by J. Conrad
“Cara Kendrick was our preference all along,” the queen said. “But Lysidia sullied that arrangement, and now your mother is serving out her sentence for your grandmother’s error. I don’t take bargains lightly, especially when they’re made to pay for mistakes which nearly cost us what humans would call a lifetime of work. But, if need be, I will fetch Cara from prison and see that she marries the prince.”
My hand flew to my heart, my body trembling on knees which had suddenly become weak. “Your Majesty, that’s simply not possible. My mother refused that role in her youth. Since then she married my father, and now she’s almost forty years old! Trystan isn’t yet twenty.” I whirled and glared at Eiriana, wrenching my arm roughly from her grip. Had she known about this too? Was this absurd possibility another secret she had kept from me?
The faintest of lines creased the queen’s forehead as she scowled down from her tree trunk lectern. “As usual, you resort to faulty, human reasoning—further cause for doubt of your lineage. You’re wrong on both accounts. Your mother is no longer married, as her husband has wed that vile, Calek woman. And being kept in our world for eleven banal years, Cara Kendrick hasn’t aged a day. She’s scarcely older than the young Draugosero.”
I balled my hands into fists, suppressing a groan as I stared back at the Fae Queen. A small voice in the back of my mind wondered about the consequences of unloading my protest. If I screamed at the monarch, if I cursed my grandmother’s treachery, if I refused to play any part in the test—whatever it was. But that small voice was drowned out by my anger. It coursed through my veins like a raging river, and the blood pounded in my ears.
“No! She has already refused the task—she didn’t even want to manifest her Fae abilities! And you can’t marry my mother to my fiancé, when neither of them has consented—”
“Elin!” my grandmother said. She grabbed my arm again, yanking roughly. “Please. Stop this at once.” She pulled my face close to hers and in a harsh voice whispered, “You’re not in the human world. You are in danger here.”
The Fae Queen laughed softly. Her eyes darted back and forth between Eiriana and me, and the buzzing from the cloud of fairies grew louder. Some moved closer, while others hung back. “Naive girl, it doesn’t matter if she refused or not. She is mine, and this is my world. If I don’t have a willing girl who is suitable, I will take one who is suitable in whatever way she comes to me. Immersed in the magic of Imurgura and commanded by me, its ruler and a True Fae, she will do as she’s told. And Elin, dear Elin, the wolf isn’t your fiancé. His proclamation to his human father in a banal court means nothing here.”
My eyes couldn’t get any wider as I struggled against Eiriana’s grip. The skirts of our dresses rustled as I tried to pry my arm from her fingers. I asked the queen, “Why would you do such a thing? Why involve me at all, if that was your plan?” With a definitive yank, I freed myself from my grandmother’s clutches. I turned my glare to Eiriana. “And you. You lied to me, you kept this from me—and from my mother—and all the while you knew. Why can you never explain—”
The Fae Queen’s fair voice boomed throughout the chamber like a clap of thunder. “Sit! Be silent.” She waved her hand and my body started moving like a puppet whose strings had been pulled. My bottom hit the golden bench so quickly I nearly lost my balance again. I stifled a small cry, blinking hot, damp eyes. My chest heaved inside my bodice as my mind pulled me back to the time when my stepmother Gwyneth had glued me to a chair with her magic. Yes, she had done this very same thing. How were the Fae and the Calek any different? They both took what they wanted by force. I swallowed, hoping the queen knew I was comparing her kind to evil witches with demon eyes who murdered people and drank blood.
“My deepest apologies, my queen,” Eiriana said. She bowed low and long. “My granddaughter has been through much hardship the past several months, and I haven’t properly prepared her. I’ve spent little time with her aside from making her ready for the ball. This is a dreadful surprise for one who wasn’t ready, and the fault is mine. If there’s to be a punishment, then please, I ask that I be the one to whom it’s administered.”
The swarm of fairies who had flown away from the queen came to hover around me. Now I could see their tiny, intricate bodies clearly. Some male, some female, their forms looked human besides their pointed ears and bright colors. And wings… and sparkly, fairy dust. I carefully removed my hands from the bench and placed them upon my lap. So, I wasn’t paralyzed, but I was unable to rise from the seat.
The queen said, “That won’t be necessary. No harm has yet been done. For now, I need only for both of you to listen. Elin, you must understand that it isn’t only me you need to impress. There are a multitude of Fae, a great many in forms you’ve never seen, and the vast majority of them will not acknowledge anyone not their kind. That means you must display proof. Doubtless, you find this all very unfair. It is unfair. But that is simply the way it is.
“The test will be this: Elin of Blaenwood, you are to return to your father’s Calek bride and grant her wish. You must change her into a human. But you must also change her heart from evil to good. And you must do these things by Edim’s Spring Equinox. If you truly possess one-quarter Fae blood, you’ll be able to achieve this without also causing harm to yourself. If, however, your Fae blood is too weak—or nonexistent—you will surely lose your life in the process.”
I wondered if my lips were frozen along with my legs. As Eiriana said, I’d had no training. I had no idea how to manifest Fae abilities, let alone do what the Fae Queen was asking. Before I had left home for the ball at Hennion Castle, Gwyneth had already been planning on using my blood in a ritual to change herself into a human. But the stepmother-becoming-good part, and the Elin-escaping-with-her-life part, those were new.
“Your Majesty, I don’t know how to carry out what you ask of me,” I said in a deflated voice. “Is there not some other way I can prove my worthiness to you and your subjects?”
The queen shook her head ever so slightly, the gems in her hair shining like rain drops. “There is no other way which would be accepted. As I said, it isn’t only me and the council members you must convince—” she extended her hand toward the hovering fairies. So those were the council members. “—but the other Fae as well. Uniting those of our kind is much more complicated than for humans or Draugosero… or even Calek. Our race is old. And as most mortals say, we are strange, for strange is just another word for something they don’t understand.”
I inhaled a shaky breath. Eiriana was still standing beside me, silent. As much as I wanted to be with Trystan more than anything, I couldn’t agree to this. It was a suicide mission. “I’m doing my best to understand. But is there nothing else I can do? Can I not receive training from Eiriana? If I can learn to shapeshift—if I can change into a sprite like the Fae around you—would that be enough to convince them?”
“I’m afraid not. That won’t be sufficient, not for this. There are other beings besides Fae who can shift. Rarely, even the Calek can do it, as we witnessed here not long ago. No, for this you must do something which only someone with Fae blood can do. And this Gwyneth, your father’s wife, is an ideal match for your assignment—a Calek who wants to become human. Such a thing is blasphemous among her kind. But since she does desire it, there is also a chance that with the right magic, her heart can be turned to good.”
I peered up at the queen’s face, not really seeing it. Her image blurred as a brand-new thought grew in my mind, a tiny idea which bloomed like a bud in springtime. As awful as this was, as much as it made my blood run cold to think of returning to Blaenwood to deal with Gwyneth, I realized this might actually be the chance I needed.
“If I succeed at what you’re demanding and prove my lineage, will you also set my mother free?” I asked.
The queen smiled. “No. She is serving time in Lysidia’s stead. That was the bargain made by your grandmother, who was herself a prisoner for failing me. I released your grandmother
from her cage early so she could save your mother from the Calek, on the condition that Cara would serve out the rest of your grandmother’s sentence. The only way to free your mother is through Lysidia trading places with her.”
“I see,” I said, nodding slowly. “And suppose I was to find another replacement? If I found someone to serve out her remaining years, would it satisfy the agreement?”
Eiriana’s eyes burned into me, but she stayed quiet.
The queen raised an eyebrow. She pulled her head back ever so slightly, almost as though she were impressed by my question. “Yes, it would. However, the someone must do it of his or her own free will or it won’t count. Do you know of, and can you obtain, such a being?”
I stiffened, straightening my back and squeezing my hands together so hard my knuckles turned white. “Perhaps.” I couldn’t believe what I was considering, but my mind raced with the possibility. Four years in fairy prison, give or take some months or days, wasn’t forever. Dafina? Annest? Or maybe someone I hadn’t thought of yet. There might be a way to bargain with one of them—if I could really learn to turn a Calek human by magic. In my conversations with them I had inferred it was something they wanted but weren’t supposed to talk about.
My extremities felt cold. I tasted blood and realized I had bitten my tongue. Never had I imagined I would be agreeing to something so obviously beyond my ability and so unjust. Yet if I could find a way, if I succeeded, I would not only secure my marriage to Trystan, but I would finally have a way to free my mother from the Fae Realm.
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