by Alexia Purdy
We found her in her bed, pale as the full moon at midnight, practically glowing from the brightness of her white skin.
“Sis? Oh, no!” I ran to her beside and scooped up her pale, thin hand. “How long has she been like this? What happened?” I looked up at her face, her eyes closed as her raspy breath came out in a quiet rattle.
“It’s been just one day.” Evangeline stepped forward, a grim look on her face. She couldn’t hide the fear of losing her niece. It would be like losing my mother all over again. I knew because I felt that way as well.
“One day? She looks near death!”
“She collapsed yesterday. She was speaking with Nautilus, and he said that she looked lightheaded and then fell. He caught her, luckily, before she hit the floor. She immediately turned pale and stated she couldn’t breathe. She managed to whisper that her heart was beating oddly, like it was forgetting to beat, before she passed out.”
“Has she reawakened?”
Evangeline shook her head, a frown at the edges of her tightly pressed lips. “No. She hasn’t regained consciousness. I had all my healers come here and try everything. Nothing is working.”
Shade stared at Anna, but I noticed a lack of emotion there. Normally, Shade would be even more worried that the rest of us, but this person looked detached. What was she thinking?
“Shade. Can you help her?” I asked.
She shook her head as she reached out and pressed a hand to Anna’s forehead. “I cannot.”
“Why not? What good is all that power you now have if it can’t help her?”
She glanced up at me as I restrained my disappointment. Her becoming an Ancient of Faerie had been pointless if she couldn’t do anything to help us when we were in need.
“I can’t help her now because my powers are derived completely from the Land of Faerie. She is human. It makes her impervious to most of my magic. It was what kept us safe from Kilara in the first place. It was why Corb had to bind himself to me when I was human to save my life. It took so much from him to do that. He lost something to me when he did it.”
“So bind yourself to Anna. You can live with that. The old Shade would give anything to save her family.”
“Benton….” Isolde held her hand to my chest as I breathed harder. I felt lightheaded and full of anger. Why was I feeling all this hate toward my sister?
Because she isn’t my sister, I thought. Not anymore.
“I can’t help her,” Shade said, either unaware of how I was feeling or unable to care. “I am not strong enough to bind myself to anyone. It would do neither of us any good. I’ve not gathered enough power to do what Corb did.”
“So ask him to do it.”
“I can’t. An Ancient can only bind to one person ever. We are forever bound after that. There is no binding again.”
Corb stepped into the room as we all swung our heads around to stare upon the Ice King. He’d regained a lot of his coloring from his Ancient magic, no longer appearing human with blue eyes and blonde hair. He looked more like a rider of death, with platinum white hair and white, pupil-less, mother of pearl-like eyes. His colorless features were a sharp contrast against the black Unseelie riding outfit he wore. If his ghastly appearance weren’t enough, I felt dwarfed by his imposing height.
I turned toward Shade, whose eyes remained on Anna, fixated with pure fascination. “Ask Arthas, Shade. He can bind to her.”
“What are you saying, Benton? Are you crazy?” Evangeline stepped forward, shaking her head. “He is pure evil. I will never allow that beast to bind himself to Anna. It just won’t happen. Anna would never want that. She just barely escaped the clutches of Oran, and she’d never agree to it.”
“Shade?” I was desperate and ignored my aunt even though I knew she was right.
“Arthas is a selfish man. He would never bind to anyone,” Shade finally answered after moments of silent deliberation. “He would see it as beneath his stature.”
“Then Rowan. Ask her. She’s like your sister now.”
“Rowan is too weak. She’s pregnant, and it would risk her child to do a binding now.”
“Dammit!” I slapped the bedpost, and the whole frame shook. Anna didn’t respond to the movement. Her breathing sounded more ragged with each breath. “There has to be something else we can do. Something.”
I began pacing the room. It felt like no one else cared. How had things turned out to be like this? I wanted to run out and start a fight. Fighting made things better for me. It was all I knew. Here, I was useless, and there was absolutely nothing I could do to help my sister.
I hated feeling that way.
Chapter Six
Dylan
It’d been hard to get James back to bed. He’d been hysterical after finding out about his sister Anna’s illness, demanding to go to the Withering Palace. It wasn’t a place for children. It was akin to a haunted mansion more than anything, and a kid like James would suffer there. That was why he lived in the Scren Palace. When Shade had been here, it’d been fine. She’d been a calming force for her brother. Now he was practically an orphan once more.
I rubbed my face as I stared across the landscape from my bedroom balcony.
“Damn you!” I slammed my hand onto the railing, afraid my inner fire would burst from my glamour, out of control. My anger flowed like a beast, and I slowly stripped away the magic that held it at bay. Standing on the balcony of the Scren Palace, a place I never wanted to be without Shade, I cursed her to the winds.
“You didn’t have to leave. You could’ve stayed. Nothing is okay, and it’s all your fault.” I shook my fist to the air, but silence answered me. The only sound was the calls of the small creatures that lived in the withering forest. The land was as saddened as I was, but I was done with this mourning. I was through feeling like a discarded game piece.
This sorrow was drowning me, and I wasn’t going to let it anymore. Breathing hard, I let the anger pass, and the inferno inside me burned away until the flames were smaller and I could easily weave the glamour round my body once more.
I was still here. Still breathing. I wasn’t going to be afraid anymore. With or without Shade, I was a king of a realm of Faerie. If she could move on so easily, I would as well. I was going to solve this puzzle with Soap. At least our children would have two parents if not three. They would want for nothing. I knew that if it were up to me, I wouldn’t mention Shade to them at all, but Soap wouldn’t allow me that luxury.
He was sitting on the reading chair, clucking his tongue and mocking me. I knew he wasn’t real. He was a ghost, a haunt following me around. He was just a manifestation of my guilt.
“That’s right, just get it out. It’s unhealthy to keep it all cooped up inside,” he quipped, a mocking smile on his lips.
“Shut up. What do you know? You get to sleep through all this. You don’t have to sit here and rule a kingdom with a fake smile on your face. You don’t have to pretend you’re okay when you’re really dying inside. You get to bypass all of that.”
“Oh, yes, and remaining in a petrified sleep and missing out on everything is so much better.” He rolled his eyes and kicked his feet up. I was about to tell him to keep his dirty boots off the furniture but shook my head, looking away as I crossed my arms. He wasn’t there. He wasn’t real.
“Oh, I’m real all right. As real as you.”
“You’re just in my head. You can leave for all I care. In fact, please do,” I snapped. I didn’t want to listen to his voice anymore. In fact, it was probably better to see him asleep in his glass coffin rather than walking around talking and chatting, more alive in spirit than I felt.
“I may be in your head, but I’m still real. Your guilt makes me real. You really should be nicer to me. Things might have been different if you hadn’t harbored such hatred. We both had the same goals, the same love for Shade. I wish it had turned out better too.”
“You have no idea what I went through. You should have talked to me first, before asking Sha
de to marry you.”
“I know. I regret not doing so, but there isn’t much I can do now.”
“You got what you deserved.” I cringed at my words. Regret had seeped into me the moment they’d slipped from my mouth, but I straightened, trying to avoid how it made me feel. I should have come around sooner, talked to Shade and Soap before things had gotten so sour. I wished we’d never gone to the Heart of Fire and Ice.
“You can wish all you want, but it doesn’t change things. Now, what exactly are you doing to make things right at this moment? You swore you’d help me. I haven’t seen much progress in months.”
“I’m working on it, okay?” I was at my wits end and didn’t need him badgering me.
“You are at your end, indeed,” Soap chuckled, jumping up to his feet and gazing out over my kingdom. He nodded, approving of the scenery. “This place is nice. Too bad all I’m seeing of it is the ceiling in the other room. You should put some paintings up there; it’s dreadfully dull.”
“Shut up.”
“Then get out of here. It’s not doing you any good to be stuck here doing nothing. You can’t even help Anna but to send Ilarial to the Withering Palace, which you’ve already done. Get out of here. Take James out of here too. He needs his mind on something else before he goes crazy. Like you.”
“I can’t take him. He’s too young.”
“He’s thirteen. On the verge of manhood. He needs a father figure, and you’re all he’s got right now. So man up and be a father.”
“I’m already a father, to Jade and Lana. I can’t do anything for James.”
“The twins are fine. The servants can care for them just as well with you gone. They’ll be safe. The palace safeguards them now. You need to help James now. And… and forget about Shade, just like I have to forget as well.”
I looked up and stared at Soap’s apparition. I couldn’t hate him. He was like a brother to me. We had grown up together in the Teleen Caverns. I was supposed to take care of him and had failed him so many times. Now, even years younger than me, he was talking more sense than I ever had. I groaned and closed my eyes.
“All right. Tomorrow we’ll prepare for a journey to the archives. I’m sure Rowan will be delighted to see us. There has to be something there to help you. If not, well, at least I can say we tried.”
I opened my eyes to find Soap gone, the room once more silent and lonelier. I sighed. His ghost only came when I was truly stressed out and feeling dreadful. Sometimes I looked forward to seeing him. Maybe we would have been great as co-rulers of this kingdom with Shade. Maybe not. I guess we’d never know, but I did know that his suggestions were the most reasonable thing I’d heard in ages.
“Tomorrow, I’ll go to the archives with James. This’ll work. It has to.”
“It will, Dylan. It will.”
Chapter Seven
Shade
I didn’t linger at Anna’s bedside. It created far too much friction. I did, however, peer in from time to time. My brother Benton continued to stress and pace back and forth. Corb remained in the room, stoic as ever as he sat there, probably assuming he was my proxy, but I hadn’t asked him to stay. I wanted to fix Anna, but there truly was nothing I could do. There was nothing to do now but to wait until Ilarial arrived.
She’ll know what to do, I told myself. I hoped she did. There was nothing but death lingering in the room now, and for once since I’d become an Ancient, a small sliver of fear grew in my stomach, growing like a cancer and making me want to disappear and run for the hills, even back to Arthas’s castle. I couldn’t breathe here. I could barely stand looking at my younger sister’s pale face as she slept.
“You’re not at your sister’s side.”
I swung around to find Corb standing by me. We were outside the borders of the Withering Palace, in the forest. I’d come here without meaning to. It happened a lot. I’d think of escaping, and I would no longer be where I’d been but somewhere random, peaceful, and alone. I hated it.
“Neither are you.”
“I stayed there for you.”
“You don’t have to do anything for me,” I snapped. I had no patience for someone as calm and solemn as Corb. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do now. I felt for my sister, but were we truly still sisters now?
“It’s okay to feel lost. When I became an Ancient, I too felt such loss and confusion.”
“How would you know how I feel?” I turned to look up at him. Normally, there would be tears in my eyes, ready to fall and slip down my cheeks, but now I only felt cold and numb. It was awful to feel nothing but oblivion inside where there had once been warmth and love.
“I wasn’t always an Ancient of Faerie. It may seem the stories say that the four of us are eternal, that we have lived for millennia, from the beginning of time, but we have not always been the same people. We change. Just as you became an Ancient, the rest of us have also been passed the thrones from our predecessors.”
“What?” I couldn’t understand what he was saying. “You’re not the original Ice King?”
“No, I am not.” He smiled, something I’d rarely seen when he was in my company as a human. Now it felt oddly familiar, as though I’d seen him smile a thousand times. He held out his hand. “I’ll show you.”
I stared at him for a long moment before glancing down at his pale fingers, afraid to take what he was offering. What if it was something I didn’t want to know? Or what if it was something I really did want to see? I couldn’t decide; everything was so much harder to decide as an Ancient than it had been when I was human. The lack of emotions was freezing me up in more ways than one. I was stuck and drowning with no way out.
“Take my hand, Shade. Arthas cannot help you transition. He was never really good at taking a fledgling. I’ve never taken one before, but I am willing to help you.”
“Whose fledgling were you?”
“I was Kilara’s, and she broke my heart. But I swear I will not hurt you, ever.”
His eyes flashed blue, and his warm smile heated the cool winter winds brushing against my skin.
“I’ve lost so much already,” I whispered as I felt the dread and despair creeping in again. How could he help me control that?
“Take my hand, Shade, and I’ll show you how to reconnect to yourself. I’m afraid it won’t be easy, but with help, it’ll become easier. It’ll take time, but alone, you might never regain what you lost. I’ll help you get it all back.”
I couldn’t stop staring at him. He looked sincere and kind. I’d never seen him with these eyes, and as an Ancient, he looked different to me. It was confusing to feel the way I was feeling toward him.
“What’s going on?” I whispered? “I—I feel odd, like I know you better than I thought I did.”
“Kilara’s residual emotions are affecting you. She loved me once, but she cut that part out. She did it to herself and let me go when she should have never done so. You can feel her emotions inside you. You’ll sense all your ancestors. I’ll help you control it. Just take my hand, Shade.”
It made sense. Yes, it was Kilara’s residual feelings inside me. Her love for Corb affected my own emotions, but it felt good, it felt like I was breathing again when I’d felt dead for so long. I liked it and wanted more of it. I wanted my own emotions back, but if this was all I could get for now, it was better than nothing. Even if the real me did continue to fade, at least I could have this.
“Okay.” I reached out and clasped his hand, weaving my fingers through his. They were cool, not icy cold like I’d thought they would be. As our skin touched, it heated to a warmth I cherished. It slid up my arm, into my chest, and hitched my breath.
“You’re so warm,” I whispered, feeling lightheaded. “You always were cold before. So cold.”
“You’re the Summer Ancient. My opposite. Only you can melt my heart.”
I sighed. It felt like I was riding a cloud, floating. He disarmed me with another smile and looped his other hand through my free one.
He leaned forward, pressing his forehead to mine as the land around us disappeared, and we found ourselves standing in the middle of the Santiran Palace, the castle where Ursad, also known as Prince Lotinar, lived. But it didn’t look the same. Things were different, older, with different decorations. And the ruler sitting on the throne was not Lotinar but Corb. A very faery looking Corb, more human in looks than what he looked like now.
“That’s you, but you’re different.”
I turned to look at Corb as he nodded. “I was a king once. Very long ago. My castle was a bit smaller, but we were adding on to it.”
“You weren’t always an Ancient,” I muttered to myself, more for my own knowledge than his. His hand pressed to the small of my back as he held out his other hand.
“May I have this dance?”
My eyes widened as I stared at him. “We can’t possibly. Can they even see us?”
“We can go anywhere now, Shade. As Ancients, we can traverse through time like tourists. We can dance, and they will move to let us. They won’t pay us much attention, and we cannot change the timeline of events, but we can go to these places and watch these faces as though we are merely part of the crowd.”
“We can traverse through time?” My shock waned as I watched the crowd sway to the beautiful orchestra playing for King Corb. He looked happy at the excitement of the party.
“Dance with me, Shade.” Corb’s lips brushed against my ear, sending tingling sensations through me as I turned and let him lead me to the dance floor. There, he placed a hand on my hip and another on my other hand. I was wearing a dress like the other women in the room: large-hooped, tailored to me, and pushing my breasts up with the corset. What century was this? My hair felt heavy, and I reached up to find a pile of curls dangling down to my bare shoulders. The dress was a bright peach color with accents of white lace sewn throughout, with jewels to accent.
