I picked up my pace, but my body wasn’t ready to be pushed. My breathing became labored, and I had to stop to catch my breath.
“Are you okay?” Jay asked, his eyes filling with concern.
“I was told by the doctor to rest this week,” I wheezed. “Giving birth kinda takes it out of you.”
His eyes widened in horror. “Lia, I’m sorry. I should have thought.”
I held my hand up to quiet him. “I’ll be fine.”
He shook his head. “No. I’m not having you running around if the doctor ordered you not to. Hang on, I have an idea.”
He took my hand and turned me around. We started back to the palace, passing the guards who looked as confused as I felt.
“We’ll fly,” he said by way of an explanation as we headed around the palace to the staviary.
The thought of flying again wasn’t a pleasant one, but at least I wouldn’t be in labor this time. I’d done it once, I could do it again.
“We’ll take Misty.”
“Right-o.” I followed Jay into the staviary and threw open Misty's stall door. She stood quickly and nudged my pocket.
“No peanut butter sandwiches today,” I said giving her a quick stroke on her nose. “I need a ride, but I promise I’ll get you as many sandwiches as you like once we are done.” She seemed to understand my words, lowering her front legs to I could mount her. I hopped onto her back and motioned for Jay to do the same.
“Williamson, Avery,” I barked at the guards. They stood to attention, saluting me. “You'll have to follow on horseback. Take two of the horses.”
They took off at a run to saddle up, no questions asked. My mouth curved. Despite mother's protection, at least no one here was questioning my authority in times of danger.
“To the meadow, Misty,” I urged. “And hurry, if you please.”
Jay clutched my waist as I gently prodded Misty with my heels. She cantered out of the stables and took to the skies.
I craned my neck and looked back toward the staviary, catching sight of two chestnut stallions as they streaked from the stables below us and toward the meadow.
A wave of nausea overcame me. Gripping Misty’s mane tightly, I took a few deep breaths to make sure my lunch stayed on the inside. I didn’t want a repeat performance of the other night, where I was sure I had thrown up at least once.
My pulse calmed as Jay pulled me closer to him. His chin nestled upon my shoulder as his arms tightened about my waist, causing my stomach to flip far more than the height had. I leaned forward, bringing Jay’s body with mine so I was snug between Misty at my front and Jay at my back. He pulled his hands from around my waist and trailed them up my arms until he laced his fingers between mine, gripping Misty’s mane. Suddenly, the height didn’t bother me anymore. I was safe. I was protected. I was confused. Confused about how perfectly my body fit in his and how much I enjoyed the feel of him.
“Do you know where the traps are laid?” I asked Jay, raising my voice so that he could hear me over the wind in our ears.
I felt his nod against my cheek, which sent a shiver down my spine that had nothing to do with the cold air whizzing past us.
“Where are they?” I shouted back, trying to ignore the heat in my cheeks that was rapidly making its way further south.
His voice was tight. “Down the hillside... We should try to land in the trees. They haven't found any there. I don’t want Misty accidentally trapping herself as we come in to land."
I nodded and looked out for a gap in the trees big enough for Misty to get her enormous wingspan through.
“There, Misty.” I leaned forward, clutching her mane in one hand, and pointed to a small clearing with the other. “Come in slowly. I want to scan the ground.”
She began to descend, and as she did, I scoured the ground beneath us. When I was sure it was safe, I told her to land.
Jay scrambled off of her back and held a hand up to help me down.
This time, when my hand took his, I managed to keep the blush at bay. Whatever I’d been feeling up in the air must have been produced by fear and nothing else. That thought made me feel a little better. I didn’t need to complicate my life further.
“Misty, stay here. We’ll be back soon. If you sense danger, fly away.”
She nodded her head in understanding.
“It’s almost as if she knows what you are saying,” Jay marveled.
“I think she does. She’s a smart unicorn. Now, where are these traps?”
Jay jerked his thumb to the left. “I left a couple of men on the hillside at the edge of the woods. They can’t be too far away.”
I looked to where he was pointing. Sunlight flittered through the canopy of leaves and, not too far in the distance, the edge of the woods was apparent.
As we walked, a couple of unicorns came out to greet us. They watched us cautiously as we walked along a well-worn path through the trees. I stopped, holding my hand out to them. They moved toward me, and the larger of the two nuzzled my hand.
“Have you seen any injured unicorns in these woods?” I asked, giving it a scratch behind its ears.
The unicorn didn’t shake its head, but I could feel its answer. It wasn’t scared. It had nothing to fear.
“They haven’t seen anything,” I said, turning to Jay.
His eyes widened, and his eyebrows lifted. “How could you possibly know that?”
I shrugged. “I just do. You head out to the men. I’ll make sure these two are safe.”
“I’m not leaving you. Your mother would have my guts for garters.”
I laughed at his choice of words. “Fine, I’ll come with you, but I think the unicorns might like to come too.”
“The more, the merrier.”
We ended up on the hillside, the city of Shipley below us in the distance. When we emerged from the trees, Williamson and Avery trotted over.
“We wondered where you’d ended up, Your Highness. We found the traps.”
Williamson pointed to a spot by the tree line where a couple of men were cautiously moving up and down through the tall grass, sticks in their hands to prod at the ground in front of them.
“You should stay in the trees,” I cautioned the two unicorns. Jay took my hand as we walked over to the men.
“We need to keep a look at where we are going too. Those traps could take our legs clean off if they shut hard enough.”
I looked to Williamson and Avery, who jumped down from their horses and tied them to a tree.
“How many are left?” Jay asked the two men, taking their attention from their job. They nodded their heads in a quick bow.
The older of the two, a man in his early sixties with a flat cap, said. “I don’t know. This tall grass is murder. The trapper knew what he or she was doing. They’re bloody impossible to see before you stand right on ‘em, pardon my language, Your Highness.”
“How many have you found?” I asked.
“Bloody hundreds of the buggers, pardon my language.” He threw a long stick to Jay, who caught it in one hand.
He glanced at the two unicorns who were peeping out of the trees behind us.
“I think it’s best if you stay here and make sure the unicorns stay in the trees. I’d feel a lot safer knowing that you weren’t in harm’s way too.”
“I’m on it.” That was why I’d been brought here. To make sure there were no accidents. I settled myself on a stump and watched as the five men worked.
Every couple of minutes or so, I heard a loud snap, and one of the men would bring his stick up, metal teeth biting into it. Then they’d bring it over to me, un-spring the trap, and throw it into a rapidly growing pile. The unicorns left soon after I sat down, probably growing bored with the lack of action. My mind began to wander in the warmth of the sun and the unrelenting thwack, thwack, thwack. The man was right, there were hundreds of traps. I wished I’d brought something to entertain myself with.
An hour or so in, something nudged my elbow from behind. My e
yes shot wide in startling recognition as I met a pair of golden eyes that I’d looked into before.
“It's you!”
The baby unicorn’s mother. She nodded her head so I could stroke her snout. I was surprised to see her, but she was probably bored cooped up in the staviary just as I had been in the palace. “Baby's doing well,” I said encouragingly. “Her wound is almost entirely healed. The hostlers just want to give her a bit more time getting used to putting weight back on it, and we'll send both of you home to the meadow in just a few weeks.”
She sagged in relief and let out a soft whicker.
“Thank you.”
“You're very welcome!” I cheerily said aloud—then froze.
Oh. My. Gods.
My voice was quite squeaky when I spoke again. “Did you just...?”
I’d sat out in the sun for too long. I understood the unicorns. I always had, but to actually have them speak to me in words, well, that was absurd. There was no way that the unicorn had spoken to me.
“I did.”
Her voice resonated in my mind but was accompanied by all the ordinary sounds that a unicorn could make. She huffed and snorted. I heard the sounds through my ears clear as day. But in my head... she sounded just as human as I did.
I was going mad. I had finally cracked.
“Don't get too hung up on this, human child. You are very well known around these parts. The unicorns far and wide have told tales of a beautiful princess. One we can understand. I wondered how long it would take you to understand us.”
“No,” I said, looking round in case I was a part of some weird practical joke. Jay and the others were far down the hillside, all of them immersed in their task. “This isn’t real.”
“Whyever not? You’ve always had an affinity with us. Not many humans would risk their own baby to save a unicorn baby.”
“I didn’t know I was going to go into labor,” I said, wondering why I was pandering to this particular delusion and talking back.
“Eliana!” Jay called from the line of traps. He threw his arms up in a question when I looked at him. “Who are you talking to?”
“No one... The unicorn!” I shouted.
He didn't need to know it was actually talking back.
Beside me, the mother unicorn huffed as Jay went back to work. In the distance, there was another thwack of metal upon wood.
I picked up another stick from a pile nearby, ready for when the one of the men came back. They’d gone through so many sticks that I could build a bonfire with the mangled wood sitting in a pile beside the traps. As I waited for the man to trek up the hill, a thought occurred to me. “Miss, er... mother unicorn...”
“Zacarina, please.”
“Zacarina, then... did you see the people laying traps?” If we had a witness and a description, we had a chance at catching the monsters behind this.
Her eyes grew shifty, and she looked away from me. “Not people. A man. One man. And yet… not a man at all,” she said with a neigh. Her entire body shuddered as she spoke.
A man and not a man at all... I'd unpack that loaded statement later. How did one man manage to do all this without being seen?
“What did he look like?” I asked urgently, my heart pounding with excitement. We were going to catch him, whoever he was.
The unicorn shook her head. “I don't know. I did not see. The forest felt strange, and I stayed well away.”
I deflated. Then we had nothing.
“But that doesn't mean I didn't hear him. He sang as he set about his gruesome work. And we heard him.”
I frowned. A song wasn't much to go on, but maybe it would help somehow. If it was an unusual song or something that had been sung in taverns recently, perhaps we could pinpoint his origin or a place he might frequent. It was a start, at least.
“What was the song?”
“It had only one word repeating over and over again,” she said grimly.
A feeling of dark foreboding washed over me.
“Rumplestiltskin.”
Heiress of Gold
1
29th April
Fact: Animals don’t talk.
Fact: Unicorns are a type of animal.
Ergo, unicorns don’t talk.
It was a truth universally acknowledged. Not something anyone talked about it or debated because it was never even in question. Unicorns. Did not. Have the ability. To speak with humans.
I’d thought that, too, once.
But just one day ago, my world had been turned on its axis. A unicorn spoke to me. It was unthinkable. Incomprehensible. And yet… it had happened. I couldn’t erase the memory if I tried. And there was no blaming it on my subconscious either. I knew that it hadn’t happened in a dream or anything of the sort. The memory had the sort of sharp edges and clarity you only got from waking moments.
So either a unicorn really had spoken to me… or I’d lost my ever-loving mind.
The sound of a little gurgle snapped me back to the present, and I blinked as I broke my gaze from the point on the wall I’d been staring at vacantly. I turned my attention instead to my daughter sleeping in my arms. She was stirring. If I didn’t soothe that little gurgle away, she wouldn’t be sleeping much longer, and this peaceful time rocking her in the rocking chair my mother had placed in our suite would come to an abrupt end. Already used to the movements that could be relied upon to get her to sleep, I gently bounced her and hummed a tune.
Gradually, she settled back down. And I relaxed, grateful to have a few more moments alone with my thoughts—as sleep-deprived as they were.
Fae was the most beautiful thing I'd ever created. The best thing I'd ever done. I just didn't understand why she seemed to hate for me to get any sleep. At all.
And gods above, I needed my sleep right now. Without it, I wasn't at all sure that the things I'd seen and done lately were much more than sleep-deprived delusions.
Like… for instance, talking unicorns. I just seemed to keep on circling right back to that point.
My tired gaze drifted outside the window.
I loved where Mother had put this rocking chair. It was right beside a big window so I could see all the hills and valleys that Vale had to offer. And there were plenty of them. I could see for miles. The sun beamed down over verdant green grass as winged unicorns grazed upon it and then took flight into the skies, searching for their next patch. Flowers bloomed so bold and bright that I could practically smell them, even hidden away indoors the way that I was. Trees that seemed to dwarf me when I stood before them looked small from here, stretched from the pit of the valley as though their top boughs strained to reach the peak.
I felt a slight pang at the memories of the last time I’d visited those hills and valleys. It had been tainted. I didn’t even know who the culprit was. I only knew that traps had been set for unicorns the last time that I had been there. And that had changed everything.
I lived in a peaceful kingdom. A peaceful city, even. Sure, people had their good and bad days, but crime rates were, generally speaking, pretty low. And it was unthinkable that someone would harm a unicorn.
Except that these days, it was what I spent a great deal of time thinking about. Who would do it? And why?
I shook my head and shifted my attention to closer targets, hoping that they could steer my thoughts away from the mystery. I’d appreciate a distraction.
And a distraction, I got. Nearby in the palace yard, a couple picnicked. A blue and white checkered blanket was spread out with a wicker basket adorning the top of it. A young man in green trousers and a worn off-white work shirt reached inside and withdrew a bottle and two glasses. The young girl in a red dress laughed in delight when he poured, and the champagne foam overflowed over the side of the glass. From my spot here behind the window, I smiled. He handed her a dripping glass and kept one for himself. As he held her eyes, the smile faded from her lips as she gazed up at him. She blushed prettily as her beau reached forward to brush her hair from her eyes an
d whisper something in her ear.
My heart twinged, and I looked down at the sleeping baby in my arms. My daughter—the one who looked more like her father every day. The one whose father would never hold her in his arms, never get to know her eyes or her sweet baby smell.
Only a year ago, if you’d painted the picture just a little bit differently, that picnicking couple could have been Luka and I. Squint your eyes, and it could have been us now, only we’d be holding Fae in the air and laughing instead of clinking those sparkling little glasses of champagne. The fact that it wasn't... That it never could be… the fact that he was just gone...
I took a deep breath to center myself. The gaping maw of self-pity opened wide, but I'd spent too long already in its depths. I refused to succumb again right now.
Grief was tricky, I was finding. It waited in the wings for you. Even when it wasn’t center stage, it was still there. One of the major players in the performance of my life. It still held me in its grasp. Probably always would. And it snuck up on me when I least expected it.
But there was no changing the fact that Luka was gone. And I was still here. I had to keep living. To keep breathing.
I looked outside once more, and movement from another direction diverted my eye away from the happy couple.
I smiled, shakiness dissipating and breathing easing.
A tall, well-built figure cut through the grass below, walking slowly, but with a steady and confident stride. Behind him, treading cautiously, was a small unicorn. The sun's light bounced off of her golden horn as she walked beside Jay. Next to them walked the baby’s mother.
Gently, I got up from the rocking chair. Fae was sound asleep, breathing evenly. So, I deposited her into her bassinet. Her brow crinkled with the loss of my body's warmth, and she let out a little grunt. I held my breath, waiting to see if she woke up. But, thank the gods, she settled back into sleep as I watched.
I left the bassinet and crossed over to the window, pressing my fingers to the glass window pane. Baby—as I'd come to think of the baby unicorn that we'd found injured in a trap last week—limped as she gingerly put weight upon her injured leg. Her name had started as a joke at first—it was just easier to say “Baby” instead of “the baby unicorn”—but the more I used it, the more I liked it. And so far, I didn’t know of any other name with which to call her.
Eliana: Remembering Rumpelstiltskin (Kingdom of Fairytales Boxset Book 5) Page 8
