by Lucy Tempest
Hazel and Bryony led the injured to the kitchen for first aid and medicinal teas, and Ivy and the centaurs helped Leander with the doors. I went in search of my father, calling for him from the stairs on every floor.
By the time I returned to the entrance, to find them having trouble with aligning the hinges, I was beside myself with worry. Where could he have gone?
Will Scarlet popped up behind me, spiking my nervousness, pointing at the doors. “Where is your father when we need him?”
Glaring up at him, I ran to search the halls on either side of the entrance again, finding only the Quill brothers lingering with their sister and Clancy.
I ran back to Leander, anxiety consuming me nerve by nerve. I found him testing one door to see if it would close. Before it did, Robin strode back in.
Upon seeing me, the hooded man approached me, his face semi shrouded, his voice uneasy, even pained as he muttered, “You and I have the worst luck.”
Apprehension shot up my spine as I froze. “What do you mean?”
“Fairies seem to have it out for us.” He paused, before addressing Will. “Well, and you, too, seeing as it was your sister they took. But Bonnie’s luck is now twice as bad as ours.”
I stiffened, not wanting to get what he was saying, heart pounding with painful pumps. “What makes you say that?”
“Because as your father led people away from the castle, I saw a fairy woman grab him and disappear into thin air.”
I stared up at him for one more second, then my legs buckled beneath me.
I hit the cold floor before either of them could catch me.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Leander hurtled to my side with an alarmed shout, crashing to his knees and pulling me into his arms. “What happened?”
I could do no more than blink, breath shallow, body limp and head heavy as the helplessness I’d been feeling since I’d been tossed in this land deepened to paralysis.
Jessamine tried to kneel by me but her legs wouldn’t allow it, so her brothers helped her to sit by me, while Robin discussed something with Leander I couldn’t entirely grasp. He seemed to be telling him about my father. I only got that from Leander’s tightening hold and the look of absolute horror and pity that gripped his face as he looked down at me.
I could understand the pity. Leander was reunited with his friend and Jessamine with her family, whereas I had lost my best friend and my father one after the other, to the same kind of creature. The kind that might have swapped me for another baby at birth, and that had inflicted this ordeal on us all to begin with.
I tried to even my breathing and forced my thoughts away from the too-fresh wound of my father’s abduction to Leander.
In his handling of the attack and Castor, Leander had made it clearer to me that I didn’t need to help him just because he and the castle’s inhabitants were victims and my friends, but because he was the future of Arbore, the evergreen kingdom, my ancestral home.
A whole kingdom now depended on how I felt.
But under the multiplied weight of responsibility, my confusion deepened. I hadn’t thought about the implications of my action at the time, but I’d put myself between Leander and an almost crazed hunter. Didn’t risking my life to spare his say that I loved him?
So why hasn’t the curse been broken?
There could be one answer. The Spring Queen didn’t consider what I’d done an act of love.
But if putting someone’s life ahead of your own wasn’t love, then what was?
Next morning came after the bleakest night I’d ever suffered through.
I dragged myself down to the dining room, hoping to find the others, if not cured of their curse, then at least improved. My hopes were in vain. No one showed up to breakfast.
A sense of defeat filled the castle like trapped smoke that no open windows or cold drafts could clear. By now everyone must be certain if the curse was to be broken, it would have been already.
So what had I done so totally wrong that I couldn’t even slow it down?
I couldn’t figure that out. There had been a complete overhaul of my feelings towards Leander. I’d gone from wanting the hunters to get him to blocking an arrow meant for him with my own body. What else was there?
Still finding no answer, I headed for his quarters. As I approached the ruined family portrait by his door, his booming shout carried to me through the closed door.
“You can’t!” He sounded panicked, not angry. “You can’t leave!”
For moments I thought he was talking to me, until I heard Clancy’s heated response. “I’m not going to die without saying goodbye to my sisters. And without explaining to Lobelia what happened.”
“Did you forget what happened when I tried saying goodbye to my sister?” Leander gritted. “As for Lobelia, she must be probably married off to some other lord by now.”
Clancy was engaged?
I leaned against the door as Clancy’s hooves clomped past. “Even if so, I must explain why I didn’t honor our arrangement. I’ll also need to choose an heir. Hopefully either Lucasta or Sorcha have married and had children since I’ve last seen them. If not, I’ll have to search for a relative to marry either of them, so they can keep the castle, and leave it to their children.”
The door disappeared from beneath my cheek and I fell into the room with a yelp.
Clancy caught me before my head could meet the carpet. “Miss Fairborn, good morning.”
Though it was dark outside like it had been when I’d first come, the curtains were drawn and bedside lamps were lit, casting the messy room in a sinister amber glow. Leander was in his sleep-clothes, the legs of his pants riding up his calves, the shirt stretching across his curving back, and his hair bound at the back of his head, baring bruises on his cheekbone and forehead.
He came over to pull us both deeper into the room, ignoring Clancy’s protests. “Perfect timing, Miss Fairborn. Help me talk some sense into the man.”
It was only then I realized that Clancy was fully dressed. Not just in his usual shirt and waistcoat, but he wore boots that fitted awkwardly over his goat’s legs and hooves, riding pants and a woolen coat, with a tall top hat in his hand.
He really was ready to leave.
Residual terror from the night before came rolling back, making me choke, “If anyone spots you, they’ll know the rest of the castle’s inmates didn’t die as Castor told them, and they’ll kill you and come back for the rest again.”
He shook his head. “I can still pass for human with some effort. To be honest, I should have left far sooner, long before my legs changed, when I would have only needed to file my growing horns. I don’t know why I stuck around so long.”
“For the same reason you came here in the first place,” Leander said grouchily. “It was a good excuse to avoid Lobelia.”
That ticked Clancy off. “I came to check on you. I thought you were dying!”
“I am now!” Leander threw down arms that looked thicker. “We all are!”
His hopeless declaration made me feel even sicker.
Clancy brought his hands together in a silencing clap. “This is why I have to leave. I’ve waited this long for this to end, and it won’t, so I need to wrap up my life before it’s too late.”
I caught Clancy’s arm, partially to steady myself. “You won’t make it to Briarfell, and even if you do, who’s to say your sisters won’t react horribly to you?”
Clancy gave me an exasperated look. “It’s not like I’ll barge in and say ‘I can eat paper, want to see?’ I’ll talk to them first, explain everything.”
Leander felt up his bruised jaw. “They think you’re dead, Clancy. So when you show up at all, then they realize you have horns and hooves, they’ll think you’re some fairy creature trying to lure them into a trap and have the guards spear you.”
“I’ll prove it, like Miss Quill did with her brothers,” Clancy insisted. “With knowledge only I could have.”
“I don’t think
they’ll give you time to talk,” I argued. “You take off that hat and you’re dead.”
He gave me a puzzled look. “Why are you so certain of that?”
“Because you look like a satyr!” I yelled, matching Leander’s urgency. “The embodiment of evil lechery! No woman would let you near her!”
Leander pointed to me triumphantly. “See? It’s not just me.”
Clancy crossed his arms, shaking his head at me. “Of all the times for you two to not argue…”
“You’re leaving?” We all turned around to find Jessamine clinging to the doorframe, feathers ruffled, matching the climbing alarm in her yellow eyes.
It was Clancy’s turn to panic, but he didn’t attempt to lie, his mouth twitching wordlessly.
She moved as if to block the doorway, gaze seeking mine out. “Are you leaving too?”
I could only shake my head. “I don’t know what I’m going to do anymore.”
Clancy faced her. “If I don’t leave, tell me, what do I do?”
“Wait for the curse to break,” she pleaded.
Clancy threw his hands up in the air. “It won’t break! I wouldn’t be surprised if this whole thing about a way to break it was an extra cruelty from the fairy queen, to torment us with hope.”
Her wings spread out as he made to move. “There are still three roses left!”
“And one is already wilting.” His voice cracked, sparking a sharp pain in my chest. “That’s not enough time for me to get my affairs in order! I can’t die here, none of us should, but after we came so close yesterday…” Suddenly he reached out to her, breathing rapid, eyes desperate. “Come with me. We can hide your wings in a coat, and we’ll find a way to disguise your feet.” He squeezed her hands fervently. “I’ve been telling you all about Briarfell for months, and you deserve to see it.”
She shook her head, still blocking the door, her voice strangled as she whispered, “Please stay. We’ll figure something out!”
I sensed Leander’s gaze on me, turned to find him watching me with something ache-inducing. Was it—longing?
He tore his gaze away from my scrutiny and said, “It seems our only option is to wait to be free or wait to die. There’s no other way around it.”
Like a startled deer, a random thought galloped through my mind, scattering words out my mouth. “There might be a way around it!” My outburst made them swing startled gazes to me. I elaborated, mind racing, “Sitting around this castle for three years hasn’t done anything before or after my arrival, so we need a new strategy. We all need to leave!”
Leander frowned down at me in confusion. “We both just finished convincing Clancy he can’t leave. Now you want us all to?”
I scrunched up my face at him. “May I finish?”
He raised large hands in a placating gesture, their skin looking harder, as if preparing for the time when he would walk on all fours. “Continue.”
“My idea comes from feeling that we’re missing a few pages in this story—that there might be another condition to this curse that we don’t know about. Is there anything else your parents told you about it? Anything at all, even if it sounds insignificant?”
Leander’s thick brows lowered in concentration, shadowing his eyes. “No, but there might be something they haven’t told me. Looking back as an adult, the story never made much sense. There does seem to be some parts they left out.”
Content that Clancy wasn’t about to escape, Jessamine folded her wings and entered. “Forgive me, Master, but I always wondered if Her Majesty provoked the Spring Queen by violating a fairy’s revered guest rites, why wasn’t she the one transformed into a beast, or given a death sentence like Princess Fairuza?”
I looked up at Leander. “Why indeed? Especially since the reason they gave you, that punishing you instead would hurt her more doesn’t seem true. She only had more children to replace you, and went on with her life without incident.”
“It’s likely the same reason witches and demons ask for one’s firstborn as payment or as a sacrifice,” Clancy said, giving up on his departure plans and dropping into an armchair.
“Which is?” I prompted.
“Because it does hurt more.” Clancy took off his glasses to massage the spot between his brows. “In a different way for everyone. For some the worst thing is being parted from their child, but in your case, Leo, your parents were robbed of an heir. Even if the Spring Queen didn’t hurt your parents personally as much as desired, she hurt them as rulers. She took away the only reasons they were pushed together in the first place, you, the future king that bound the West and the East of the Folkshore, and Fairuza, a rare princess nations would have gone to war over.”
Leander shook his head. “My parents now have another future king and princess.”
Clancy reached up to rub the base of his horns as if they ached. “But they’ll be no good to them for years to come, when it would probably be too late for them to be of any use. Take the war for instance. I doubt that the peace treaty with Avongart will go through, or if it does, that it would last. But a lasting one could have come about if Fairuza married their crown prince.”
I raised my hand in question, baffled. “Why couldn’t she have done that already, instead of wasting her precious time on the demanding Crown Prince of Cahraman?”
Clancy shook his head sadly. “Because Prince Laurent is nine-years-old. Although you can arrange marriages for children, they remain betrothals until a boy’s twenty-first birthday, when he becomes a man of marriageable age.”
“Even if she is eight years older, it could have been arranged.” Leander’s voice was stifled, as if he was being choked. “But such a wait was out of the question, for the peace, and for her survival. Cyaxares is her only option, since Fairuza is meant to succumb to her own curse on her eighteenth birthday next spring.”
Clancy exhaled heavily. “So whatever gaps in your parents’ story there might be, finding them out won’t stop the clock.”
“Not here it won’t,” I said. “But we can go where time does slow down. I’m saying we go to Faerie.”
Three voices rose at once, filling the room with clashing exclamations.
I raised my hands. “One at a time!”
They stopped then Leander went first. “How is going there supposed to help any of us?”
Clancy followed. “Please tell me you’re joking.”
Jessamine only looked at me, something like hope, tentative and terrible flaring in her yellow eyes.
“I’m serious,” I insisted. “Don’t give me that face, Leander. It was you who said time moves slower in some courts than it does here. And assuming everyone is tied to you, then if your condition stalls, so should everyone else’s, giving us more time to find a solution.”
After a long moment of starting at me, Leander exhaled. “Any theories what that might be?”
“Yes. We seek out the Spring Queen and convince her to lift the curse.”
Leander continued staring at me, like he was waiting for me to add, “Ha! Joking!”
But the longer I stayed silent the more incredulous he looked.
His massive shoulders finally slumped. “She would never do such a thing.”
I reached out, gripped his arm urgently. “Just consider it, Leander. Fairies are all about courtesy, and if we go to her court, the Spring Queen will have to hear out your case. I’ll vouch for you—we’ll all vouch for you, prove to her that you’ve changed, that you are someone worth loving, if not as a suitor, then as a friend, brother, and master.”
At that, looking conflicted and something more—disappointed? Leander turned to Clancy. “Would that be enough?”
When he found all three pairs of eyes on him, Clancy shoved his glasses back up his nose. “Why are you all looking at me?”
“You’re the eldest and most experienced,” said Leander. “Not to mention the wisest.”
Clancy’s eyes brimmed with annoyance. “Honestly? Now you defer to me?”
Leand
er made a hurrying gesture. “Speak, sage.”
“Of all the times to decide to take my advice, you choose now?”
A low growl echoed deep in Leander’s chest. “This isn’t the time to bring up the past.”
“Why not?”
Leander’s voice became a heavy-hearted rasp. “Because I want to ensure that we all have a future instead!”
“It’s…” Clancy stopped, swallowed. “…it’s an unprecedented decision to consider. Going to Faerie, negotiating with one of its queens for your release—it goes against all we know about solving magical problems! It’s unheard of, really. We have no prior example to measure our odds against!”
“Clarence,” Leander demanded, both firmly and agitatedly. “Yes or no?”
Clancy slouched in his chair. Then he gazed at Jessamine, who was hovering anxiously by him, and exhaled loudly. “Why not? It’s not like anyone else has a better idea.”
I clutched Leander’s arm, hope surging within me. “We can solve so many problems by going to Faerie. All of them, actually!”
Images began to form in my mind, of the chance to save my family and lift the curse among the backdrop of the fairy courts. I could already see everyone reverting to their old selves among a glitter of magic and the lushness of the Spring Queen’s domain, imagine formally reintroducing Leander the prince to my father…
Clancy doused my fantastical imaginings with the cold splash of his worry. “We may have maps of the courts, and ideas on how each realm functions, but we don’t know if any of that is accurate. And negotiating a curse? That is uncharted and certainly perilous territory.”
“It actually sounds exciting,” Jessamine protested. “Who knows, maybe our quest being unique will appease the queen, at least convince her to give us a hint or two, or an extension? And things should be fine as long as we all stick together, right?”
Clancy forgot his usual reticence, gripping her hand. “You can’t think of coming! You’re still healing—and it’s too dangerous!”
She squeezed his hand back, gazing down at him with fervent intensity. “No one there could mean me more harm than the hunters here. I also want the chance to fly in an open space. If I can’t do that over our green fields, I want to do it over their blue ones.”
