by J. M. Kearl
Visteal shoved to her feet. “Wait, Zy—”
We disappeared into the blackness again and I wound up back in the alleyway where the boys waited. I shoved Firo. “Why didn’t you let her finish talking?” Maybe she was going to tell me something...
“The guard was about to check in her room. Sorry, lover boy,” he drawled. “Now you best be off if you want to make it in time.” He nodded ahead. “The farm at the edge of the city is my family’s. You can take the horses you need. I’d also grab a coat if I were you. It might get cold.” Firo disappeared after that.
10
Visteal
Why can’t you just tell Zyacus how you feel? Why are you such a coward? Why are you letting yourself get pushed around so much? The rest of the night I punished myself with these same thoughts over and over for letting Zyacus go. For allowing Firo to take him from me. For becoming nothing but a puppet for Gwindola. But most of all I wanted to tell Zyacus I loved him. I did. Why was it so hard to say out loud? Why hadn’t I said it when I had the chance? There was the possibility I would never see him again.
Gideon sat on my belly and purred. “There will be another time, Princess,” he said. Sometimes I hated that he could read my thoughts but right now I was glad he knew. His soft purr soon lulled me to sleep.
When the sun peeked through the window my eyes fluttered open. Ugh I should have shut those curtains. When I was about to do just that, Gwindola blew into my room clapping her hands. “Rise, girl. There is someone you need to meet.”
I had to meet someone else? Someone else to order me around? I got up and dressed quickly. The maids did my hair and when they finished, I followed Gwindola to a room where a slender Fae man dressed in a blue robe trimmed in white waited. He had alabaster silvery skin and eyes the color of the sky. His hair was midnight blue and cropped at his shoulders. He looked nothing like anyone at Summer Court. Was he a Winter defector? His pinched mouth and disapproving eyes had me thinking he wouldn’t be any kinder than Gwindola.
“The girl from the prophecy is a child?” his musical voice echoed throughout the room.
Gwindola smiled. “She’s at least sixteen.”
“Seventeen,” I mumbled. I’d be eighteen soon. I’d miss the fall festival and my birthday party at home. Oh my unicorn, my parents were no doubt losing their minds at this very moment.
“She’s not ready to be Astaroth’s bride or kill the Winter King.” The man’s eyes didn’t seem unkind, more concerned but his sharp tone said otherwise. “She’s too young and lacks the experience needed to compete. We should have done the ritual and retrieved her several years from now.”
Compete… here it was. The competition in Winter I knew was coming. Finally someone who would hopefully speak openly.
“We saw the chance and took it,” Gwindola snapped. “This is happening whether you like it or not, Bastian. King Venos has spoken.”
“The King is a fool,” Bastian said flatly.
“Are you from Winter Court?” I asked when I probably should have kept quiet. But I thought it was a good time to interject since Gwindola might blow up at her King being called a fool by a Winter Fae.
His eyes darted to Gwindola then back to me. “I am.” He stepped forward and walked an agonizingly slow circle around me. “If Astaroth told you to lick his shoe, would you do it? You’ve met him. You know how powerful he is, how perilous.”
“Never in a thousand years.”
He stopped in front of me with his hands behind his back, surveying me or my answer. I wasn’t sure. “What if he told you to strip naked in front of his friends?”
“He’d have to kill me first.” His expression gave away no displeasure or approval. I couldn’t get a read on this man. Gwindola would probably tell me I had to do as commanded but I wouldn’t. There were lines I wouldn’t cross even to save my own life.
“He is the Prince of Winter and Night. You are a human,” Gwindola stated. “You will do as he asks.”
I wanted to tell her to shut her stupid mouth but Bastian did it for me.
He held up a hand to silence her. “Do not under any circumstances give into any sort of humiliating demands Astaroth might give you. You must be willing to die first, as you stated.”
Not a problem.
Gwindola’s mouth dropped. “What are you talking about, she—”
“Astaroth hates women who cower to him. She will be in Winter Court not Summer,” Bastian cut her off. “If she acts like a shy beaten dog, the king will know she is not one of us. Astaroth would never choose a bride who doesn’t have a backbone. A woman like that would never win.”
“Win what?” I asked, scared to even know the answer at this point.
Gwindola’s lips pressed together.
Bastian’s cruel gaze pinned to Gwindola. “You haven’t told her?”
I only had a small idea of the person I was dealing with when it came to Astaroth. “Told me what? And just so I have a better idea, why would Astaroth do any of those things to me? Especially if I’m there to kill his father, whom he wants dead.”
Bastian frowned. “He may not, but he’s cruel and unpredictable.”
My mouth became dry as the desert. “I’m not going to actually marry him, right? This is a ploy.”
“That all depends on many things,” Bastian stated. “Like you winning the competition to be his bride.”
Oh my unicorn. No. I had to compete to be his bride?!
Gwindola scoffed. “My prophecy said she’d be the wife of a powerful faerie not betrothed to one.”
“Prophecies can be interpreted many ways, Gwindola.”
Were they seriously going to gloss over the most important detail?! “I’m competing to be his bride? I thought I was the only one?”
Bastian’s hard expression softened. “You were the first chosen one and I’m thinking Astaroth will help you win but he knows the King wouldn’t allow him to outright marry you. It’s tradition in Winter Court for the prince’s first bride to compete and win the Spear of Ice.”
“What sort of competition is this?”
“A deadly one,” Bastian said.
I wanted to vomit. As if it wasn’t bad enough I had to be a part of this in the first place, now I had to fight for the man? A man I wanted nothing to do with?
Bastian gestured to a desk with books and paper. “Sit. We need to get started on your lessons. Time isn’t something we have an abundance of.”
Breathless, nauseous and a myriad of terrible emotions roiled within me. I sat at the desk and Bastian stood opposite of me. Blank pages had been stacked in front of me with a bottle of ink and several books.
“I will teach you all I can about Winter and Night courts. You’ll play the role of the child of my brother. I have a family tree you’ll have to memorize. My brother has a half Fae child and she has never been to court.”
I had to become someone else and compete in a deadly competition… great. “And who are you in relation to the royals?”
Bastian raised his chin slightly. “I am the King’s general.”
Dragon’s breath, my lessons were by a traitor who could turn on me at any time. “Why are you here?”
“My motivation is none of your concern. What you need to focus on is what I’m going to teach you. Our lives depend on it.”
Four hours later I got a break. My hand ached from taking notes. I remembered more when I wrote it rather than just listening. It seemed to cement it in my memory that way.
A lot of what I learned wasn’t from a book but from stories Bastian told. He’d been alive for the last nine hundred years so much of their history was told from his own experience. So far I knew that Winter Court in many ways was a warrior kingdom like Delhoon. The women were as tough and brutal as the men. His daughter Aenea was as fierce as they came. He’d seen to her skill personally. That little bit reminded me of lessons with my own father.
Half Fae were treated little better than humans but if they proved themselves, they could rise i
n status and marry a full-blood Fae. I got the feeling, by the way he spoke, he didn’t like that half Fae were treated as less than but he didn’t outright say it. I wanted to say it for him: the Fae purity disgusted me but I too kept it to myself.
After going over names for an hour, Bastian grilled me on the family tree. My mother was to be the human, Perusa of Norcandlia, taken during a ritual. My father, Bastian’s brother: Lycand Ethelwich Snofury of Winter Court, ruler of Cancarna, a small province in the east. I was one of fifty children. He had ten other wives. Only one full Fae and she only produced one child.
My head started to ache after so much information. Only speak when spoken to, only eat food I dish up myself from the banquet table. Don’t drink the Fae wine. Stay away from the other “chosen” women. They’ll probably try to kill me and I was supposed to take them out.
I hoped when Bastian left, Gwindola would leave me alone in my room but she made me practice walking again, zapping me every time I slouched in the slightest or my foot hit the ground too hard. I wanted to slap her but I kept calm. If I got it wrong in Winter Court I wouldn’t just get zapped. I’d get killed.
Gwindola smiled with a sick joy every time she got to hurt me. I was relieved when she finally said, “Now, let’s see how you eat a meal.”
Food. My stomach had been complaining for the last hour. I lightly followed behind Gwindola into a dining hall. No one else was present but her and me. I didn’t think this was where the King or Prince ate but a separate area. It was much too small and lacked grandeur I’d expect.
“Have you ever had phoenix meat?” Gwindola asked when my plate was set before me by one of the servants. “It pairs well with pippa—it’s close to what you’d call a potato with gravy.”
I swore I could feel the color leaving my face. I stared at the white meat next to what did indeed look like a potato. She had to be being facetious. No one would ever eat a phoenix. They were rare and precious and magical. I scowled at her; she said that on purpose to get to me, right? She knew the phoenix was the symbol of my Kingdom, a sacred animal. “You’re bluffing.”
“I cannot lie,” she said with a sly smile. “Have you had it before? The meat is incredibly tender.”
She was truly sick. Pushing my plate away, I shoved up from the table. “This is where I draw the line.”
Raising one of her light eyebrows, she said, “I guess you’ll go hungry then.”
“I guess I will.” I wanted to take my glass of red juice and throw it in her face… perhaps I would. It would bring me joy to see the liquid run down to her dress and ruin it.
“Sit down,” she said, sounding annoyed. “I need to see if you can eat properly.”
“Gwindola,” I said through clenched teeth. “No.”
She lifted a shoulder cutting into her meat and brought a dainty piece to her mouth. As she chewed on I thought about attacking her. I pictured my hands wrapping around her neck.
She lifted her eyes and said in her cutting voice, “Well, goodnight.”
For the next week or so, maybe it was longer, I didn’t know, I had lessons with Gwindola and Bastian. Thankfully, Bastian brought me meals after I’d told him what she’d done. He spoiled me with sweet pastries, fresh fruit, hot scrambled eggs he assured me didn’t come from a phoenix, and hearty vegetables and starches. Gwindola looked like she wanted to tear his head off but she never said a word to him regarding it.
They were starkly different. Where she was cool, he was warm. Where she prodded or hurt me, he had a gentle hand. I learned much faster with Bastian.
In his presence I wasn’t afraid to get punished. He never lost patience or scolded me for getting something wrong, he corrected me but it didn’t seem to be in his nature to belittle.
I knew this made him a good leader. People followed those they respected and who treated others with respect. Gwindola tried to force everything, instead of acting in a way that would make me want to try harder.
For her, I almost wanted to do worse to make her look bad.
I worried for Zyacus and the boys but we kept in touch and I’d been kept so busy being zapped and prodded and filling my head with information that I couldn’t spend time dwelling on them or wanting to go home. My focus was my task of becoming a Winter Fae.
When I walked into my classroom this day Bastian stood with his hands behind his back. “Good morning, Visteal.”
Gwindola always rolled her eyes when he greeted me. I think the wench was jealous.
“Did you sleep well?” he asked.
“I did, thank you for asking.”
He held up a finger. “Remember, Fae do not say thank you. It implies you owe a favor.”
I smacked my forehead. I kept forgetting that.
Gwindola sat in a chair and crossed her legs. “You’ll be beheaded the first day if you can’t remember.”
Bastian tapped the back of my desk chair. “Have a seat. Today is your final assessment.”
“Has it been three weeks?” My stomach was a ball of nerves. “I don’t know if I’m ready.”
“Certainly not but you have no choice,” Gwindola said.
Bastian didn’t even look at her. “It’s been twelve days but the timeline has moved.”
After asking me question after question about his family, their lands, Winter Court customs and the like, I passed. Then he asked me to stand. I took a deep breath through the nose as both Gwindola and Bastian watched my walk and posture. Gwindola sneered but Bastian gave me a single nod. He stuffed a cup into my hand and told me to drink.
I stared into the auburn liquid. “What is it?”
He folded his hands behind his back. “It will glamour you into looking more like a Winter Court Fae.”
“How long does it last?”
“A month. And then you’ll need to drink more.”
I hoped I didn’t need a month. I drained the cup, cringed at the bitter taste, and swallowed it down. I stepped in front of a mirror. The changes came quickly. The biggest being my hair: from a dark honey blonde to an icy blue. Then my face became more symmetrical, my eyes seemed to open wider, and my lips, subtly fuller. I half smiled at myself; the reflection was me but not me. Even my teeth which had been straight before were somehow even more perfect. I tucked my strange hair behind my now pointed ears and turned to face my audience.
Bastian smiled. “Perfect.”
Gwindola’s gaze trailed over me with careful inspection. “It will have to do.”
Sir Gideon peeked out from within the shadows of a closet. “You look more than half Fae. You will fool them easily, princess,” he said into my mind.
“Speak for me,” Bastian said.
“What should I say?” I asked and noticed my voice had a smoother, richer tone to it than it had before. “Oh, even that has changed.”
Bastian circled me as he had the first day. “I think you’re ready. As ready as you can be. If you don’t know the answer to something it’s best not to reply rather than lie. If you’re caught lying, it will expose you.”
I nodded, remembering the Fae can’t lie and I was supposed to be one of them now.
A light breeze wisped the papers off my desk onto the ground. I glanced at the window. It was closed… When I turned back, the Winter Prick stepped through a black portal. His dark eyes clung to me like the ebony mist wafting around his silvery-blue skin. “How interesting,” he purred, pushing his hand through his white hair. “I liked the way you looked better before. Then at least you looked like the worthless human you are.”
I clenched my teeth, forcing myself not to recoil from him. The last time I saw him, he branded me with these stupid tattoos claiming me as his. “I don’t care what you like. I’m here to kill your father.”
Gwindola retreated to a corner, panic in her clouded eyes. After her tormenting me for weeks now, her fear made me smile a little.
Without taking his eyes from me, Astaroth said, “There’s no need to hide from me, seer. I only came for one thing.”
/> Bastian gave me a hard stare then stepped beside the prince. “The glamour will hold a month. I made it myself.”
He turned to Bastian and said in a biting tone, “It better.” With the portal still swirling behind him, he held a hand out to me. His black nails were slightly pointed as if he were part beast. I’d nearly forgotten how oddly beautiful and yet terrifying he was. I lifted my chin and strode right past him into the swirling black.
When I emerged on the other side a cold blast of air nearly took my breath away. As goosebumps erupted on my flesh, I wrapped my arms around my middle. I hadn’t changed into anything for winter weather and the thin flowy gown they had me parading around in did nothing to stop the cold from seeping into my bones. They hadn’t told me Astaroth would be coming. Maybe they didn’t know.
I stood in a dark room with a small fire crackling in a stone wall. Contains a single chair with a book on a table and a wide-open window revealing a dark sky with snowflakes drifting inside. I wanted to run over and slam the wood shutters closed. Before I could move, the Winter Prince appeared with my trunk floating behind him and Bastian following closely after.
Neither of them appeared to be bothered by the chilly temperature. I strode over to the windows, closed, and latched the shutters, and hurried by the fire.
Astaroth watched me shiver with a half smile on his face, as if he enjoyed seeing me suffer. He probably did, the prick.
“Have you ever seen winter?” Astaroth asked.
I had been up north a few times but I’d dressed for the occasion. “Yes,” I said, with chattering teeth.
“It seems a change in attire is warranted,” Bastian said, folding his arms behind himself, as per usual.
“I have a few things I can wear in my trunk.” I looked around at the cold gray stone lining every part of this room. There wasn’t any decor to speak of. “Is this the castle in Winter Court?” I crouched down and warmed my hands.
“You’ll wear what you’re given,” Astaroth said. “Everything including style must match our court.”
