The murmur of voices inside the room halted. It felt like an eternity before my mother’s voice came, resigned. “Come in, Eliana.”
The guards pushed the doors inward and my confusion didn’t abate when I saw what was within the room.
My parents were indeed inside. And as the guard outside of their rooms had indicated, they were not alone. But the foreign royals that were inside weren’t what I had expected.
For starters, they were all so young. My age, it looked like. And maybe I was just sheltered—well, I supposed that I knew that I was—but I had never been sent on a mission to another country, and I didn’t think it was just because of my mother sheltering me. Often, if royals were sent to another country without being invited, it was because they needed something from the other country. So, usually the people who showed up were older, more experienced in the art of statesmanship.
I drew closer, and as the light glinted off the eyes of one of the visitors, I sucked in a quick breath.
It had glinted gold.
Gold like mine. Gold like the unicorns’.
One of them, another woman about my age with long, curly hair nodded decisively, as though she’d confirmed something upon seeing me.
“I knew it.” She turned to others, who watched me uncertainly. “You see? I told you. She’s one of us.”
“One of you?” My eyes darted through the group, comprised of both men and women. They were a strange-looking bunch. The one that had spoken wore men’s clothes that looked like they hadn’t been washed in a week, but her face and hair were so feminine. On her shoulder sat a purple dragon. An actual purple dragon. In a belt around her waist was a sword with the hilt craved into the shape of a dragon. She was mesmerizingly beautiful, but looked battle-worn and tired despite the apparent excitement on her face. Beside her stood a girl who’d at least tried to make an effort with her appearance. Her strawberry-blonde hair was tied in a braid down her back and her blouse and trousers, while still tattered, were clean. The two men couldn’t have looked more different from each other. Where one was tall and clean shaven, with the look of an academic despite his broad shoulders, the other, slightly shorter one was wiry and had a guarded expression. They were, quite frankly, the strangest looking bunch of folks I’d ever met—but their eyes! Their eyes were just like mine.
So I worried over what she might mean. Because their sudden appearance had the eerie pressure of fate to it.
“Eliana, right?” The young woman who had first spoken strode forward with a decisive stride, clomping down the stair of the dais where she and her companions had congregated around my parents.
“Ye-es?” I drew the word out into two syllables, making it a question. I darted a look at my mother, who watched wide-eyed. My father’s face remained nearly impassive, but I caught how he tightened his grip upon the arms of his throne.
What had everyone in such a twist?
“I’m Azia.” The curly-haired woman brushed a strand of hair out of her face with impatient fingers. “Azia, Princess of Draconis. And you—” She reached down and seized my hands in hers. “You’re one of us,” she repeated.
I looked back at my devoted parents and swallowed hard. What did she mean? I thought of the times I’d spoken to the unicorns and they’d spoken back to me. Was this what she was talking about? It seemed she knew more about me than I did. I dropped my voice so that they wouldn’t overhear everything. “You’re gods-touched too?” I whispered.
Her eyebrows flew to her hairline. “Gods-touched?” she repeated loudly. I yanked my hands free and made shushing motions, but to no avail. She said it again, this time with clear laughter in her voice. “Gods-touched?” She looked back at her companions, and it was clear that they were sharing a private joke that I wasn’t in on. “Gods, you really have no idea. Eliana… you’re not gods-touched.” She reclaimed my hands and held my gaze steadily. “You’re magic, though, right, Eliana? We all are.”
My hands fell to my sides, fingers numb, as she turned to the others. “Meet the others... We think we are your brothers and sisters.”
I nearly fainted. My vision blurred at the edges and I fell to my knees as someone went to fetch water. There was a strange buzzing in my ears and I could distantly hear Azia apologizing for the way she’d sprung the news on me.
I sipped at the water and gradually, my senses cleared. Not completely. But enough. It was like I was hearing and seeing everything through a haze of water.
My parents knelt before me, Mother smoothing my hair back with shaking hands, reassuring herself that I was still there, still safe. My eyes fixed on their familiar faces. So warm. So comforting.
And then I looked past my parents to the people behind them. The people who shared my eyes.
“Brothers and sisters?”
I knew I was adopted, and yes, I’d had idle thoughts about my real parents over the years, but I’d not once visualized siblings. “You came from Draconis to find me? Do you know my… our mother… our father?” I asked.
Azia shook her head slowly. “I wish that I could tell you that was the case. We’d love to be here just for a family reunion. But there’s more. We have a duty to the kingdoms that we’re here to fulfill. We aren’t all from Draconis. Blaise is from Atlantice, Castiel from Elder, and Deon from Floris. It seems we were scattered around the kingdoms as newborns.”
“So why are you here? What duty?”
She swallowed. “Magic is...” She turned her hands in a circle, as though trying to grab on to the right words. They fell open as she settled for words she seemed to find inadequate. “Magic is failing,” she said simply. “In all of the kingdoms.”
I stood up, Mother and Father scrambling to do the same. “Vale doesn’t have a particular affinity for magic,” I said slowly. “I’m not sure this really has anything to do with us.”
Even as I said it, I felt the lie on my lips. I’d been talking to the unicorns for weeks and they’d been answering back
She gave me a half-smile. “None of us were eager to believe it. But if you’re not prone to spells and the like, you do have magical creatures here. Has anything strange been happening there?”
I’d kept my secret so well, but it looked like I wasn’t going to be able to keep it much longer.
She took my silence as a confirmation. “I thought as much. But we’re going to fix it. You have to come with us, Eliana. We’re stronger together.”
“Her place is here,” my mother croaked out, her voice choked with emotion.
Normally, I’d object to my mother speaking for me, but in this case, I couldn’t help but agree. “She’s right,” I said. “And it’s not that you’re wrong, not entirely. There are issues plaguing our unicorns, but they’ve returned now and I can’t…” I trailed off, thinking of what I had to lose.
My life was so perfect right now. Jay and I had embarked upon something new and wonderful. Mother and I had seemed to reach some sort of an understanding. And I fell a little more in love with Fae every day. And that was really what decided it.
Part of me, the old Eliana who longed for a world outside of Vale, a life without restrictions, would have jumped at the chance to go with them on some sort of fated quest if it meant I’d get to see the world. But I was a mother now. And that changed everything.
“I have a daughter,” I said quietly. “Not even three weeks old. I can’t leave her.”
“Then bring her with you!” Azia said. Her brow furrowed with emotion. Frustration, maybe? I didn’t know her well enough to read her completely yet. “I wouldn’t ask if this wasn’t serious. We didn’t come here on a whim. There is something very wrong with the magic in our kingdoms. It’s spreading and we need your help to stop it. My mother is sick… maybe dying. Same with Blaise’s mother. Castiel’s entire village is sick and all the crops in Floris are failing. It’s bigger than me or us; this is affecting—or is going to affect—everyone. ”
I laughed humorlessly. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you think I c
an do to help. You haven’t been around babies very much, have you? That’s no place for her.”
Azia’s mouth opened, probably to voice another argument, but I held up my hand. “I can see you’ve come a long way to meet with me, but I’m not taking a newborn on an adventure. I’ve made up my mind. I wish you all the luck in the world, and I truly hope to get to know you all at some point in the future. But as far as your mission goes…”
I pressed my lips together in a grim line.
“You’re on your own.”
Goddess of Loss
1
13th May
Fae chose the most restless night I’d ever had to decide to sleep through for the first time. She was asleep by ten and softly breathing right through until just after six in the morning. Even if those strangers claiming to be related to me hadn’t shown up so unexpectedly, I probably would have woken up, wondering if Fae had stopped breathing or any number of other things that could befall a baby, but as it was, the strangers had me tossing and turning most of the night. It meant I could check on Fae regularly. The sight of her little chest rising and falling, and the movement of her lips suckling in her dreams were the only things that kept me centered the whole night.
Just like any other only child, I’d dreamed of having brothers and sisters. Of course, with my mother’s stance on having children of her own, that dream of mine had been scuttled when I was very young.
Never in all my childhood dreams of siblings had I imagined I’d have four. Four! Azia, Blaise, Castiel, and Deon. I mentally checked them off on my fingers, remembering their names. Alphabetical. I was number five, Eliana. Whoever had brought us to our prospective houses just after our birth had obviously given our new guardians our names. It would be too much of a coincidence otherwise. My mother had always told me she’d loved the name Eliana, but was that just another secret she was hiding? There’d been no mention of a baby whose name began with F or G, but did that mean they weren’t out there? The strangers didn’t really seem to know any more about their history than I did mine. And yet our stories were so similar. All of us brought to the leaders of a kingdom soon after our birth by an older woman and a younger woman who seemed to have disappeared soon after, never to be seen again. They’d told me that right after dropping the bomb on me that they needed me to accompany them on an adventure to save the world from some magic apocalypse and bring my sweet baby. I still wasn’t sure which part of their story was the most insane.
If it wasn’t for their eyes and the golden rings around their irises, I wouldn’t have believed them. They probably wouldn’t have gotten a meeting with my parents. The whole thing was very strange and had rattled me more than I liked to admit.
A small cry took me from my bed and over to Fae. When she saw me, she quieted down immediately.
“Good morning, beautiful,” I whispered, picking her up from her bassinet. Her onesie was soaking wet due to her not having been changed since ten the previous night.
“As if I’d take you away from your home,” I whispered soothingly to her as I peeled the onesie from her body. “Your granny would lynch me on the spot if I so much as tried it!”
A quick change later and she was ready for her morning feed. Less than a month ago, I’d been an only child with my only family being my mother and father, and now, I had so many new family members I was practically fighting them off.
“How things change,” I whispered to Fae, who was busy suckling at my breast for real this time. As anticipated, she ignored me. The concerns of the mother were not the concerns of the daughter.
After a quick shower and change for me, I bundled Fae up and headed downstairs, taking the stone steps carefully with her in my arms. Avery and Williamson, who had reappeared this morning, walked, as always, two steps behind. With no particular agenda for the day, I headed to the breakfast room.
My mother was there, but, surprisingly, so were my father and Jay.
Jay jumped up when he saw me and gave me a kiss on the cheek before taking Fae from my arms and cooing softly to her. I noticed my father raise his eyebrow at the gesture, but my mother merely had a sly grin on her face. All she’d ever wanted for me was to see me settled, happy and safe, and she saw I could be all of those things with Jay by my side.
“Toast and jam?” she inquired as I sat down, pushing the toast rack toward me. I took a slice and slathered it in butter, then jam.
“This is cozy,” I said, taking a bite.
“Your mother has had quite a bit to say this morning,” my father commented. “I guess she thought it better if jam was involved.”
“Everything’s better with jam involved,” Jay interjected. A quick look told me he was talking to Fae rather than the rest of the people at the table. Fae was gazing back at him with adoring eyes.
“I’ve told your father everything,” my mother explained. “He knew most of it, but it was long overdue that he knew the whole story. After the strangers… your, er… possible siblings turned up, I couldn’t keep any more secrets.”
At the mention of the visitors, Jay finally dragged his eyes from Fae. “Do you really think they’re your siblings?”
I guessed my father wasn’t the only one who had been party to my mother’s words.
I shrugged my shoulders and put my unfinished toast back on the plate. I had stayed up most of the night thinking about it. “I don’t know how they can be. Quintuplets are very rare. I mean, have you ever heard of anyone in The Vale having five babies at once?”
I shuddered at the thought of it. Giving birth to Fae was hard enough; doing it another four times right after was a terrifying thought.
My father pointed the knife he’d been using at me. A glob of butter dropped onto the tablecloth. “I looked it up after they left. Not once in the history of The Vale has the royal family ever given out a gift to parents of quintuplets. We’ve had a few sets of triplets over the years, which is the lowest multiple birth we recognize to get a gift, and twice we’ve had quadruplets, but never more than four.” He seemed to notice his butter was on the table, and he swiped it back onto his knife and went back to buttering his toast.
“We give gifts to parents of multiples?” I asked. I’d never heard it before.
“It’s a gesture. Must be hard to have that many babies at once. I gave one out myself in my first year of being king. They were a family from a poor village in the north. I didn’t visit them myself, but the guards who made the journey told me they were very happy to receive such a gift. We sent them enough diapers and baby clothes to last for two years, along with a substantial monetary donation. There was another one in your great-grandfather’s time. Of course, there could have been others that we were never made aware of.”
I poured myself a cup of coffee and took a sip. It was already cold. “I don’t think my birth parents were from The Vale,” I replied, gesturing to one of the servants and handing him the coffee pot.
“What makes you think that?” Jay asked.
“The strangers weren’t from The Vale. They were from all over. Azia and her dragon were from Draconis...”
At the sound of my mother’s voice, Fae began to cry. My mother reached forward, and Jay handed Fae to her. She cuddled her close and swayed softly, humming so quietly I could barely hear it. It was working on Fae, though. She quieted down quickly. My mother passed her granddaughter back to Jay.
“Wait up,” Jay interrupted. He leaned forward on his elbows. “There was a dragon here?”
“Only a little one,” my mother said, shooing him back. “Carry on, Eliana.”
Jay let out a low whistle. He would have been fascinated to meet a real dragon. I made a mental note to tell him all about the impish Nyre once we were out of earshot of my mother.
“Blaise was from Atlantice, Castiel was from Elder, and Deon was from...” I tried remembering where he’d told me he was from, but in all the information I’d been given, I’d clean forgot.
“Floris,” my mother answered for me.
/> “Yes, Floris. My birth parents could have been from any of those places, or none of them. They could have been travelers. If they’d delivered five babies while on the road, maybe they thought it was kinder to give them away.”
Jay looked deep in thought.
“What?” I asked him.
“Your mother told me she thought you were siblings because you were all brought to your new parents at around the same time.”
“That’s right. Very late in the year. We all estimated our birthdays to be around the winter festival.”
Jay sat forward again, and this time my mother didn’t shoo him back. “How did those mystery women manage to get to all the kingdoms at the same time? Elder couldn’t be further away from Floris. Even at the fastest speeds, it would take many weeks to get to all the kingdoms.”
He was right; it was impossible. How had I not thought of that last night?
“Maybe they came by train?”
“Train would take a week or more to get right across the kingdoms, and that’s only if it did a straight run. Trains don’t just go in a straight line from one kingdom to another, and even royal trains can’t just drive around the others on the tracks. I don’t see how it’s possible to deliver five babies to five kingdoms within a week.”
“Even the Urbis Express has a timetable,” Father said. He munched down on his third helping of toast and looked pensive. “Of course, the airships of the Urbis Express aren’t the only flying vehicles. There are others. Privately owned.”
This was something I didn’t know. “What vehicles?”
“I hear that The Forge is making headway with steam-powered flying machines. Nothing like the airships, but smaller vehicles that carry one or two people. I’m not sure they’re completely ready yet, though. When I last talked to Alice Rowntree—she’s the president of The Forge—she was kind enough to give me a tour of the guild there. I must say, the inventions those Forge people come up with are nothing short of extraordinary. Anyway, I did speak to a young man who was working on a flying machine.”
Eliana: Remembering Rumpelstiltskin (Kingdom of Fairytales Boxset Book 5) Page 23
