He looks around slowly, the torchlight outlining the silver-blond of his hair like a halo. He's as beautiful as the rest of them, but there's a cruelty inside of him. A dark and twisted fire flickers in the pits of his eyes, one that has burned long enough to do lasting damage. He's just as dangerous as the Savage Prince, of that I am sure.
“I don't have to give you anything. I'm sure that you’d rather not be tortured. How long do you think you'll last without food? I would rather spare your portion for someone who deserves it.”
I’m not sure who could possibly deserve the slops from the kitchen, though I'm sure there’s livestock or a kitchen pup that’s missing out, thanks to me. His words don't hold any real threat, no matter his intentions.
The earth will not let me starve.
As reluctant as I might have been to come back, the land has welcomed me home. I might be more comfortable with a full belly, but most of my life has been a test of my limits, and going hungry is not going to break me.
The more I ignore him, the hotter his temper flares. “You look like every other witch we've hunted down. I don't even have to close my eyes to know what you'll look like when we cleave your head from your shoulders. The moment the Fates have been satisfied, Soren will do it himself, but it doesn't matter to me whether it's my hand or his swinging the sword—being present at your death will be enough.”
My head rolls back on my shoulders and my eyes open as wide as slits for him. “Aren't you a delightful creature? I’m not sure why I was expecting more from a prince of this land. I’ve been nothing but polite and genial to the lot of you, and yet that courtesy has been returned with threats of violence and deprivation. It’s my own fault. I shouldn't have expected better of the Unseelie high fae.”
I’m poking at him, frustrated to be trapped with him instead of his silent and—mostly—harmless brother. Tyton’s questions are intrusive and petulant, but they’re not a useless, never-ending attack with no intention of accepting my answers. If Tauron is to watch over me for the evening, I’m not going to be able to connect with the land in peace.
He cocks his head, considering me a little too keenly. “You keep pointing out that I'm Unseelie, but so are you. I guess you’ve spent quite a lot of time across the seas in the Seelie Court. You’ve come back to the Southern Lands with an idea of your ‘right’ to live here, but you have none. Every witch in the kingdom will be wiped out by the end of the war. You'll be nothing more than a footnote in those history books you mention. Perhaps you should have stayed in the Northern Lands with your precious Seelie fae.”
For someone so friendly with a Seelie high-fae prince, he certainly doesn’t seem to respect the rest of the Seelie much, but I shrug back to him. “I returned because my fate required me to. You should be grateful. That Savage Prince you’re so loyal to can’t ascend to the throne without me, can he? It seems as though I'm doing you all a favor by sitting here peacefully in this cell, and in typical Unseelie high-fae fashion, you have nothing for me in return, no gratitude or welcome. Nothing but selfish taunts and hollow threats of death. Pathetic, the lot of you.”
* * *
As the night creeps closer to its end, the sun not too far away, Tauron calms the fury roiling within him, and some of the tension eases from the cell. His eyes never waver from me, no longer seething but wary all the same.
It's clear that he's not here to get information from me, merely to guard. Why he could possibly think I would try to escape with the entire Unseelie Court dancing upstairs is beyond me, but I let my head fall back against the stone once more and consider the insights the night has given me.
The animosity between the regent and his nephew was palpable, a living, breathing thing within the hall that no one could possibly ignore, and it answered a lot of questions I’ve had as to why the Unseelie Court would keep a rightful heir from the throne for the sake of an archaic law.
The Seelie Court upholds many traditions and has never lost the use of their magic, but they are quick to adapt in times of need. When the Fates tore open the sky and the high-fae soldiers took catastrophic losses, the Sol King changed the laws himself, no votes required, and the lower fae and part-bloods took up arms at his command. The lines of succession are at his discretion, and his court is not concerned with things like marriages and heirs.
It’s peculiar to me that the Unseelie high fae are holding so tightly to this tradition and yet have let so many others slip, their use of magic being the most obvious and shocking. Magic is intrinsic to me, so deeply embedded within my flesh and bones that the thought of not accessing it is inconceivable. The high fae are built the same way. They use magic differently, of course, and they relate to it differently. They cast in stark contrast to the way that the witches do, tied to themselves and the Fates instead of being rooted to the earth and a connection to the land, but magic is just as vital to the high fae as it is to me. Their place in the cycle of nature might be opposite to mine, but it's still there, keeping the balance.
They're still partly to blame for the way that the earth is dying.
I feel the ground call to me, asking that I open a vein to bleed directly into it and to give to it so that it might give back to me, but to do so in front of the high-fae prince would only spark his suspicions.
He’d assume I was casting some evil curse against the whole castle, plotting some way of escape as though I couldn’t simply open the iron doors and walk out if I wished. I could, but the Fates have put me in this cell, and so in this cell I shall stay, despite the guilt chipping at the ice inside of me.
Two hundred years I spent in the Seelie Court, fighting against the Fates themselves to prove to myself that I didn't have to surrender to their whims. I ran because I was scared, but, as I matured and grieved my family and found out who I truly was, I became determined to prove I knew better than the Fates. Surrounded by the devastation of the Ureen and the dire consequences of the Sol King’s choices, still I fought to find a new fate for myself, and all that taught me was the futility of my actions. Millions of people die at the hands of the most evil and grotesque of creatures if we step away from what has been decreed for us.
When the Ureen laid siege to Sol City and the Golden Palace in the final battle of the Fate Wars, I was attacked by one of the monsters and nearly died. I was carried from the battlefield on horseback, desperate hands holding my wounds closed to be sure I didn’t lose any organs or the last threads of my life as I was rushed back to the healers’ quarters, the screams of the dying and wounded my last memory before I slipped away.
I woke, weeks later, with a scar connecting me to the Fates and ice around my heart. That battle broke the last of my resolve, and I submitted to the fate I was given and began planning my return to the Southern Lands, waiting only as long as it took to be discharged from the Sol Army and convince my loved ones to let me go before I sailed back here.
Shame curls in my gut, a stream of regrets bubbling in my mind. I can’t let myself fall into them, but I can’t ignore the simple truth that I ran away from the Seelie Court just as I once ran from the Savage Prince. The trauma I carry from the war is now greater than my fear of my fate, and so no matter how right or noble it is to do as I’ve been instructed, sitting here feels like I’ve failed.
I take a deep breath to center myself again, to calm my mind and clear away the shadows. These thoughts don’t help anyone and, while I’m many things, a mindless, massacring witch is not one of them.
I’ll do as the Fates have asked of me, even marry the Savage Prince, who wishes me a torturous death.
I keep my eyes shut and fall into a meditative state. Though I’m not bleeding my magic into the earth, I can still slowly let it seep from my skin into the stone beneath me. It's a far less efficient way to cycle it, but it isn't detectable to the high-fae prince with his sad lack of magical knowledge.
Many hours later, the door upstairs opens, and footsteps come down the staircase. I’ve learned the gaits of everyone who visits regularly down here, another trick learned from the Sol Army that comes in handy even when I’m not using it deliberately.
Tyton, the speaker of the trees, is coming.
He stops in front of Tauron and scowls at him for a moment before he murmurs, “You should get some sleep. I'll watch over the witch.”
Tauron raises an eyebrow at him, unaware or uncaring that I’m observing them both. “I can smell the fairy wine on you from here. I'm staying to guard her, not to fall into a drunken stupor only to wake up to a corpse and a broken fate.”
