by Gow, Kailin
Normally, I would have gone to Logan, asked him for help, talked to him about my feelings. I would have showed him my vulnerabilities – weaknesses I didn't feel comfortable sharing with anyone, not even Kian. I would have confessed to him how unsure I was about everything. But as I watched him sleep, nestled across the glen from me, I knew that this option was closed to me now. For both our sakes, for both our mental health, I had to cut off this reliance on him – at least for now. Until he could move on; until I could move on. It wasn't fair to emotionally rely on him the way I did – no matter how much I cared for him – until he was able to disentangle himself from the complex web of emotion that bound us inextricably together – until he was able to move on from me.
I sat and listened to the sound of the crickets, pondering my fate. Right now, everything seemed strange, uncertain. I was immortal – but did I want that immortality, if that meant living forever apart from Kian, apart from Logan? And what would happen if I lost my kingdom, lost my people, lost Kian? Would I stay in Feyland? Or would I go back to the Land Beyond the Crystal River and try to make a life there. Without either Logan and Kian. I smiled bitterly. I couldn't imagine what a life outside of Feyland would be like. I'd never love again – I knew that all too well – but perhaps I could try something like normalcy. A normal life, a normal job, contented solitude. Trying to forget Feyland, as if it were nothing more than a midsummer night's dream. Perhaps that was what I was meant to do now.
But something within me raged against the prospect. No, I told myself. You're part of this now, Breena. You'll keep your throne or you'll perish in the attempt. This life, this world, is part of you – and you could never be happy anywhere but here. You belong to Feyland, and Feyland to you. This throne is your birthright; it is your destiny. And you yourself know that whatever happens, you'll never leave it, never stop trying, never give up, never surrender. No matter what happens. It was true. I would face a thousand mobs rather than retreat in despair.
When I heard the rustling of the leaves, my body tensed up. Was my first mob on the horizon – had somebody found me at last? I heard the sound of footsteps coming towards the glen.
“Psst!” I tried to signal to Logan, but he was too far away. “Psst!”
A raspy female voice echoed across the clearing. “We'll get 'em first. That's the only way. Surprise attack.”
The voice sounded strangely familiar – like a voice from a dream. But before I could process the sound or make sense of her, she was on top of me, a knife at my throat, a cloth over my face to hide my eyes.
“What the....” From the shout at the other end of the glen, I knew that Logan too, had been ambushed.
“Don't move – fiend!” The female voice on top of me was slow, menacing, commanding.
“Where did you hide the loot?” A male voice was on top of Logan. “Come on, out with it.”
“What loot?” I heard Logan say. And then, after a pause. “Rodney?”
“Logan?” Rodney sounded just as shocked as Logan did. “What are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same thing.”
I struggled to see what was happening, but the body straddling me kept the blindfold over my eyes, the sharp edges of the knife pressingly lightly into my neck.
“We thought you were robbers, highwaymen. The same bandits who stole our provisions earlier. Figured we'd try stealing them back.”
We? I tried to catch a glimpse of my assailant through the gauze of the blindfold. “Shasta?” I choked out, but the dagger did not move.
“It's fine, Shasta!” Out of the corner of my eye I could see that Rodney had gotten up, Logan in tow. “They're not robbers. It's just Logan and Breena. The coast is clear.”
But Shasta did not move. She pressed the dagger further into my neck. “I know exactly who it is,” she hissed, through clenched teeth. “It's the bitch that broke my brother's heart, and sent him into exile. I told you once that if you were ever so stupid as to hurt my brother, I'd hurt you a million times worse than you could ever imagine. Didn't pay attention, did you, Breena? Well, let me tell you, I look forward to the privilege.”
“The...spell...” I coughed out, my heart racing. Had Shasta, too, succumbed to the mysterious shadows that had turned everyone against me? She took off the blindfold of my eyes, throwing it into the soil and looking down at me with savage eyes. She was still mind-blowingly beautiful; if anything, her anger only increased her loveliness, adding crimson fire to her porcelain cheeks, her eyes blazing with fury. For a moment I lay staring at her, stunned by her beauty, too entranced by her resemblance to Kian to even fight back.
“It's no spell,” sneered Shasta. “Don't get me wrong – I know what you're talking about. Things are going wrong, going crazy. Bandits are roaming Feyland. No law, no order. No civilization. Not that you've done anything about that, of course. But rest assured, it's only hit the Summer Kingdom so far. We haven't been affected. The hatred I feel for you right now is all my own.”
“Shasta!” cried Rodney, his voice full of warning.
“Don't Shasta me!” She looked down at me, fury on her face. “You knew how much Kian loved you. You knew! And you broke his heart anyway. You left him – left him for that Wolf....”
“Don't bring animal politics into this,” Logan was getting angry.
“What are you talking about?” I was almost too stunned to speak. “It wasn't my decision to...” The words caught in my throat. “Kian broke up with me.”
“What are you talking about?” Shasta looked at me with disdain. “Kian would never have done that! He was crazy about you – although who knows why? You obviously didn't deserve his loyalty...”
“Actually, she did.” Logan's rage was barely contained beneath his smooth, polite speech; his ears had turned pink with fury. “I don't know what you're implying, Shasta, but I'll have you know that Breena and I are nothing but friends. She's been a wreck since Kian left – and I've been protecting her against these crazy mobs because Kian isn't here to do it because he left her. As you can see from our sleeping arrangements, Breena and I are entirely chaste.”
“Kian...left you...” Shasta looked confused. “But why?”
“It doesn't matter,” I snapped, taking advantage of Shasta's momentary change in focus to wriggle out from under her and get out of stabbing distance from her. “He left, okay? So before you start accusing me of sending anyone into exile...”
“Then you don't know where he is?” Shasta began to look worried.
“No...” I said. “Don't you? He didn't tell you where he was going – after coming back to the Winter Palace?”
Shasta shook her head. She was still glaring at me, but at least her instinct towards murder seemed to have subsided. “No,” she said. “I have no idea where he is. Rodney and I have been searching. We thought you'd sent him into exile, hid him somewhere...”
“She thought,” Rodney interjected. “I thought something had to be up. A spell, enchantment, something. I know you and Kian, Breena. And while I find it difficult to believe anyone can love anyone else as much as I love Shasta...” he turned a bright shade of tomato red. “You two come pretty close. You wouldn't be apart without a reason.”
“I just hope that's true,” I whispered. “All I hope is that it's true.”
Chapter 16
Shasta gave me a wary look, raising her elegantly arched eyebrows with a mixture of disdain and suspicion. “I don't know,” she said softly. “This isn't like my brother – not like him at all.” A flush of rosebud color came to her cheeks. “What did you say happened between you two, then?”
“I didn't.” I wasn't in the mood for sharing girlish confidences. Having her dagger firmly planted at my throat wasn't exactly the ideal starting point for our sisterly relationship. “Does it matter?”
“My brother's missing,” said Shasta shortly. “It matters to me.” I couldn't help but feel for her then, despite my irritation with her. We both loved Kian, after all. And as much as her ho
t-tempered defensiveness of him put me off, I couldn't resist admiring her for it. Shasta was fiercely loyal to those she loved – a quality I recognized from Kian's own passionate loyalty to me. How could I fault her for her anger, when I knew that if the situation had been reversed, I would be just as violent in the defense of the man I loved.
“Then believe me when I say it matters to me too,” I said, taking a tentative step towards her and taking hold of her hand. She pulled it away, avoiding my gaze. “I love Kian.” The words brought tears to my eyes. “You have to believe that. I know I haven't always committed easily. Where I come from, in the mortal world, eighteen is considered a very, very young age to marry, and I won't deny I was afraid, deep down, of getting married, of spending the rest of eternity with someone I'd only just met, in a land that is still strange to me. But deep down, I know Kian is the man I'm meant to be with forever. Our love is stronger than my fears, and it always has been. I have never, ever betrayed Kian – not, at least, when in my own mind.” I blushed scarlet as I remembered the effect of Wort's love potion. “I hope that my actions have never given you reason to doubt that – ever.”
“I suppose not,” said Shasta, but she didn't look overly keen at the idea of giving up on her plan of killing me for revenge.
“I'm looking for him too, Shasta,” I said. “I thought maybe someone in your family knew where he was. I last saw him when he went to the Winter Palace....we had an argument and....he decided to leave. I followed him to the Winter Palace and found a letter he'd written, saying he needed time, to go off, to decide whether or not we could still be together. That was the last I heard of him. But I started to get these strange dreams – dreams that might have been visions. Of Kian being held somewhere dark, somewhere without any magic, growing old, forgetting me, forgetting everything...”
“How do you know the dream was real?” Shasta was blunt and acerbic. “And not just some projection of your insecurities.”
“Believe me,” I said. “I know. The same way you'd know if Rodney was in trouble.”
As Shasta looked over to Rodney, her grim expression softening, I saw a look of utter love and adoration on her face. She may have been stern and uncompromising with me, but one look at Rodney was enough to reveal the passionate vulnerability behind her steely gaze. Her love for her own knight was palpable, for real. I couldn't help but feel a twinge of jealousy as I watched them stare into one another's eyes, rapt with joy. After all, what they had had never been broken, never been altered. They had given up everything for one another – Shasta had sacrificed honor, her title, her mother's respect – but now, no longer royalty, they were happy together. The way Kian and I had never been able to be happy – free, at last, of all the chaos that got in the way of their union.
“And you know, too, that something's wrong, don't you?” I continued on. “You can sense when something's wrong with your brother, can't you? Some sort of telepathy that links the magic of Winter Fey – blood ties?”
She nodded slowly, reluctantly. “Yes,” she said at last. “I've been having nightmares, too.”
“Then we should team up,” Logan said. “We're all heading towards the same place, wherever that is, and we're some of the very few who don't seem to be affected by this mysterious spell that's been turning Feyland into a circus. There's no point in splitting up – we've got to stick together.”
A long pause fell over us while Shasta considered, biting her lip. “Fine,” she said at last. “But don't expect me to like it. I still say my brother would never have left Breena without a reason – and I'm not prepared to say that you didn't hurt him.” She swallowed. “I know he cared for you, Logan, but I know your relationship with Breena wasn't easy for him, either.”
Logan looked at the ground, ashamed. “I know,” he said. “I'm not proud of that. But Breena and I have both acknowledged that nothing will ever, ever happen between us. And we're prepared to do what it takes to make sure Kian knows that, too.”
“Anyway,” said Rodney, breaking the awkward silence. “We should get going. I'm not interested in waiting around here until another angry mob finds us.”
“Fine,” said Shasta. “But which way are we heading?”
“We don't even know where to start,” admitted Logan.
“Well,” said Shasta. “I think I do. This nightmare I've been having about Kian – he's somewhere without magic, right?”
“Right,” I said.
“Well, there's only one place that Fey magic doesn't always work – a place that has its own magic, that sometimes interferes with Fey practice.”
“The ancient realms?” I cut in.
“How did you know?” Shasta looked surprised.
“I had a hunch...” I said. “Logan and I have been wondering about another lead – someone from those Ancient Realms. The White Witch.”
“The White Witch? But she can't enter Feyland!”
“Not unless she's invited in,” said Logan darkly. “By someone with the power and authority to do so.”
“You mean – you think Kian invited her in?”
“Maybe not on purpose,” I hurried to explain. “Maybe she tricked him. But the magic we're seeing – it's not normal Fey magic.” I explained about the appearance of the little girl.
“That doesn't sound like Fey magic,” Shasta said, nodding. “That sounds like witchcraft to me. I've never heard of any Fey creating an apparition you can touch. One you can see, maybe. But a physical one – that's much more serious. And more difficult. If the White Witch does have Kian, then we're in for a serious battle.”
“It will be dangerous,” Rodney looked grave. “If we go to the Ancient Realms, we have no guarantees that our magic will work. The border area between the Realms and Feyland is a strange place – unexpected things happen. One minute our magic will be fine – the next,” he snapped his fingers, “gone.”
“It seems like today is my lucky day.” Logan laughed bitterly. “I've spent my life getting used to not having magic – all of us Wolves have. We know how to fight without sparks flying from our fingertips. Which means we're particularly well-suited to fighting in the Ancient Realms.” He threw back his head and let out a long, low howl.
Instantly, we began hearing replies – the howling of wolves echoing across the woodland.
“I've signalled my Wolves,” he said. “I've told them to assemble at Ragnor's Peak. It's the furthest village towards the Ancient Realms, about a five-day journey from here.” He looked over at Shasta and Rodney. “Or faster, if you want to use your wings.”
“It's dangerous,” said Rodney. “We don't want to sap our magical energy too much...”
“But time is of the essence,” Shasta insisted. “And if our magic won't work once we're there, we might as well use up our energy now, rather than later.” She turned to Logan. “But how will you keep up? If you can't fly...”
“I have my ways.” Logan smiled mysterious. “Shasta, do you know the way to Radnor’s Peak?”
“Due north,” she said. “Not difficult – I'll follow the Belt of Helen in the sky – the seven stars are easy enough to follow.”
“Then let's go. Now. To Radnor’s Peak. From there we can narrow down our search.”
“Yes,” I said. Somehow, it felt right – as if some magic deep within me sensed at the mention of the place-name that Kian might be there.
And with that, we spread our wings, rising gossamer and glowing into the dark night sky. Fairies flew only rarely – we did not like to sap our strength, and too much flying made using magic in battle more difficult – but now, we knew, speed was our top priority.
“And Logan?” Shasta turned to me as we floated through the air. “What's he going to do?”
“Look!” Rodney pointed towards Logan, who had reverted into his Wolf form and had begun to run through the trees, heading due north just as we were. But he wasn't running like a normal wolf. His whole body was enveloped in a green glow, as warm and intense as the light shining from an emer
ald, a glow that seemed to make his paws glide above the ground. My mouth fell open with admiration. Logan had truly learned to harness his magic in record time – it had taken me months to learn to use my own – and as he ran, faster even than a fairy's flight, he looked more noble, more beautiful, than I have ever seen him.
“The Wolf has magic?” Shasta turned to me as we flew, following the light of Logan's journey. “How?”
“It's a long story,” I said. “But all the Wolves are regaining their magic now – not just Logan.”
“How nice for them,” said Shasta drily. “I'm sure that makes Logan quite a catch, now.” She eyed me suspiciously.
“Believe me, Shasta,” I said. “That's over. It was over a long time ago – and maybe it took Kian leaving for me to acknowledge it for sure. But it is over. And I'm sure before long, Logan too, will move on.”
“Well, let's hope not too quickly, for Alistair's sake,” shot in Rodney with a laugh.
“You think....” Shasta pursed her lips. “Rose?”
“Alistair's one of my best friends,” said Rodney, “and Rose would never let on to him – or to anybody else – that she felt the way she does about Logan. She thinks it's hopeless, a lost cause. But...if it isn't....”
Shasta laughed darkly. “Well, let's get my brother back, first,” she said. “And then we can worry about love again.” Her expression softened. “Who knows,” she said, almost smiling. “Maybe there will be a second wedding, after yours?”
“I hope so,” I said. But as we sped on towards Radnor’s Peak, I couldn't shake my doubts. I knew now in my heart that I was committed to Kian. But did he still feel the same way?
Chapter 17
The stone towers of Radnor’s Peak appeared in the distance shortly before dawn. The tall defensive towers, each one long-since converted into homes for the shepherds that tended their flocks in these parts, stood in a ring around the outskirts of the village, while a grouping of smaller thatched-roof huts stood in a cluster in the center.
