I cleared my throat, ready to calm the situation and put on a strong face for my people. Half a dozen guards flanked our carriage, but I’d trained them to look relaxed and not hostile. I didn’t want my people thinking I was protecting myself from them.
Falana left the carriage first, opening the door for me, and I stepped out next.
“Princess Aribella!” the farmer cried out, dipping into a low bow. “I’m so glad you came. You must see, it’s the curse, I’m sure of it. I heard what happened in the Summer Court and now it’s coming for us. We must tell everyone—”
I pushed the emotion of calmness into him and he stopped rambling, taking a deep breath.
“Let’s check out the water together and make a plan, shall we?” I asked him with a smile.
“Yes, princess,” he agreed, his posture much more relaxed.
The last thing we needed was a panic on our hands. If all of Fall Court got wind of this,there would be a full-blown exodus into Spring and we couldn’t have that.
The farmer walked me over to the well, around which his wife and three young children, all under five years old, were sitting, two of them eating apples. As I approached, they stood, wiping their hands and standing straight. The little ones curtsied so low their hair almost touched the ground, and I smiled at them.
“Hello,” I called to them, but they all moved to hide behind their mother, suddenly overcome by shyness.
The farmer’s wife looked worried but was holding it together for the children. She curtsied to me. “Nice to meet you, my lady. I’ll take them inside for bath time.” She widened her eyes meaningfully, as if she didn’t want me to say anything about the black water or the curse in front of them.
I nodded and they left.
Once they were out of sight, the farmer began to crank the well handle, raising the bucket. “I had my wife sit guard just in case,” he said.
I slowly pulled the calmness away from him. I never liked to leave an emotion with people for too long. I didn’t want it to feel fake, or unnatural.
As my powers receded from him he looked a little panicked, so I quickly tried to assure him. “If the curse is here, that’s okay. We have a plan for that. My father and I aren’t going to let anything happen to our people.”
He nodded, seeming to relax a bit, and then the bucket came up.
It was filled to the brim with black water.
I frowned. “Anything that could have caused this? Oil? Someone tampering with the well?”
He shook his head. “Smells like water. It was clear yesterday and the well shaft looks untouched.”
I leaned forward and smelled the bucket. It smelled like nothing, not putrid or oily.
I tried to cover the shudder that ran through me. This made it real.
The curse was here, in the Fall Court, and I was leaving in fourteen days to carve the heart of an Ethereum lord lest all the people I cared about died.
Chapter 2
“Again!” Queen Liliana shouted.
Another week had passed since the black well incident and we’d thrown all of our efforts into my training. A bead of sweat rolled down my neck, soaking into the collar of the cotton shirt I wore under the tight leather battle corset. I wasn’t even welding a physical weapon, but that didn’t mean that my tutors were not armed.
The training today had been grueling. Queen Liliana had forced me over and over again to use my powers and unarm my opponents, sometimes facing me off against two or three adversaries at a time.
I was sure I was littered with bruises from the number of hits I’d taken this afternoon. Had the swordsmen been using real weapons during this training session and not blunted ones, I’d have had several serious, if not life-threatening, injuries. But as important as I knew this training was, I struggled to keep my mind on the task at hand.
How could I when the curse threatened to take over our lands?
With only a week left before the fall equinox, the effects of the curse had already started to appear. More and more of our water sources had been polluted by black water.The land had stopped regenerating in places, so when the leaves fell off the trees or crops were picked, rather than magically replenishing, the vegetation withered and died. And there were reports from our western border of wildfires being caused by raining embers.
Every day more and more Fall fae arrived at the palace, seeking refuge. Tired, scared, and sometimes injured, they looked to my parents and me for answers and assurances we didn’t have and couldn’t give.
We were already overextended because of the refugees from the Summer Court. Even before the Fall fae had started to arrive, tents ringed the palace and the surrounding areas. Our physicians had been working almost around the clock to help the Summer fae injured by the curse. Our food stores were practically depleted. And now my own people were begging for help and we had nothing left to give. How had we come to this?
