It looked like a beautiful Christmas spent gathered around the hearth with Daisy and mother.
But now I could no longer deny the ache I felt in my heart. My family no longer felt complete. Someone was missing from the picture.
Elden.
I thought of him then. Had I ever stoppedthinking of him? Of how he and I had danced among the fair folk of Spindlewood. Of how he’d held me that night when I’d been freezing cold. He’d protected me through the storm. He’d befriended and saved each of the maidens, giving them true purpose. He’d transformed into a mighty beast and fought off a monster, just to give me a chance to live.
“You have warmed my heart little by little every day until I no longer know myself. I no longer see myself alone, but with you…forever.”
A warm fire spread through my heart. The light of hope. The hope I’d wished into that first pastry I’d given the king back in my own kitchen. The calm of peace. The peace I’d wished the king when I’d made the magic tarts with Aldaar. Those were the magic spells I’d woven through my baking.
I felt it as strongly as I felt my warm fire grow hot. Felt it roar through me at last. The true warmth of…love.
I reached out and touched the glowing gold surrounding Queen Elayna’s heart and, to my shock, the entire mural dripped from the surface, as if I’d thrown a bucket of water on it. I jumped back in horror, but the painting was not destroyed. No, it morphed and changed reflecting me back at myself. I looked in wonder at my likeness. This was not anything like a reflection in a mirror, this was as if I was one of Elayna’s magic moving murals.
In the painting, I smiled and held a glass jar of dark brown nibs and a large scroll as if I could reach out and pluck them from my painted grasp.
I was so astonished by the magic that I did as I was bidden. I reached out, and to my utter amazement, I felt cool smooth glass and dry paper beneath my fingers. Curious brown nibs sat in the jar in my hands. I did not know what was in the jar, but I did have an idea of what the scroll contained.
The treaty.
The king had found a way to weaponize the treaty, to falsify it and plunge the elf and human worlds into distrust and ruin. With both the treaty and the brown nibs, did I now hold the two keys to the cure in my hands?
“Thank you!” I gushed as my own portrait morphed back into the happy smile of the king and queen strolling down a dirt path, following their white-haired elf child on the castle grounds.
I turned from the mural, jar and scroll in hand, and ran to Elden. I had the cure to this disease. And what was more? I knew exactly what I needed to do.
28
BROWN NIBS
My feet flew across the stone floors as I raced to Elden, the strange brown bits tinkling in the jar like silver bells.
I followed the murals, turning the opposite direction of the pointing fingers and robin’s beaks until I came upon the enormous room hollowed out of the side of the mountain, the Christmas Room. And there he was. The Elf King. He lay out on the red couch by the blazing fire in the center of the room, exactly how I’d left him.
It struck me then, how very…real he was. He was no longer just a tall, looming creature who stole me away from my family. He was a caring guardian of his people and his land, though a desperate one. One who put others first. Who put me first. Who saved me again and again without thought for his own life.
I rushed to him. His breathing was labored, black poison spreading across his neck and chest like putrid cracks in porcelain.
“Elden.” I knelt by his side, worry sticking my heart together like molasses. “You are going to be alright. I solved the riddle of my magic. I found the cure.” I jangled the brown bits.
“And now I’m going to cook it for you.”
A smile spread slowly across his face. That side smile I was learning to appreciate. To love. “Just seeing you again is all the magic I need.”
My face flushed, and a keen warmth thrilled throughout my body as if I’d just taken a sip of hot tea. I needed to hold on to that feeling. I’d need it for what came next.
“Here.” I placed the scroll in his hand. “It’s the treaty, right?”
I hadn’t taken the time to open it, but I knew what it was the moment I saw it in that mural.
“It is. You found it,” Elden said in both awe and relief as he unrolled the scroll.
He sat up with considerable effort and laid the ancient scroll across his lap.
“Please don’t take too much upon yourself,” I cajoled.
“I must. I am the only one who can read Elvish.”
