“Why are you doing this?” asked Nadin. “What did I do to you?”
The monarchs exchanged glances.
“Must thou have done something?” asked the queen. “But, to answer thy question: we merely act in accord with our arrangement. Adren wanted a cure, we wanted thee. Now we have what we desire.”
Nadin narrowed his eyes. A moment later, they went wide and it was as if the strength left his body. “She… she couldn’t have…”
“I assure thee, she did.”
“So why put an illusion around her?” Nadin asked, straightening.
“We prefer efficiency,” said the king in a languid tone. “We deal with thee, while our daughter completes the rest of our arrangement in private.” Then, to the fairies holding Nadin: “He bores us now. Remove him to his place.”
As the fairies dragged Nadin away, he screamed to Adren to help him as if hoping he could break through the illusion. Even as the doors to the throne room closed, he screamed. But it was clear she could not answer him.
Though the magic that held Adren burned away at the touch of her own, Iraem raised her hands, palms up, and stone ties appeared. They wrapped themselves around Adren’s body and legs, pinning her arms to her sides.
Except Adren knew an illusion when she saw one—no fairy could make something out of nothing—and she pressed her arms through and through and through and through…
These ties were thick, it seemed. She couldn’t get her arms out of them. Why couldn’t she get her arms out of them? The logical thing would have been to look down, but Adren knew that she wouldn’t see the truth, no matter how clear it was.
And neither would she feel the truth. She may even be free already and only the fairies would know it until she could get away from their power. Iraem must have seen Adren realize this and her smiled deepened.
“So, you can use your illusions on me. Amazing.” Adren put as much sarcasm as she could muster into that one word. Which was quite a bit, despite the circumstances. “Now that we’re done with the small talk, what do you want? Is this some sort of test before you give me the cure?”
“I used to want a plaything, but Loram has been generous with me today. Now I want for nothing.”
“So now you have Nadin. What does that have to do with me?”
“Oh, Nadin is my parents’ plaything, not mine.”
Adren swallowed. “I’m not human.”
“And neither will you let me call you thee. So here we are.”
Adren didn’t know how to respond. Her truth sense had remained silent all through her first meeting with the monarchs, but that couldn’t have meant anything. Fairies were magical beings, and magical beings didn’t deal with others in such an underhanded way. They just didn’t.
“What about the cure?”
“I believe you were the only one to say anything of it.”
That couldn’t be true. Every detail of Adren’s first meeting with the monarchs raced through her mind. Every word spoken. She had asked for the cure and they had agreed, hadn’t they? Perhaps not explicitly, but it was understood.
“I notice you have left behind our dialect entirely with me,” Iraem said. “Am I meant to take that as an insult? Surely one who grew up with fairies, as you claim, would hold tighter to it in times of duress. Or did you lie to me about that? I shall not hold it against you. It shall be our secret, my dear plaything.”
Perhaps Adren had missed a detail. Something that, once remembered, would make everything make sense again. Iraem’s spell now gone, Adren stopped her magic’s flow and did her best to ignore the weight of the stone ties as she turned and walked away.
The walls around her vanished, revealing that, of the three who had stood before the dais, only Adren remained. She turned to face the monarchs, but they had also gone. All that were left were Iraem and a large number of other fairies.
“Where is Loram?” Adren demanded of Iraem.
Iraem only shrugged.
The fairies around them came at Adren, both with magic and physical force. She fought them off as best she could, and slowed their attack. Stopping it, on the other hand…
They grabbed her and gagged her with magic that held firm with a collective force her own couldn’t break. One of them hit her and everything went dark.
Nadin swore at the fairies as they pulled him through the tunnels, using a wide variety of words which were all the more shocking coming from him. Several he’d learned from Adren. Most had not passed his lips before this day.
The fairies hauled him into a dank, dark part of the mound, threw him into a room little larger than a hole, and laughed as they closed the door. He slumped in the corner.
“Great. Now I’m in prison again.”
Around him, fairy illusions and magic shimmered, both inside his new cell and outside it. And along the door. Nadin perked up and went over to it.
“Hmmm…” With a frown, he tried the door. Said door refused to cooperate. Nadin’s frown deepened as his gaze ran up and down the lines of magic that flowed within the wood.
When Adren woke, she found herself in a room so small she couldn’t stand or lie down with her legs straight. The damp walls smelled of dirt and rotten wood. The door, which she rushed to the moment she saw it, was locked and only let in light through what few chinks there were in the wood. She couldn’t see anything more.
Saints and all the gods besides.
In the name of all the saints and the mothers who bore them.
Gods in hell, with their stinking breath, may they eat the bowels of the fairies responsible for this and spit the masticated remains back into their faces so they can die by choking on their own fetid leavings. May the gods’ curses reach their firstborn and cast them down into the pit of hell to entertain the divine who are never satisfied. May the fairies watch this as they choke, may they know with more horror than they have ever experienced in a lifetime that they signed their sentence the moment they decided to do this… this…
Adren buried her head in her hands.
This couldn’t be real.
They had lied to her. Fairies—magical beings—had lied to her. They’d lied to her, attacked her, and imprisoned her. And for what? So Iraem could have a plaything.
What if Iraem hadn’t met Adren, hadn’t decided she wanted to keep Adren for her toy? Loram hadn’t gone into the prison for Nadin. She’d used Adren to get in so she could retrieve the wooden hand, probably to get back into the good graces of the monarchs. No wonder the prison had a fairy-proof barrier. Adren had thought it just a precaution against their mischief, but now she could see it had been to keep the fairies from getting back that hand. The obvious question of why anyone would want it aside, Adren had been used. Kidnapped. Lied to.
No, no, no, no! This couldn’t be real! She pounded on the door until she almost bled. She wanted to let her magic loose, gods eat the consequences.
She wished she’d never let Nadin go into town in the first place.
Saints, it was all her fault.
With that thought, she curled up in that wet hole and rocked as she did all she could to keep the pinpricks of tears from escaping her eyes. The river of her emotions poured through to the unicorn, alarmed it. It wanted to come, to comfort and, for one insane moment, Adren wanted it, too. Until she remembered exactly how many fairies there were in this mound. The unicorn would never be able to stand against them.
Would it need to? Iraem had implied that she justified her actions by Adren not counting herself a magical creature. Terrible as the fairies had been to Adren, they couldn’t possibly be so evil that they would harm the unicorn.
No! They couldn’t be evil. Going back on a promise—that was something humans would do. Not fairies. There had to be something else, something Adren couldn’t see yet. So she let the unicorn come, praying that its presence would be what the fairies needed to show her what their true purpose was.
Time in the hole passed in a jolting, sideways fashion. Adren would fill with a desir
e to give in to all that boiled within her, a desire so strong she almost couldn’t control it. Somewhere outside of that was the rest of the world. Somewhere outside of that was the grime of dirt against her fingers and that damp, earthy smell. And then her body would relax, turn to normal again as she reminded herself that the unicorn was coming, that the fairies would recognize it for what it was, and that she would be released. Except, as she thought of the fairies and what they’d done to her, it would start all over again. That sick feeling in her stomach would return and it would be all she could do again to keep from losing herself to it and all it implied. Time slowed, stretched out thin and hot, and the next bout of relaxation was always too short to compensate.
But the unicorn was coming, so she held on. She held on as it approached through the forest, as it came so close she almost thought she could hear it in the tunnels, as it…
As it blazed through with pain and fear that sent claws through the connection. Saints and all the gods besides, that hurt. Adren’s forehead tingled with it. The unicorn drew back from whatever the source was, confused.
“Come on, come one,” Adren said. A minor setback, only. Something humans had left. It had to be that.
The unicorn plunged to her again, only for the pain to connect, worse this time. It tangled through the connection in vinelike tendrils. Terror rose, an ocean to flood all else, and the unicorn ran.
Away.
Chapter Six
“There has to be something I’m not seeing,” Nadin said. “It can’t be that simple. They do know I can see magic, right?” He squinted. “Sometimes.”
He sent out some exploratory tendrils of his own magic. They wiggled in and around the door, poked at the enchantments in it. He scratched his head. Tapped his chin.
“Huh. But there’s no use trying to escape while everyone’s awake.” With a nod, he settled himself on the floor and took a nap.
Sometime later, Nadin yawned, stretched, opened his eyes. He then sat in place for several moments before blinking and shaking his head.
“You know, I would have liked for this to be a dream. Just this once.”
Stretching again, he stood and peered at the door to his cell. Before his nap, while the tunnels outside had been dark compared with the rest of the mound, they’d still had enough light for someone to walk along them without tripping themselves. Now, even that light had dimmed and all that remained visible were the curtains of illusion and the occasional thread of an enchantment.
Nadin hummed to himself as his magic reached out to meet the enchantment on the door. The magic fiddled with the threads for a moment before they unravelled. With a smile, Nadin tried the door. It opened. He laughed, but cut himself short by clamping a hand over his mouth. Only after he poked his head out and checked the tunnels did he relax again and chuckle instead.
Under his breath, he said, “I cast more complex ones on Lord Watorej’s motorized carts. For safety, but still.” He paused. “Adren—” His jaw clenched. “This is probably a trap. Which means I really should stop talking to myself.” Taking a deep breath, he nodded. Opened his mouth. Evidently thought better of the idea, closed it, and headed out.
The tunnels of a fairy mound are not designed with the casual visitor in mind. They are created as if grown, and so the only logic they have in their design is a haphazard one at best, although some are better marked than others. Growing up in a mound, one would learn its layout through experience. A new visitor to the mound, on the other hand, would need either a guide or a stupendous amount of luck to get to their intended destination on the first try.
As a result, even with his ability to see the magic of both the tunnel he walked and those beyond, Nadin spent a great deal of time getting nowhere. He stopped, turned around and around all while counting under his breath. With a frustrated groan, he said, “There are too many of them!” Pause. “Oh, but what if…”
In some places, the illusions were thicker than in others. In some places, the enchantments covered a much larger area. One place in the mound had both. Nadin headed off towards it.
The enchantment, as it turned out, coated the entire surface of a door, and the room on the other side held layer upon layer of illusion. It also held the source of muffled weeping.
He paused mid step. The weeping died down, gave way to shuddery breaths. Sometimes, it would stop completely, creating a deafening silence until a gasp started the whole stumbling cycle all over again.
Nadin took a hesitant step towards the door. Whoever was behind it continued as if they hadn’t heard him. He took another step. And another. When he was close enough to reach out and touch the enchantment, the person inside stopped weeping, instead doing what sounded like scrabbling away from the door. Nadin winced, then sighed.
“Are you all right in there?”
“Nadin?” It was Adren’s voice.
Getting burned wouldn’t have made him draw back as fast as he did. Arms shaking, he balled his hands into fists, but he didn’t speak.
“If you’re an illusion, then you’re an illusion. But if you aren’t, please. I need to get out of here.”
Nadin took a deep, careful breath before answering. “Why would I help you, when you gave me to the fairies? Like a thing! As part of an agreement.” His voice was hushed, intense and quivering with raw emotion.
“Gods,” Adren said in a small, small voice.
“Didn’t think I’d find out, did you?”
“It’s not that, it’s… this is all my fault.”
Nadin snorted. “Yes. That’s exactly how it is.” He turned to go.
“No! Wait! Don’t leave me here!”
“Why not? You gave me to the fairies. After I helped you in Watorej, after I stayed with you while you had those attacks, you decided to trade me away. And for what? Did you even think of anyone but yourself in all—” He clapped his hands over his mouth.
“I did it for the unicorn,” Adren whispered. “They promised me a cure. Then they did this.” When Nadin didn’t respond, she continued. “I thought that, if you were part fairy, they wouldn’t treat you badly.”
“And if I was human?”
“You know what I think about humans.”
Nadin threw his hands down and paced in front of the door. “What if I am human?”
Silence.
He chewed his lip. “I hate you for doing this, you know that?”
“I understand.”
“So why would I help you?”
“Because it’s the right thing to do.”
The tunnels were so quiet it was as if the roots listened to them. Nadin sighed.
“Fairies are selfish, you should know that. They don’t give unless they know they’re going to get something better.”
“Humans are selfish, id—” She bit back the word. “And don’t go telling me what fairies are like. I grew up with them. I know what they’re like, and they’re not like that.”
“Well, maybe not your fairies,” muttered Nadin. “But other fairies are. A lot of them, in fact. I thought you’d know better.”
“Nadin,” Adren’s voice shook. “I don’t care. I just want to get out of here. You got out. Please, help me.”
“Fine.” He scrubbed at his forehead. “Fine. I’ll get you out.”
In a few moments, he’d unravelled the enchantment and opened the door. Inside illusion lay thick around Adren, one that made the room seem like a cramped hole in the dirt. In truth, she stood, hunched to fit the space she thought she had, in a fine, spacious room.
“What is wrong with these fairies?” Nadin said under his breath, shaking his head.
When Nadin opened the door, Adren was relieved to find the tunnel dark enough to hide her face. He had most certainly heard her crying, but if he could see her face, then he would be able to see the tear stains on her cheeks. He’d be able to see her eyes. If she had to meet his eyes right now, the veneer of composure she’d cultivated inside her would break and everything underneath would come free. She c
ouldn’t pretend he hadn’t heard her. She couldn’t pretend he hadn’t seen her.
Because it was so dark and because Adren couldn’t see the illusions, she kept a hand on Nadin’s shoulder as she followed him. Touching him while she was still so fragile caused every muscle in her body to tense, so much that she had to consciously relax in order to walk without discomfort.
Their footsteps echoed strangely in those tunnels. Or did they? Did Nadin hear it differently? Adren hoped he didn’t. She wanted something real after all these illusions. At least none of the fairies would try to stop them. Fairies and their sleep—still, Adren kept expecting something, anything to happen. After all, something had hurt the unicorn. As they worked their way through the tunnels, Adren tried to keep track of where the unicorn had met… whatever had hurt it. She couldn’t remember the exact position, but she had a rough idea based on where the unicorn now waited.
By the time they found their way out of the mound, the position of what stars were visible between the jagged teeth of tree silhouettes indicated almost half the night had passed. The moon, a thin slice at this time of month, had already set. Adren took her hand from Nadin’s shoulder and shivered. They had entered the area she thought was where the unicorn had been attacked. Part of her thought telling Nadin about it would help them avoid whatever was out there. Another part hoped against all hope that the unicorn had come up against something momentary, some sort of random happenstance that she couldn’t possibly connect to the fairies.
The path to town opened up before Nadin a few steps at a time. Adren hurried to walk next to him and all the hair on her body rose before she could stop herself from setting foot on the path. Magic shot through her the moment her shoe connected with the bare dirt. It was like walking into a wall, except the wall was lined with prehensile vines that sought out her skin and burrowed under it to snake through her veins.
Her magic rose to protect her, white-hot and wild, but the veins had endless power behind them. She could tell, even if they hadn’t called on their full strength yet, that behind them lay a vast reservoir. The fury of her magic would last for only so long, while whatever that magic was would last and last. Growing bit by patient bit, it would subdue her magic as if it were a child having a tantrum and this spell were the parent come to discipline it. She had to get away, but something had gone wrong between her mind and body. It wouldn’t do what she wanted.
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