The Faerie King

by Ash Fitzsimmons

  “He took a vow of celibacy once—did he mention that?”

  “Briefly.” She winced at a bad tangle, then gave in, waved her wand at her head, and waited as her hair returned to smooth and straight. “We didn’t exactly dwell on it. The priesthood’s more than a chronic lack of sex.”

  “So he told you about seminary?” I asked as she pulled her coat on.

  “Yep. He told me how he got here.”

  “Told you about the mermaid?”

  Helen’s dark brow arched. “Actually, yes. He said he figured you’d tell me eventually anyway. To each his own,” she added, shoving her feet into her tennis shoes. “Now, where’ve you hidden Aiden this time?”

  Helen’s face broadcast her relief at seeing Aiden sitting up and stuffing himself, but to her chagrin, he refused to leave with her. “I’d get in the way in Nashville,” he said between bites of bacon. “And things are good here…unless you want me gone?” he asked me, abruptly unsure of himself.

  “Nothing of the sort,” I replied, reaching for the coffee.

  “Okay, good.” He started mopping up the remaining syrup with whatever food was most readily at hand. “So I’m staying here, then,” he told his sister. “Thanks for the offer, but I’m fine where I am.”

  “Aid,” she protested, “do you hear yourself? This is Faerie! It’s dangerous, I can’t leave you on your own!”

  He cut his eyes to me and shrugged. “I’m not on my own. Coileán’s all right.”

  “High praise,” I muttered into my mug.

  Aiden grinned and continued his quest to scrub every atom of syrup from the china. “You don’t have to worry about me,” he said to Helen as he worked. “Go on, go do your finals or whatever, and…uh…” He hesitated, then looked up at her and mumbled, “When you go home, tell Mom I’m okay, will you? I’d tell her myself, but…you know.”

  She slid into the chair beside him and gripped his shoulder. “Come back with me. I’ll talk to the grand magus, and we’ll get everything straightened out. You don’t have to do this—”

  “I want to do this.”

  Flummoxed, she fumbled for a response for a moment, then tried again with intensified fervor. “Just listen to me, okay? Listen to the sister who loves you, Aiden,” she said, taking his chin in hand and steering his face toward hers. “If you stay here, you’re turning your back on all of us. All of the Arcanum, everyone you’ve ever known, everything that’s ever mattered. Is that what you really want?” She took his free hand and squeezed it so hard her fingers whitened. “Come with me. Let me get you back into school, get you a job, whatever you want to do. We’ll do it together, okay? You and me, Aid, like always.”

  He sat there in miserable silence, then dropped the last of his pancakes, wiped his hand clean, and stared at the nothingness over his plate. “I’m not turning my back on you, Hel,” he said softly. “I wouldn’t do that.”

  “But you are.”

  “No, I’m not,” he insisted, and when he looked up again, his eyes were moist. “All of you turned your backs on me. Dad, Mom, the grand magus…all of you. And now you want me to go home and pretend like everything’s great? Like I don’t know they look at me like I’m nothing? Go back and be the dud again, stay out of the way until someone needs a punching bag? That’s what you think I should do?” he asked, his voice rising. “You don’t know what it’s like! You’ll never know what it’s like!”

  “You think they respect you any more over here?” she retorted. “They kill mongrels! They’re a bunch of crazy—”

  “No one’s broken my face lately! Or my arms!”

  “Then what the hell do you call yesterday?”

  “I was trying to help!”

  “You could have been killed!”

  “It was going along fine until you butted in!” He snatched his hand away from her and pushed back from the table. “Go home, Hel. You don’t get it, you don’t want to get it, so go home.”

  “Aid, wait,” she pleaded as he stormed out of the room, but the slamming door was his only reply.

  And so we sat in awkward silence, Helen and I, as the grandfather clock ticked and I drank my coffee, until she broke down, covered her face, and sobbed.

  By the time she pulled herself back together, I’d finished my drink and taken Aiden’s vacated chair. “Are you giving up on him?” I asked, passing her a clean napkin.

  She swiped at her eyes and shook her head.

  “Good. Stay as long as you like.” Before she could protest, I touched her temple and pressed Fae into her mind. “Sorry about that, but you may need it. Oh, and for the record,” I said over her sniffles, “we don’t kill all our mongrels. And you might want to have a chat with Toula before you go. You know, get someone else’s perspective on growing up in that silo of yours. I’m sure she has stories. Then again,” I said, rising from the table, “you’re going to be grand magus, so why should the miserable childhoods of a couple of mongrels trouble you?”

  I headed for the door, intending to leave her to her thoughts, but I paused when she mumbled, “Witch-blood.”

  “Good girl,” I said, and took my leave.

  On waking, Meggy had been too preoccupied with our daughter’s welfare and whereabouts over the past few days to debate about the ethics of binds and memory wipes, and she brushed me off when I tried to broach the subject. “I need to be sure she’s all right,” she said, heading for the cellar, “and then we can talk about you doing things to her behind my back.”

  “Toula agreed,” I began, but she cut me off with a finger to my chest.

  “You’re her father. I’m her mother. Toula doesn’t get a vote as far as Olive’s concerned.”

  I bit my tongue, praying to any conveniently listening deities for patience, then made another attempt as she walked away. “If you’re going down now, at least take Val with you.”

  Meggy turned again, exasperated. “Colin, I may be new to this, but I’m fairly certain that I can handle one bound teenager by myself.”

  “If it doesn’t hold—”

  “Then I’m sure you’ll know soon enough. Let me deal with Olive,” she ordered, and I watched from the top of the stairs as she made her rapid descent into darkness.

  At a loss for a better idea, I wandered over to Val’s quarters—the man was owed many days off by then—where I found him busied with breakfast preparations. Catching me let myself in, he raised a finger to his lips, then glanced at the corner of the room, where Toula was snoring on a cot. “Problem?” he whispered, abandoning the bread he’d been prodding to rise.

  “Up for a ride?” I asked.

  Shortly thereafter, with food and a note left for Toula, we set out alone in my boat for the spot where Grivam and I had last parted. As Val brought us to a standstill, I stretched out my hand and signaled, hoping the merrow wouldn’t keep me waiting long. Fortune decided to cut me a break, however, and within five minutes, Grivam pulled himself up against the side of the craft. “I assume that was for me,” he said, his black eyes squinting in the sunlight as he dripped. “What news, Coileán?”

  I pivoted in the boat to face the old merrow, careful to avoid the puddle forming beneath him. “The creature’s dead. You should be able to go home in safety.”

  It was difficult to read his expression in his natural form, but I thought Grivam seemed more resigned than pleased at the tidings. “That is good,” he said, “and I will trouble you no longer.” He hesitated, then asked, “The favor I promised you…have you decided yet what you would ask of me?”

  “Not at this time.”

  He nodded in understanding. “Then should that time come, you know where to find me. Farewell,” he said, and disappeared without another word.

  I stood and leaned over the side, watching the water for a trace of his passage, but the merrow have nearly perfected the art of going unnoticed, and my vigil proved fruitless. My task accomplished, Val turned our prow back toward shore, and I settled in for a pleasant trip—until, that was, my phone
rang.

  “I hate this thing,” I muttered, pulling it from my pocket, then saw Meggy’s name on the screen and felt my stomach knot as I took the call. “Any luck?”

  Her voice was strained on the other end. “She won’t talk to me. Just sits there and stares.”

  “Catatonic?” I asked, fearful that Oberon had slipped a little something extra into the bind.

  “No, stubborn. Won’t eat, won’t speak, doesn’t even react when I touch her…” She paused, and I heard her exhale slowly. “You said her memory is intact?”

  “Yeah,” I said, raising my voice to be heard over the wind.

  “So she knows what we’ve done to her since March.”

  “I would assume so.”

  Meggy said nothing for the space of a long breath, then mumbled, “I want her back.”

  “In what—”

  “I want her back,” she insisted. “I want my Olive back. Bring her back to me.”

  I wished then, more than ever, that I’d left the phone at home. “Meggy, I—”

  “Please, Colin. She hates me, she won’t even acknowledge me,” she said in a rush, “and I can’t get through to her. Give me back my baby, okay? Give me my Olive. That’s all I want, just my Olive, and we’ll go home. Just like it was before…”

  Whatever was to follow dissolved into tears, and my heart broke anew as she cried. “I’ll be back soon, and we can talk about this,” I said, but when that garnered no coherent response, I ended the call and put the phone away.

  From the rear of the boat, Valerius asked, “Do you want a quicker arrival? It’s no trouble—”

  “No, but thank you.” I hunched over and rested my head on my palms. “How am I supposed to tell Meggy that altering Moyna’s memory again might not be the best idea?”

  “Was that rhetorical, or did you want advice?”

  I sat up and looked back to find him leaning against the wall of the canopied pilothouse. “Go ahead.”

  Val folded his bare arms and nodded curtly. “Do the right thing.”

  “For whom?”

  “There’s no ‘for whom’ in this—there is only the right thing.” I looked at him blankly, and his eyebrow rose. “If I may be so bold, Coileán, I’ve known Lady Moyna much longer than you have. She can be somewhat prickly.”

  “Tell me something I didn’t know.”

  His smirk spoke volumes. “But for good or ill, she is what she is. Her mother may prefer her more…well, malleable, I suppose…but that’s not Moyna. That’s a girl with Moyna’s face and someone else’s mind, and the Moyna I know—the Moyna who gets her way—won’t sit by and let herself be mentally neutered forever.” He stepped back behind the steering console and made a few fine adjustments in light of the shifting wind. “A bind is a complex piece of enchantment, you know.”

  “Oberon’s more than proficient.”

  “I’m not saying he isn’t. But making a bind and keeping it intact are two different matters. You…haven’t had much cause to experiment with this, have you?” he added, sounding as though he already knew the answer.

  “Not exactly,” I admitted.

  Valerius grunted and set the controls, then took a seat on the bench beside mine. “Any piece of magic—enchantment, spellcraft, what have you—is a disruption to the natural order of things, yes? You’re forcing your will on the universe. If you’re not careful, if you’re sloppy, then wards fall, shields fail…you know this, my lord.”

  I nodded. “Of course.”

  “Well, complicate that by trying to enchant someone sensitive enough to fight back. I’m not speaking of throwing fire or lightning—I mean the more subtle works, binds and the like. The average mortal is powerless, but binding, say, another faerie…” He shifted his weight, cocked his head toward the climbing sun, then shielded his eyes from the glare. “Toula’s bind would have failed years ago if she hadn’t accepted it—I think she was so desperate to win the Arcanum’s favor that she allowed that spell to stand, flawed as it was. Perhaps Lady Meghan would have broken her own bind, too, had she known she had the power. But Moyna…” Val whistled low. “She knows her power, and she’s not going to accept this quietly—consciously or not, she’s fighting against that bind.”

  I thought back over the past months and winced. “She never liked me, not from day one. I thought it was because I was dating her mother, but even with the memories I gave her, she was having trouble with Meggy by the end…”

  “Fighting,” he repeated. “Now, whatever Oberon did to her this time is assumedly strong, but that doesn’t mean it’s infallible.”

  “You think she’s going to break it herself?”

  “I think anything’s possible with enough time. And should I be correct about this, what happens when it fails?” Val watched me wrestle for a moment, then said, “You have a stopgap in place, but it’s not a permanent solution. I’d advise you to either find a way to dissuade Moyna from outright patricide or eliminate her.”

  “Eliminate!”

  “Those are the only logical solutions,” he replied, unfazed by my outburst. “And you’d be wise to remember that she favors her grandmother.” He stood and returned to his post, but added, “I understand that your lover might prefer a different short-term solution, but she doesn’t yet understand the long game. By now, I would hope you do.”

  I sighed and rose to join him at the back of the boat. “You want to tell Meggy she’s not getting her little girl back, Valerius?”

  “If you insist, but since I’m not the one sleeping with her, perhaps the news should come from you. She’s going to blame you, no matter who bears the tidings, but at least she won’t think you a coward if you’re upfront with her.”

  I looked out to sea, watching the waves glint as we flew by. “That’s what two thousand years gets you? Clarity?”

  “In certain respects. In others, I muddle through as well as the next man.” He waited until I turned around, then said, “I spoke because I was asked to do so, and my advice is yours to leave or take. Whatever you choose to do, you’ll hear no protest from me.”

  “No,” I muttered, “but Georgie might.”

  He smiled at that. “She’s a nosy little thing, isn’t she?”

  By the time we reached the shore—and Val, bless him, took the scenic route—I’d made up my mind to do what was in Moyna’s best interest, as sick as the thought made me. Meggy would rage, and I doubted she’d be quick to forgive me, but I mused that if I could keep our daughter in Faerie—imprisoned or free, but always bound—and gradually show her I wasn’t the enemy, perhaps she would come around. That would satisfy my siblings, I reasoned—Moyna without magic was still a return of their plaything—and maybe it would help me build rapport with them as well. Ji, at least, would likely be warmer toward me for bringing Moyna home.

  My resolution firmed as Val and I stepped through the gate back to my office, but it faltered immediately upon seeing Meggy’s puffy face. She had curled up on one of the couches with a cup of tea, and she hugged her knees against the sudden wind as I closed the gate behind us. “Honey,” I began, but she shook her head to silence me.

  “Still won’t talk. Aiden tried. Joey tried. The little wizard girl, what’s-her-name, she tried. Nothing.” She uncurled and wrapped her hands around her mug. “I told Toula she could try if she wanted to, but I don’t know how that’s going.”

  Val perked up at the news. “So Toula is there now?”

  “I don’t know,” she said dully. “Doesn’t really matter, does it?”

  “It might,” I interjected, settling down beside Meggy and waving my hand over the coffee table. The realm was happy to oblige, and a picture appeared in the air before us, a security-camera view of Moyna’s cell.

  Meggy sat up and gaped. “How did—”

  “Realm likes me. Shh,” I said, motioning the volume up, then heard slapping footsteps crescendo outside the frame. “She’s on her way in.”

  A few seconds later, Toula passed through the secur
ity wards, still sporting her sweatshirt and flip-flops. “Hey, there,” she said in her odd version of Fae, addressing the motionless figure sitting cross-legged at the foot of the bed. “I don’t think we’ve been introduced. Toula Pavli.” She extended her hand, but Moyna gave no flicker of recognition, and she aborted the gesture. “So, Moyna,” she said, waving a folding chair into existence and making herself comfortable, “I understand you’re not in the mood for small talk right now. That’s fine, you don’t have to say anything. I just wanted to tell you a little bit about your mom and dad.”

  I couldn’t tell if Moyna’s expression changed, but Toula, seemingly nonplussed, settled back into her new seat and crossed her legs. “Let’s get something out of the way to begin with: I killed Titania.”

  Moyna twitched at that, and Toula nodded. “Not your father, not your mother. Little old me.” She waited, but Moyna was once again a statue. “You were there, sweetheart, I know you saw it go down. Maybe you want to blame Colin—and you wouldn’t be alone in that, trust me—but it’s not fair to drop that solely on him. He didn’t come back to Faerie to kill her, you know.”

  Silence fell over the room for a solid minute, until finally, almost inaudibly, Moyna murmured, “Then why?”

  “To rescue you and your mom. She was almost dead when we found her, did you know that? Titania was letting her starve in the dark.” Toula shook her head as if to dispel the memory. “Think what you will about her, but Megs is a friend of mine. All she ever wanted was to find her stolen baby. That’d be you, incidentally,” she added, raising her chin toward the bed. “She never did a damn thing to Titania, and that old hag locked her up to starve. I don’t know,” she said, fixing her eyes on Moyna, “maybe things are different here, but back home, if you starve a dog, you get prosecuted for cruelty.”

  Moyna maintained her silence, and Toula shrugged. “But back to my point—Colin was ready to trade himself for the two of you. That’s what Titania was after, you know,” she said, bouncing her sandal up and down on her foot. “Megs was collateral, and you were the bait. She wanted him back. She might have gotten him, too, if you hadn’t suggested execution. Maybe it’s a quirk about Joey and me, but we take it kind of personally when people are killed right in front of us—and you’ve got to admit that Robin had a nasty end.”