by Eve Langlais
The crowd echoed back in typical manner, “We salute you.”
Then everyone but Ethan and Katherine raised a mug, glass, or, in the case of one lady Katherine spied, a shoe, and toasted the queen and her heir to good health.
“Could be cider,” Ethan said in a quiet and reflective tone over her right shoulder.
“And I could be a licorn’s aunt,” Katherine replied back with a sniff. She didn’t believe it for a minute.
“Not impossible,” Ethan said with a chuckle.
“But highly improbable,” she said while stifling laughter of her own and elbowing him in the ribs. “Stop making me laugh. I don’t even want to think how I could be the aunt of a horse with fangs and the temper of a spider–demon.”
“Adoption,” Ethan said as he tilted his head down and looked into her eyes. “My, someone has a dirty mind when she’s drinking.”
Katherine blushed to her dark roots and hastily said, “I meant that would be a ridiculously troublesome nephew.”
“Uh–huh,” Ethan said teasingly. “You sure you don’t need a detoxification brew?”
Katherine pouted and let her shoulders slump. “No.”
“Katherine.” Ethan’s voice had turned serious. “You know your mother. You go home even the slightest bit off balance and–”
“I’m grounded for a week, I know–”
“–and we need to be somewhere in four days,” Ethan said, finishing her sentence.
“Right,” she said.
“So I’ll ask again. Need a detoxification brew?” he asked.
“Yes, please,” she said with a slight grumble. It wasn’t like she needed the warm buzzy feeling to stay, but she’d certainly miss it during the two hours of ceremonial speeches to follow. She knew that for a fact.
“All right,” Ethan said with a rub of her back. “Be right back.”
Katherine nodded and squeezed his hand as he walked away. Refocusing on her mother, she had to admit that making a unity speech while everyone was well and truly drunk off their rocker could be one of the brilliant ideas that her mother had. No objections from happy drunks after all.
Before the queen could do more than raise the microphone to her glossed lips, the first and probably not the last interruption of the night appeared. An eight–foot–tall giant with a wooden club the side of Katherine’s bedpost lumbered toward the front of the crowd at a leisurely if slightly off–balance pace. He had to hunch his head slightly when he passed under the beam that divided the main room from the front area, where the queen stood. As soon as he cleared the lowered roof, he was able to spread out to his full height as the roof of the bar toward that end arched upward to form a cathedral–like structure. Katherine had a feeling it was for the fairies and winged fae who patronized the bar. If they couldn’t have the pretense of flight or at least hovering they were not happy. Winged fae that weren’t constantly surrounded by open sky were not happy, and Katherine couldn’t blame them. If she could fly, that’s what she would want to do all day. Nothing else.
She watched with bated breath to see what the lumbering humanoid–like creature would do. You never knew with giants. They were huge foot soldiers of the witch armies because they were strong, fierce, almost indestructible, and insanely dumb. If he was drunk, it could mean trouble. If he was angry, it would mean trouble. The guardians of the coven queen apparently were wary as well. None too subtly, three emerged from the shadows to the left and right of the stage and placed themselves four feet in front of the podium. Close enough to grab the queen and run if needed, far enough away to launch an attack on the giant at her command.
Katherine knew and her mother knew that unless the queen’s life was in imminent danger, her guards would only act with her consent. So as her mother stepped out from behind the podium with a click of her heels, she did so with the utter surety that she commanded everyone and everything in this room.
Katherine watched as her face changing from welcoming to contemplative. Her eyes darkened, her chin lifted, and her hands calmly cupped in from of her. In private Katherine liked to refer to it as her mother’s ‘game’ face. Because she would not flinch and would not blink when she had it on. If you were playing a game of chicken with her, then you would lose, because the Queen of Sandersville didn’t back down. Not for anything. Her subjects depended on her to show fortitude, and in a situation like this, when the eyes of the town’s most powerful magical beings were all upon her, she couldn’t back down.
“That giant better know what he’s up to,” Katherine whispered to herself as the giant came to a stop far enough away that he would have to take a step forward with a swing of his club to even attempt to hit the guardians. Yes, the floor was that big. And Katherine realized that the giant might not be so stupid after all. He had assessed the situation and adapted to it, even off balance as he was, although she honestly couldn’t be sure if that was because he’d had too much alcohol or for another reason.
“How much would it take for a giant to get drunk anyway?” she said while taking in the bare skin and bulging muscles of the giant’s back, which was crisscrossed with numerous scars from fights he’d gotten into, no doubt. A thick loincloth covered his privates and, astonishingly enough, he didn’t stink. Giant had an aversion to water–a big one, since their bones were quite dense in order to withstand attacks and they couldn’t swim. If you could throw a giant into a deep enough pool, they’d drown faster than you could kill them by piercing their flesh with swords. Or so the legend said, anyway.
So the fact that this one didn’t smell like an outhouse was quite strange. Ethan appeared at her left side without a word of warning and Katherine nearly jumped a foot in the air.
“Don’t do that!” she said in an accusing tone.
“Do what?” Ethan said as he handed over a large glass of a brew that looked like a cross between mud water and a root beer float. She grimaced, knowing it didn’t taste anything like root beer.
“Sneaking up on me,” she grumbled, taking the concoction. “You walk as if the air separates your feet from the ground they stand on.”
“Maybe it dord,” Ethan said blithely.
Katherine rolled her eyes and knocked back the first third of the drink. There was no use protesting or holding off. The detoxification brew lost its potency quite quickly once it was made.
Spluttering and forcing herself to swallow the drink that tasted worse than she had thought, Katherine gestured at the drunk giant and said, “What do you think he wants?”
“I don’t know,” Ethan said thoughtfully while crossing his arms.
Chapter Five
Katherine heaved a deep sigh and swallowed the next two–thirds of the drink as she forced her stinging eyes to focus on her mother and her petitioner. The giant gripped his club tightly and slowly swung it off his shoulder and down to the floor. Every breath in the room paused with tension, and the giant’s deep and booming voice rang out when he said, “I am Stoke.”
The queen raised a fine eyebrow. “I am pleased to meet you, Stoke. How may I be of service?”
Katherine couldn’t see the giant’s face and she desperately wanted to, so she edged through the crowd while clutching her mug tightly. Because she refused to turn away from the spectacle, she ran into a few people and stepped on more than a few toes until she got to a position where she could peer into his face.
The giant didn’t look angry. He didn’t look sad. He just looked peaceful. As peaceful as a beast–like fae with an upper row of incisors jutting from his maw could look.
“I am Stoke and I am happy.”
Katherine blinked and resisted the temptation to wipe away her ears. Had he said what she thought he said? That he was happy? But the whispers around the room with the derisive laughter that quickly followed behind, confirmed that suspicion. When he began swaying slightly in the non–existent wind, well, it was clear that he wasn’t altogether there.
“All right, he’s drunk, definitely drunk,” Katherine muttered.<
br />
“I am glad,” Katherine’s mother said with almost imperceptible motion of her hand to her guards to move forward.
Taking the lead from their queen’s movement, one of the guardians stepped up and said, “Perhaps you’d like to be happy elsewhere, Stoke?”
Fortunately, Stoke did seem happy that he had been able to say his peace and quietly started to amble off under the direction of a guardian who had approached him. It was a slightly comical sight to watch the warlock who only reached the giant’s mid–shoulder guide him like a toddler urging an adult forward through the crowd. But when the lumbering giant ducked to go out the back door with the whole room watching, two things happened. First, Stoke fell forward flat on his face, and second, the whole room realized that Stoke was not wearing any underwear as stifled laughter abounded.
Katherine blinked and choked down the rest of her detoxification brew. She could already feel the cloudiness in her head leaving. As she turned to eye her mother’s orders to more guardians to assist an unconscious Stoke, she thought, It’s going to be a long night.
Meanwhile the pokes and prods of bar staff and guardians on Stoke’s unconscious form yielded no results. After a minute or two the group turned to the queen with a collective shrug. He was obviously out for the count, and as heavy as his kind was, they couldn’t move him.
The icing on the cake was when a bar waitress had the bright idea of grabbing a bucket of water to pour over the slumbering giant’s head. Stoke half lurched up with a shout, fell right back down, and promptly began snoring. Then, to everyone’s surprise, not least her own, her mother promptly began laughing.
No one said the Queen of Sandersville didn’t have a sense of humor. Not to her face, anyway.
A few minutes more of consultation yielded a solution. A large tarp thrown over Stoke, a silencing spell, and the meeting continued on.
Then the queen spoke. “My friends, as you well know the bicentennial anniversary of the coven–fae wars has come upon us. In just a few weeks’ time, we shall celebrate the time that witches and fae came together as one representative regency…”
Katherine’s eyebrows rose into her hairline in surprise. Well, that’s one way to put what happened nicely. Another would be to say that the remaining fae got the short end of the stick and were forced to serve under the witch queens if they didn’t want to relocate to the newly freed territories.
“…and as such I think it would be a brilliant idea, not only to celebrate as a town in remembrance of all of our fallen, but also to bring our children into the events,” the queen finished as murmurs, both angry and distrustful, died down around her.
Katherine’s jaw dropped as she thought to herself, “Children–what children? She doesn’t mean her children, does she?”
Then the queen looked directly at her second–eldest daughter and held out a beckoning hand. “Katherine, come forward.”
Dread pooled in Katherine’s stomach like a ravenous beast. “No, oh no,” she whispered with horror.
“Katherine, don’t be shy,” her mother encouraged with another flicker of her hand, and the crowd standing in front of Katherine parted like the Red Sea of the human Bible.
“Oh no,” Katherine said with slumped shoulders as she had no choice but to put her glass on a nearby table and slink forward into the limelight. She was good, very good, at avoiding her mother’s events and generally staying out of the way. And usually her mother was very good about understanding that desire or at least giving Katherine some forewarning before she sprung a social trap on her. Unfortunately, today was not one of those days.
Whispers followed Katherine as she walked around people, slipped between the cordons of guardians, and made it up the stairs of the stage.
She paused when she reached the level her mother and Rose stood on, pleading with her eyes for her mother to say it was a mistake and that she could go back. Instead the queen turned and held out her left hand with her back to the audience. Katherine hurried forward with a grimace and latched on like her mother was her last lifeline on a sinking ship. Katherine liked public presentations even less than she did public speeches. Whatever this was, it was guaranteed to be painful.
Her mother leaned over and whispered into her ear, “It’ll be fine. Just smile.”
Then she turned back to the gathered individuals with her own blazing smile and said, “Beside me stand my two daughters. The future of Sandersville!”
There was polite applause. More from the majority witch population than the fae dispersed throughout, but still it came from all sides, which made Katherine absurdly grateful. At least they weren’t ready to tar and feather her just for being the daughter of a queen.
“Now, as I was saying,” the queen said with a gracious smile, “I believe it’s time for our children to celebrate the heritage of witch, fae, and human alliances. Therefore I ask that each of you accept a token from the basket that is going around. For three days, to symbolize the three decades of both conflict and renewal, each of your children will be paired with the person named on the token. They will bond, they will remember, and they will come to know a little more about what makes the town of Sandersville and all of the Atlantic colonies of the republic so special.”
Katherine blinked. Half in relief. Half in disbelief. This was the big event? But as she watched the token basket being passed around with bemused expressions plastered on the faces of most of the individuals in the room, she had to admit this was a well–calculated time to spring it on the parents. Half of them were so drunk they had no idea what they were agreeing to.
Katherine knew that because the tokens being passed around were blood stones. Binding agreements between fae and witches that could not be broken. It generally wasn’t used when most of the target audience was semi–incoherent. Looking around though, she knew that the three–day commitment wasn’t that bad–even Katherine could see that and she had no real fae friends to speak of. As for the audience, they wouldn’t be in any shape to protest the commitment until morning when the binding contract would be in their hands and they would be unable to counteract it.
When one of the baskets was passed up to the stage via the guardians, Rose took it with ease. Without a word of protest, Katherine’s sister reached into the basket with her well–manicured French nails and withdrew a small stone that was ablaze with moonlight. It was almost blinding to look at for a moment before the glow dimmed and a name emerged in script on the flat surface of the gray oval stone.
Rose read it to herself and then held up her hand with a triumphant squeal as she yelled aloud, “Gavin Atwood, sprite!”
The sheer joy and enthusiasm held in her sister’s voice made Katherine sick. Because she suddenly knew just by looking at Rose’s face with her suspicious eyes that Rose had known.
“This whole time,” Katherine shrieked. “You knew this was going to happen?”
Rose turned to her with a smile plastered on her face as she hissed in her annoying older sister tone, “Keep your voice down!”
Only Rose could make Katherine feel both ashamed at a childish outburst and furious enough to clock her in the face at the same time.
Before she could do more than step forward, their mother squeezed Katherine’s hand quickly. “Yes, she knew, Katherine, and now you do to. Now act like a proper Thompson woman and do what is necessary for our town.”
Katherine looked up at her mother with vague horror. “But Mother…”
“Now, Katherine Laine Thompson.” The queen didn’t have to raise her voice. It was a command, not a request.
Reluctantly Katherine reached into the basket and withdrew a stone. The glow died down and Katherine watched the name appear on the stone with resignation. As the letters rolled across the stone in smooth script, her emotions turned to trepidation and then outright horror.
“My life is over,” Katherine whispered as her impatient mother snatched the stone from her fingertips and read out triumphantly, “Natalia Cumberbatch.”
&nb
sp; When her mother fully comprehended whose name she had spoken aloud, even she turned pale.
If Katherine Thompson was the outcast of witch society, Natalia Cumberbatch was the social pariah of the fae community, and with good reason; she had killed her entire family five years ago. And gotten away with it.
Chapter Six
“Someone must hate you from beyond the grave,” Rose said frankly once they were in the car. “You have the worst luck.”
“Shut up!” screamed Katherine at the same time her mother said, “Not now, Rose.”
That tone and that face meant trouble. Rose smirked at her sister from the front seat and turned back around to stare out the window.
“Katherine,” her mother said.
Katherine crossed stubborn arms and turned to avoid her mother’s eyes with an angry grimace.
“Katherine,” she repeated after her daughter didn’t respond to her.
Finally Katherine turned resentful eyes up front and snapped out, “What is it, Mother?”
She was this close to being rude, but even if she was filled with resentment at her horrible turn of luck, Katherine knew not to sass her mother. It was bad for her health.
“Dear, I’m sure this is a misunderstanding,” her mother fretted as she tried to catch her daughter’s eyes in the rearview mirror and simultaneously keep aware of the SUV full of guardians trailing them in the front and back for security.
“How, Mother? How is this a misunderstanding?” Katherine asked coldly. “You didn’t read the wrong name, and thanks to your stunt I’m stuck with it. We signed a pact using a blood stone and so I have to spend the next three days with this crazy murderer.”
“Now, Katherine,” her mother pleaded, “I know this seems bad–”
