Another chink in my armor against the elves, but I had a more pressing question. One that I was determined to flesh out. Tonight. “So, the maidens?”
“The maidens were my father’s way of looking for a cure,” Elden said quietly. “He believed that if he could fall in love with a human woman, then he could break the curse.”
“What?” I reeled. “He was married to your mother.”
“Their union was not twenty-two years old.”
I laid out under the stars, stunned by the revelations. The old king and his wife had only been married for twenty-one years?
“Before their marriage, my father dreamed of finding his soulmate among the humans. Until he met my mother and fell in love,” Elden continued.
“If he loved your mother, then why?—”
“After their union, he did not take another maiden for several years.” Elden swallowed, pausing in a long silence that stretched out as long and wide as the night sky. “I was almost sixteen when father brought me my first maiden.”
My mouth popped open. A strange sensation had me queasy and angry all at the same time. I tightened my fists and pushed down the strange emotion. So what if Elden had maiden after maiden thrust in front of him for the past four or five years? What did that mean to me? But deep down, I felt the coil of jealousy tighten about my gut. Stupid human emotions.
When I could find my voice, I asked. “And what did you do?”
“In truth, she was lovely, but we knew on our first greeting that we were not destined to be lovers. I got to know her. We became friends. I learned that she never had a chance to explore her own talents. She discovered a skill for sewing. Through the months that followed, I helped her get work with one of my chief dressmakers.”
I’d met that maiden, Brooke, the woman who worked with Saphronia.
“Once I found a position for her, she thanked me. She told me she was being forced to wed an older wealthy human man across the sea and this was her only way out. She’d never worked with her hands, had never done anything but prepare for marriage. Coming to the land of the elves had been liberating for her.”
Liberating.
My cheeks flushed, and I immediately regretted the jealousy that had me in a stranglehold. Not every woman was as privileged as I to live in a loving home. I’d been free to explore my talents. But in Lila’s case, with her mother’s expectations, she would’ve done anything to escape her fate.
“I tried to fall in love because my father wished it to be. But I was young. I did not fully understand all my people, your people, would stand to lose,”—Elden cleared his throat— “So, from that year on, for each of the maidens brought through the Falls. I helped them find…purpose.”
All thoughts scattered from my mind like sugar dropped to the floor. All I could do was lay under the veil of stars and try to catch my breath. Elden had not been taking maidens and using them. He’d helped them to find purpose outside our human conventions. What had he said to Lila when she came to his castle?
“You are free to do as you please. Please take this time to discover things that you enjoy.”
Lila had felt rejected by the king, but had she really been saved from a lifetime of sorrow married to a bully of a man, Axel, she didn’t love? Had she been given the chance at a new life with purpose? But if so, why had Elden brought her to begin with? He hadn’t even tried to fall for her. Hadn’t given their union a chance of working out. Something was not adding up.
“I hope you will forgive my father,” Elden said into the twittering sounds of night. “He was under the illusion that an ancient prophecy must be fulfilled for there to be peace amongour two peoples again. He believed that a king of the Elves and a maiden of the humans were to have another union, like the one his father had, in order for the curse to be lifted.”
“Where would he get an idea like that?” I knit my eyebrows together.
Elden shrugged as he lay in the grass, “He said it had been foretold, though he could not quite remember the exact wording.”
“He changed a lot of lives on the ambivalent notion.”
Elden huffed out a puff of hot air which curled in the cold night air. “He was obsessed with the idea. Utterly convinced. He believed it was the only way to stop the curse from spreading. The curse, you see, only transforms the Elf Kings.”
“Only the Elf Kings?” I squinted into the dark.
“You and anyone else infected by the blight will turn into wraiths of the night. Forever haunting the living, but I will become a creature of shadow.” Firelight caressed Elden’s rugged features. His mouth downturned. “A shade monster like my father and grandfather before me.”
“But your grandfather was married to a human.” I shook my head, my hair scraping against the hood in the grass. “None of this makes any sense.”
Elden sat up and picked up several stray sticks. I joined him, sitting up in the grass. The fire crackled and spurred, throwing our shadows out like phantoms onto the trees surrounding us.
Elden examined the small sticks in his hands with a little more attention than seemed to be warranted. “No. It does not. We need answers.”
“So that dark yeti in the mountains? The first shade monster is your—” I started.
