing to say to your king,” Alex said, sounding amused. He gestured at the scythe with its twisted hilt. “After all, I did do you a favor.”

  Cole said nothing, and Alex took several more steps forward. “I met your grandfather once, when I was very young; he terrified me, though I never knew why back then. He wasn’t imposing like Andre Gallagher, and he didn’t cover himself with war medals and armor like the Valencias. Looking back, I think it was because my father was always careful around him, like he was a little bit afraid despite himself too.”

  “My grandfather is loyal to the crown,” Cole said, sounding like he didn’t mean it at all.

  “I know. And that’s why I agreed when you asked to join this group. It’s why I asked the Cheshire to send for you without the rest of them knowing.”

  “Why?”

  Alex tilted his head. “What do you mean?”

  “All you needed was a command, and I would have obeyed. You didn’t need favors.”

  “You know what happened at Reykjavik, right?”

  The other boy froze, the wariness apparent in his eyes.

  “Stand down, Nottingham. I’m not going to dangle that over your head. I only mention it because you were a witness to everything that happened. Not only did you choose to keep your silence, you helped cover it up. That kind of loyalty, I respect. And until I can reclaim Avalon, I am the king of nothing, and my words hold no power or authority.” A faint sneer crossed Alex’s face, though it seemed directed at himself more than at anyone else. “I’m not asking as the heir of Avalon. I’m asking you as someone who understands exactly the kind of situation I’m in…a situation I’m sure you know all too well.”

  The silence seemed to drag on before Cole spoke again. “I owe you my loyalty, not an explanation.”

  Alex chuckled. “And I won’t ask you for one. But a favor is a favor. I upheld my end of the bargain.”

  “And you want to pull a Bogart on me, tell me this is the start of a beautiful friendship?”

  “Pardon?”

  A ghost of a grin crossed Cole’s face. “Just a line I heard from somewhere. What do you want me to do?”

  “An old woman—a seeress—foretold my doom once, and it’s been repeated so many times that I know her words by heart: Pledge your love to the blackest flag, and only then shall you lift that which was forbidden. I am sure you know the prophecy; most Avalonians have heard of it. Even that foul ice maiden knew.”

  “I do.”

  “You know how that prophecy ends. There’s a decision I have to make, and if I choose wrong, we lose everything—the throne, Avalon, magic as we know it. And on the chance that I do fuck everything up, I want you to be the one to kill me before I do more damage.”

  Tala clapped a hand over her mouth to swallow her gasp. To his credit, Cole said nothing, though his face grew even more expressionless than before.

  “That’s a big favor compared to what I’d asked for,” he said.

  Alex smiled grimly. “You know that isn’t true.”

  Another pause. Cole inclined his head in agreement. “I’ll do it. But why me?”

  “We never met before Reykjavik, yet you did what no one else had there. I trusted you immediately, then, and I trust you now. Maybe you can say fate has thrown us together.”

  Cole laughed, the sound a rough scrape against stone. “I hate fate,” he said, his mouth curled in contempt, and reached for his shirt.

  He stopped, looking at something behind him. His eyes narrowed. Alex whirled around with a muttered oath.

  The Dame had stolen into the room so quietly, no one had noticed her presence. The old woman wore a loose
dressing gown, and her long hair fell down her shoulders, sweeping at her waist. She reminded Tala of a ghostly specter, like the spirit of a disgraced noblewoman who haunted castles and wrung her hands in royal dismay over the crimes she was falsely accused of while living.

  “Your Majesty,” the Dame said faintly. She looked tired and frail, less elegant than she had at the supper table, less threatening. But something not unlike pleasure seasoned her tone, as if relishing her interruption. “Kings should not be wandering in large castles so late at night. Odd little things can happen to kings in large castles.”

  Alex took another step back. “You don’t scare me.”

  “No,” the Dame said. “It is not me that you fear. An outland kiss is not enough to break so great a curse, my liege. To you, a kiss will always be a question. Are you the one? Are you? Will you break this curse? Will you break me? Will you make me whole? Will I let you?”

  Alex paled.

  “Only when those that were missing shall fly again; when those that were dead shall rise again; when that which was cold offers warmth again. That is how your curse shall be broken, Your Majesty.”

  “Good night, milady,” Alex said curtly as he whirled away, robe flapping behind him, and strode purposely out of the room, head held high. It was only when he was safely past the Dame, out of both their views but not quite completely out of Tala’s, did he abandon all pretense at saving face; his expression crumpled, anguish replacing the cold haughtiness, even as he fled up the stairs. The firebird remained inside the fireplace, seemingly unaware or uncaring of its master’s anguish.

  Tala wanted to run after him, to make sure he was all right even if she had to admit having eavesdropped, but the Dame’s next words halted her steps.