Yours,
High King of Ravensong
I couldn’t stop smiling at the note, or at the strange intimacy of the nicknameLittle Baker.My heart fluttered, if only for amoment, until I glimpsed Rafia’s magenta eyes. If she wasn’t my servant, she’d likely scold me for allowing my heart to flutter at the vague attentions of the king.
He was a king, and I was a baker, and we were both infected with the shadow curse. We were allies set on finding a cure.
The end.
I hadn’t thought of what that would look like yet, and the idea of being alone in a library with the king…well, it got me all kinds of flustered.
And angry and annoyed, right? That’s what those feelings were?
“Shall we wash the soot and mud from you before you meet with the king?” Rafia raised a magenta eyebrow, a smile forming on her lips.
“Yes!” I stood on wobbly legs, but the draught was working. My infected leg felt only a tinge sore today. I held my hands out to inspect where my fingernails had broken as I’d tried to gain purchase of the oak tree I climbed the night before. My arms and legs had been scratched up and down. Today, as Rafia helped me remove the dressings, my fingernails were short and jagged, but healed, with the scratches on my arms only faint pink lines. They would be gone in a few days’ time.
Back in the human lands, wounds like these would take weeks to fully heal, and Jel had done it overnight. How easily could they have healed my father when he fell from his heart ailment? As much as Jel said magic was a science, that there were checks and balances, I couldn’t help but shake my head. They have all of this wealth, this magic, this knowledge, and they were hoarding it.
My thoughts ran in circles between meeting with the king in the library and the awe with which my leg had been healed. Rafia helped me bathe and dress for the day. I cut my fingernails down and filed them so they were clean and presentable. Saphroniaand her dressmakers had also been working overtime, it would seem, as my closet was full of a half dozen new dresses arranged in rainbow tones. The jeweled dresses sparkled like the many-colored hues of the elven hair and eyes.
Once I was presentable, dressed in a long rose-pink gown, my brown hair pulled back in a series of intricate braids, Rafia led me to the library. I held a plate with a single gingerbread man on it. The unfortunate man’s arms were a bit too long, his head lop-sided. He was a reject cookie, but the only one leftover from the bake yesterday. It’d have to do.
Guards pulled open the massive curved doors shaped as the branches of a mighty oak tree. Its gilded leaves stretched from the floor all around the edges to the full height of the door, looking like the shimmering gold leaves of autumn.
Sunlight spilled into my eyes as I beheld one of the grandest series of rooms I’d ever seen. Stairs and ladders wrapped around curved walls with shelf after shelf of books. Books with colorful spines popping out as if to say, “take me home, rest, and read me.” I longed to run my hands across the spines and climb to the highest shelf, easily ten stories high. Wooden tables and comfortable couches arranged in cozy sitting areas were clustered together around small fireplaces—each with white stone chimneys that stretched up past the large ceiling. I pulled in a deep breath as a smile spread across my mouth. I could spend hours here every day, very happy indeed.
Then the Elf King stepped into the streaming sunlight. My eyes widened almost in shock. Every time I saw this male, my stomach and face reacted in ways I had no control over. He was just so…beautiful. Strong. Tall. The golden light caressed his face, softening his features, warming the white-gold strands of his long hair. It was wavy today, not fully dried.
In this light he looked young. It was impossible to know his age or the age of any elf by looking at them, but he seemed tobe close to my age. Eighteen, maybe nineteen or twenty. Young. Unexperienced in so many things, yet forced to grow older after the death of his own father.
I knew the feeling well.
He was dressed in a forest green tunic with golden filigree embroidering of long elk horns emblazoned across his chest. The royal family crest. He wore white shirtsleeves rolled up at the elbows, exposing muscular forearms and tan skin.
The king nodded and indicated I was to follow him. I received a raised eyebrow from Rafia, my stomach a pile of nerves, but I strained a smile, then hurried after the king who was already halfway behind a column of books. In my haste, I tripped. My poor misshapen gingerbread man nearly tumbling to the ground.
“I—” my words left me as I stared up into two bright gold eyes as they peered down at me. It took me a second to realize the Elf King’s strong hands now gripped onto my forearms, steadying me.
My stomach dropped as I froze in the grip of the king. He released his grasp gently once he was sure I was steady on my feet.
“Can’t have this falling to the ground.” The king said as he snatched the cookie from my plate and chomped down on it. He smiled, a true smile, one that glowed from within, then he shot his crisp gold eyes down at me again with a knowing stare. “Magic.”
I smiled carefully, my breath catching at our closeness. “No. Just the right ingredients added at the right time with a practiced hand.”
“Precisely like what Jel does.” A true smile lit up his face.
“Except I’m a human and?—”
“Humans don’t have magic.” The king finished the sentence for me, his warm breath ruffling the brown curls framing myface. “But long ago, they did. And if you are any proof, it seems they can again.”
My heart pounded as I stared at the lips of the king. All I would have to do is hop up on the tips of my toes and those lips would be on mine. I shook my head at the intrusive thought, a hot blush creeping into my cheeks. “They did? I mean, we did? We can?”
“Come,” the king commanded, and I followed him through wide corridors and past several large doors until we reached a more intimate room. The walls were a deep green, the books more muted the farther we went. Aged, thicker, the spines revealing a language and runes I could not read. Gemlights lit the way in radiating jeweled tones. This part of the library was cozier than the brightly lit entrance. More intimate. This was a part of the library dedicated to study.
A large map covered an entire wall. On it, the shining white castle in which I now stood shone like a beautiful bone shard in the center of the hand painted masterpiece. Large rusty trees sprouted around the alabaster castle. A silver stag stood proudly near the golden border of the Falls. A thick golden line curved around the border between the human realm and Undying Lands like the blonde twisting curls of my little sister.
In this map, the land of the elves spread far and wide, including several other villages and seasons, all in the fine curving language of the elves. Flowers dotted the land toward the east among images of butterflies and frogs and, were those dragons? A great mountain rose in the north, covered in white ice and snow, surrounded by a layer of clouds. A dark monster lay shrouded in the shadows. Its shape was that of a yeti from legend. A shiver rolled down my spine.
