The Heart Between Kingdoms

by Mary Dublin

  Still wearing that smug, pondering expression, Aeron stretched a hand into the air. Before she could register that his lips were moving, a rush of magic took hold of her, tore her away from Daniel. Aeron sliced his hand down. It was as though a stake of red-hot iron had torn straight through her chest. Esmae crashed to her knees at once, gasping like a hooked fish. The pain lasted only seconds, but the weight did not leave.

  "King Maison suffered a terrible ailment of the heart last night," Aeron continued. "Servants found him dead in his bed before the sun broke this morning. Nothing could have saved him. I hope you'll accept my deepest condolences for your loss."

  Esmae couldn't look at Aeron when he spoke. The words stung too deeply and his face was the poison that sprung it. She turned her head slowly to regard Daniel. Having been fighting the spell to get to his feet, he froze at once, as though all strength had left his body the moment that terrible word had rung out.

  Dead.

  "That's not possible," Esmae whispered. Then again, in a roar, "That's not possible!"

  Several of the guards flinched at her volume, but Aeron remained perfectly calm as he watched her fight viciously against the weight of the magic. Her body strained, but she couldn't pull more than an inch from the core of the spell.

  "You liar!" Her words crackled like fire in every nerve of her body while sobs shook her chest. "You murdered him! You murdered him!"

  "Ask any of the servants and they will confirm what I have told you," Aeron said, unmoved by her grief. "He died in his sleep."

  Her shoulders heaved. It felt as though the awful spell was the only thing holding her together. "You did it. You struck while he was vulnerable."

  "Now, Esmae, that is a very serious allegation. Especially serious, considering I have accepted the burden of ruling Evrosea. With Maison's unfortunate passing, and Rommen nowhere to be found, there was no one willing to step up."

  When she gave no answer, staring at the ground blankly, he flicked his wrist and forced her chin up.

  "I'm glad you're here, sweetling," he said. "It's high time you've returned where you belong. With your people. There has been resistance to these changes, but you can be the difference. They need you now more than ever, don't you see?"

  "You're out of your damned mind." Daniel's voice was a quietly contained storm of fury. "You'd force her to be a face they can trust. She belongs in Mirrel."

  Aeron waved off the statement. "I'm not above using certain magics to return her to her natural size—the way she should be."

  Horror stole her voice. She shuddered and sobbed, her fingers digging into the fabric of her dress. Even as she found the will to speak, it was as if the words belonged to a different person—a person who hadn't shattered into a million pieces.

  "I will never, ever play a role in your vile game, Aeron."

  "You're already playing, Esmae," he said. "You all are."

  Wings hummed on the air. Against the protests of his guardsmen, Aeron came to hover just before her face. Though his smile stayed strong, there was nothing playful about the way he looked at her.

  He was bold to come so close, and he seemed unsurprised when she immediately tried to make a grab for him. He only had to twitch his finger to pin Esmae's hands to the grass, and sent Daniel doubling down onto his elbows in the dirt.

  The most frightening part about it was how effortless he made it seem.

  "You won't have her." Daniel peered up at Aeron from the level of the ground, murder in his eyes.

  "And why not?" Aeron quipped in far too light a tone.

  "Maison's kingdom won't stand behind you." In his anger, Daniel's very obvious Mirrel accent became stronger. He sounded so incredibly human, outnumbered by the fairy lord and guardsmen. "Look around you. You have twenty, perhaps thirty guards at your disposal, while rest of Evrosea is boarded up in their homes, terrified. They'll never fight for you. You're a criminal, not a king."

  "Untrue," one of the guardsmen grunted.

  Aeron held up a hand for silence, intent on maintaining intimacy between the three of them below the palace balcony. He looked down at himself, his own hands, and gave a disquieting chuckle. "If you knew what I was capable of now… You wouldn't speak to me in such a way."

  "Wrong again." Daniel's fingers curled into the earth, his glower unrelenting. "You're going to wish you were never born after what you've done to these people—to my family."

  "You speak as though you have any leverage here," Aeron snorted, clenching his fist before him.

  A hiss of pain escaped Daniel. He squeezed his eyes shut and panted through his teeth, agony plain on his face. Esmae struggled to reach him, unable to watch in silence any longer once Daniel let loose a tortured groan.

  "Stop!" Despite everything, she couldn't stop herself from begging. "Stop it! Let him go!"

  "It's about time that humans learn their place." Aeron ignored her pleas, a frightful depravity mingling with his amusement as he eyed Daniel's writhing. "Perhaps you'll be more inclined to understand what I can do once I have you rip your dear Esmae's heart out."

  Esmae shuddered in horror and ceased her struggles. She met Aeron's cold eyes, and for the first time she truly understood why humans would fear and hate the fae and their magic.

  "You can't," she whispered. "He's too strong—"

  "So am I," Aeron snapped.

  Daniel's gasps of pain came to a stop, and Esmae feared the worst, ducking her head down against an attack that never came. When she peered up, she found Aeron glaring past her. Following his gaze with a stiff turn of her neck, she saw a guard making a beeline for the palace, shouting at the top of his lungs.

  "Sire! Another human has passed the barrier! We need more men!"

  With the traitor's attention diverted, the pressure keeping Esmae pinned to the ground slackened, and she wasted no time in taking advantage. She scrambled of her hands and knees, rushing to Daniel's side to help him to his feet. Blocking out Aeron's shout of anger, she dragged Daniel along with her, relieved when he began moving on his own. He pushed her ahead of him and ran without pause.

  Her heart pounded madly as she waited for agony to overtake her once more. She could hear Aeron ordering his guards to stop them, and she didn't doubt that he would be at the head of them.

  A flurry of wings erupted around her and Daniel as they passed the first of the elegant residency oaks. She dared to glance back, looking around Daniel's arm. Spells crackling and spun through the air—a full-on battle erupting in mere seconds as inhabitants of Evrosea bought Daniel and Esmae precious time.

  "Yer Majesty!" Sir Logan's voice carried like a roar above it all. He barreled into the chaos, splintering two rope bridges strung between home carved into old oaks. He stepped over the wreckage, his long sword drawn and dragging on the earth, "Yer Majesty… I heard you shout."

  The rest of his words seemed to turn to ash in his mouth as a bolt of crimson light narrowly missed Daniel's shoulder, and it dawned on the knight that the magic was aimed for them.

  Gruffly, he pushed his way behind them and shoved them towards the outskirts. Esmae winced every time her foot caught on a twisted root, or her shoulder skirted against a polished balcony. Aeron's cronies were spreading panic through the kingdom, and now she and Daniel and Logan were carving their own path of destruction. Every step was made more frightening with the worry that a fairy would dash out into their path. There was no chance to be careful as they should, fearing for their own lives as well as the rest of the kingdom.

  Sir Logan brandished his sword wildly to keep attackers at bay, growling curses at the lot of them. The swarm of guards with spells pooling in their hands would break formation to give the blade a wide berth. Esmae could barely keep track of who was fighting against Aeron's men, and who with him.

  "We can't fight them, Logan." Daniel panted. Another spell whizzed past—this one grazed his neck, leaving a streak of pink, raised skin.

  "The hell we can't," Logan said. "Maison has lost his mind!"
<
br />   Esmae's face hardened. "It's not my father doing this!"

  Her voice threatened to choke up at the mere mention of her father. Gone. Forever. Blinking back tears, she put a hand on Logan's arm, giving him a tug in the direction of the barrier.

  "They're aiming to kill," Daniel said, seeming to read her thoughts. "We can't stay here any longer. If Aeron latches onto us with his magic, we're dead."

  Logan answered, "Go, then. Run! I'll cover you."

  Daniel grabbed Esmae by the wrist and took off at a sprint. Thankfully, the trees and homes spread out farther from each other and gave them more room to move. But as the air behind them still buzzed with lethal magic, the relief was minimal.

  At last, the barrier came into view. Esmae took the lead, making a beeline for the shimmering magic wall. She scooped up her cloak, daring to glance back one more time as Daniel seized his coat and swung it around his shoulders in one smooth motion.

  As Sir Logan made to usher her and Daniel out, Esmae peered past his arm and felt her gut clench with a fresh wave of horror. At the edge of the chaos, a painfully familiar figure restrained a struggling Nadine upon a branch of a tree.

  "Alyssa, no," Esmae breathed.

  Brennan's mother fixed a cold, hard look at her. There was no time for anything more.

  They stepped past the barrier, panting. Esmae's mind raced with what they could do, where they could go. They couldn't return to Mirrel like this, chased by a hoard of fairies. She hadn't the foggiest idea of how to throw them off, but a fresh twinge of magic in the air silenced her thoughts. Right before her eyes, the glamour barrier thickened with fortifications.

  Pulling herself free from Daniel's grasp, she stepped up to the glamour and rested her hand on the wall. The barrier rippled, but did not allow her to pass.

  "It's solid," she said quietly.

  Daniel's eyes moved, unseeing, over the wall. "Hopefully that will keep them in, too."

  Esmae gave him a sharp look for hat comment, but when he took her by the arm, she allowed herself to be drug away and saddled onto Amos' back. There were innocents in Evrosea along with the new disciples that Aeron had amassed, but she knew she could help none of them if they she was killed.

  She had given up calling the forest kingdom home six years ago, when she encountered Daniel. But Esmae had never imagined that she would be running from it once again.

  Daniel didn't slow the horse to a canter until they were approaching the gravel path that led to the Mirrel stables. Esmae sat in front of him in the saddle, her fur cloak clasped in her lap. Without it, the wind was fiercer than ever before, but this time she barely felt its sting.

  "We don't know if he's telling the truth," she announced bluntly. "My father could still be alive."

  Daniel's hesitation was excruciating. "I pray that he is. Are you hurt at all?"

  "No more than you. I'm only dizzied." Esmae rubbed a welt on the back of her neck self-consciously. "I've never had fae magic used against me like that. Not aimed to pierce."

  Having passed the gilded stone archway that marked the entry of the sprawling stables, Daniel slung himself out of the saddle. Servants were still sparse at this hour, and those who saw the king's brooding gaze were wiser than to approach with conversation.

  Slack with weariness, Daniel leaned his forehead against Esmae's trailing skirts.

  "He won't do it again," he assured her in a low voice. "I'll make sure of it."

  "You can't promise that."

  "I can," he refuted, lifting his chin. "I may be only one man, but I am king. A king doesn't make his promises lightly." There was no arguing with the steely look in his eyes.

  She sighed, reaching down to brush a hand through his wavy hair. The spires of the Mirrel palace loomed over them, a giant in its own right. Esmae felt as though the obsidian walls were watching them through the gaps in the stable's beams.

  "Daniel… We should go inside. You'll grow ill if—oh!"

  Something—someone—had grabbed her hand, nearly invisible to her within the folds of her cloak. It was most certainly a fairy, she knew the sensation like her own reflection.

  Aeron's sent one to finish the job, she realized, and with a cry, tried to fling it off. The cloak gave a jump, the fairy beneath fastening skinny arms around her wrist.

  "Es? What is it?" Without waiting for an answer, Daniel made a grab for the thing dangling from her hands.

  "N-no, please! Esmae, don't let him. It's me! Your uncle!"

  The voice was unmistakable. Eyes wide as saucers, Esmae pushed Daniel off and brought her hands, cupped carefully, up to her eyes. The fairy acted as though he had never been held by human hands before, trembling bodily as he lifted his head.

  "Uncle Rommen?!"

  Chapter

  Eight

  "You have to take me with you." Rommen clasped his hands, looking at no one but Esmae.

  Daniel glanced about warily, double-checking that no well-intentioned servants had entered the long stretch of the roofed stable since he and Esmae had entered. He studied her expression. She was an odd mix of relieved and cautious, as though she couldn't be sure of the family member huddling in the hollow of her palms.

  "Tell me first," she said, her voice brittle. "Is it true—"

  "You're back!" Brennan's shout came from outside the window on the other side of Amos' stall. Forgoing his usual skittishness of the horse, he flew right past to hover before Daniel and Esmae. The hope on his face dampened when he caught sight of Rommen. "What... what's happened?"

  Esmae couldn't seem to look straight at him. "You should have stayed inside. Someone could—"

  "I know what I'm doing. Why is he here?"

  "Aeron's taken over," Rommen blurted before anyone else, desperately turning to Brennan. "It happened so quickly, I-I didn't know what to do. I couldn't stay."

  Esmae's lips pursed. "How do we know you're not with him? He didn't follow us. He... he could have sent you."

  Somehow, Rommen managed to look even more ashen. It might have been fear for what would happen to him if he was truly discovered a traitor, but the sorrow in his eyes was unmistakable.

  "How could you say such a thing?" He shuddered out a sob. "He killed my brother!"

  Esmae made no discernible reaction. Her eyes stayed wide and staring like Daniel had never seen, as though she'd awoken from a nightmare she couldn't escape. Brennan did not share her horror in silence.

  "No." His voice was quiet and hollow at first, then packed with more grief than his rising volume could contain. "No, no, no! I-I... he didn't. He couldn't have. Aeron was right there. I could have—I should have..." As he inched back in the air, panic searing deep into his gaze, Daniel saw his attempted retreat coming before it could happen.

  Taking a hasty step forward and lashing a hand out, Daniel snagged Brennan's lower half into a fist. The fairy immediately began to writhe, his wings beating furiously. As much as it pained Daniel to restrain him, he didn't dare loosen his grip. If Brennan slipped away now, he'd be flying to his death.

  "Let go, Daniel," he growled through clenched teeth. "I'll kill him!"

  "Alone? Aeron has an entire league supporting him." The words seemed cruel when Brennan gave a tiny start of surprise and paled to a dismal, ashen color. It had to have been all the more terrible, intimately knowing the faces of those louses.

  "T-Then they all have it coming. The filthy traitors!"

  "Brennan—"

  A tiny fist beat against the side of his hand. "Don't you dare to presume to tell me to calm down."

  Daniel stared down at him pleadingly, his throat tight. "Stop it. You won't fix anything by blaming yourself," he insisted.

  Brennan regarded him with such ferocity for this comment, Daniel thought he might try to magic his way free. The stalemate lasted for the better part of a minute, his labored breathing the only punctuation in the stillness. Then, as suddenly as he had begun writhing, Brennan gave up the fight. He slumped over the side of Daniel's fingers, wings wilted a
nd face buried into his hands.

  "But I-I had him. I could have stopped all of this." He lifted his head. The tiniest, most delicate tear trails were racing down Brennan's cheeks as he gazed up at Esmae. "I'm so sorry, Princess."

  Her expression hardly shifted at her old, familiar title. "He would have killed you if you pursued him," she said, her eyes distant and lost. "The power he's gained—he wouldn't have hesitated. None of this is your fault, Brennan. Not what Aeron did, or—" Words choking, she looked down.

  "Or?" Brennan straightened when he was met with no answer, squirming for a better look from Daniel's hand. "Or what?"

  "It doesn't matter right now. There's nothing we can do."

  He bristled. "Esmae!"

  She squeezed her eyes shut. "When we were leaving, I saw Lady Alyssa."

  Daniel frowned at her. This was news to him, and his heart grew colder upon seeing the pain that flooded her face. Another traitor.

  "M-my mother? Where is she? He... he couldn't have kill—" Brennan cut himself off, unable to finish.

  Esmae shook her head slowly. "She's alive. And she's on his side."

  Brennan's silence was far worse than any struggling or yelling that could have resulted from the admission. He dropped his head back into his hands with a defeated sigh. Fearing that he would snap at any moment, Daniel glanced at the end of the stables.

  "We should go inside," he murmured. "There's too many eyes here. Brennan, can I trust you to fly ahead of us?"

  When he got no answer, he tested his grip. Daniel unfolded his fingers, one by one, and Brennan fell to his knees, a pitiful heap in his palm. He did not move to spread his wings. He did not look at anyone.

  The mere mention of moving, however, had agitated Rommen back into his petrified state. His golden-brown eyes were wide as he crawled closer to Esmae on his knees.

  "My dear, please… Y-you believe me, don't you? I didn't hurt a soul. I had nothing to do with t-that murderer!"

  "You'll have shelter here, Uncle." Esmae said, looking carefully down to Daniel. She waited for his nod before offering Rommen the best smile she could manage. "We… we must stick together, mustn't we?"