“General Araton,” my grandmother greeted the leader as he brought his mount toward us. They rode tall beasts called irin, which were built like a giant long-legged fox with white fur, a sloping, shaggy deer’s head with branching antlers dotted with leaves and tiny petalled flowers, and a long, fluffy tail. His irin’s eyes were intelligent as it eyed us coolly. Irin, much like the unicorns, would only deign to be ridden by the high fae.
“My LadyVeardur,” the general greeted in return, using the High Fae word for my people—spirit guardians—giving a respectful bow from the back of his mount.
“Does the Queen think that we do not know the way?” my grandmother asked mildly as she pulled her gloves from her cloak and began to tug them on. The shadows around her feet swelled and darkened as she called on her magic to create her own mount, the rest of us immediately following suit. Our magic forced us upward in a fluid motion as the shadows grew legs and withers and necks, quickly solidifying beneath us into the dark shapes of well-formed horses. Like my staff, the shadow mounts felt solid to the touch but were disconcertingly transparent and wraith-like to others observing them. The fae took it as a matter of course, but their irin spooked and pranced in place.
“Providing theVearduran escort to the palace is my honor,” General Araton responded deftly to my grandmother. “And were I to shirk this honor, my beloved Queen would have my head.”
“I’ve never known her Highness to be one for taking heads,” she muttered, ignoring the unhappy look my mother sent her way.
“There is a first time for everything, my Lady,” he answered wryly.
My grandmother eyed him with pursed lips before giving an infinitesimal nod for him to proceed. If I hadn’t known her as well as I did I might have thought I caught the briefest flicker of an eye roll.
The general led the way out, flanked by two sharp-eyed female soldiers while my family filed in behind, squeezing between trees and underbrush as we left the quiet meadow. The forest floor here was undisturbed except by their irin’s recent passage and our horse’s hoofs sank into the soggy ground of the old growth forest, something the irin seemed to have no trouble with as I watched their paws spread out to evenly distribute their weight as they walked. Though Aleksei was in front of us, he still managed to notice when Nikolai paused beside me to pick a bramble loose from his trousers, flashing him a childish grin.
It wasn’t long before our party emptied out onto a hard-packed path. The original meeting point had been selected to be close enough to civilization while still being respectful of the fae’s discomfort with having portals opened within their lands. Though reapers, orVeardur, as they called us, were generally welcomed and permitted unhindered passage in every land, they still disliked the idea of our portals opening and closing indiscriminately within their kingdoms.
The small path wasn’t wide enough for many animals abreast, especially considering the irin’s wariness of us and our mounts, but the fae still managed to slip in at the edges of our little party, as well as several more in front and behind. The dichotomy between our peoples was not lost on me; my dark-clad, shadow-mounted, taller family with exceptionally pale skin and our heavy cloaks, surrounded by the small, lean, brightly colored fae in their rainbow of skin tones and shimmering armor on the backs of pristinely groomed white mounts. I wondered if the visual separation between my wife and I would be as pronounced. Would it bother her?
“Are they… guarding us?” Nikolai interrupted my thoughts with a whisper, leaning out of his saddle toward me in an annoyingly conspicuous way.
“They can hear you,idiot,” my sister hissed at him from behind us.
It did appear that the fae were guarding us, stationed around us and riding with a hand on their sword pommels, constantly scanning the surrounding woodlands for threats. The idea was amusing—that my family would need protection from marauding bandits or wild beasts by mere mortals—but I found myself charmed by this general and his commitment to his queen’s request. I supposed it did explain my grandmother’s bristling response. She could eat this general and his soldiers for breakfast and no doubt found the entire encounter condescending.
“We can go faster, if your animals can handle it,” my father muttered quietly to one of the soldiers behind us. The general must have heard him, because he signaled with a hand and all the irin picked up their pace, stretching their long legs to cut across the ground more quickly. It wasn’t much longer before our path connected with a major thoroughfare and we could pick up even more speed. I could practically hear my grandmother’s teeth grinding with the need to go faster every time we passed through a village instead of going around, slowing to a painful crawl to maneuver around pedestrians and hawkers who stopped to stare. Even when we found flat, open roads in the countryside, we were hampered by the relatively slower top speeds of the irin and the soldier’s need to rest them every few hours due to the maintained pace. It was just before midday when we crested a rise and finally caught our first glimpse of the Dawn Court’s Morning Palace in the distance, and it was then that I realized my stomach was twisting itself in knots.
This wasn’t the Palace of the Rising Sun, where the queen resided most of the time, but it was still notable in its own right. Perched on the edge of a river, its spiralling white towers jutted into the sky, built of glittering stone selected specifically for its ability to catch and refract the sunlight into its multitude of hues. Draping vines climbed the sides of the towers and cascaded from the outer staircases and balconies, further softening the tumbled-stone exterior. White statues carved of the same stone soon began to dot the left of the roadside as we grew closer, men and women of some renown in these people’s history, set to watch the sun breach the horizon each day for eons. I studied their weathered faces as we passed them, cold, arrogantly poised figures with delicate features currently washed out by the harsh angle of the midday sunlight. Were these ancestors of the woman I was selected to wed? Or leaders or war heroes of some kind that she’d been told stories of throughout her childhood? I glanced over my shoulder to see if my family had any noticeable reactions to any of them. It was entirely possible they’d even personally known them. But they only stared straight ahead toward our destination, faces impassive and unimpressed by the ancient carvings.
As we neared the front gates, the sound of the rushing river behind the palace finally grew loud enough to be heard over the clatter of our horses’ hooves on the cobblestones, followed by the clanging of the heavy metal gates being hoisted open and the shouts of soldiers and stable hands. After several hours of listening to nothing but the rhythmic sounds of our mounts or an occasional remark by our escorts, the din was nearly deafening.
Once we were in the courtyard, my grandmother waved away a young wide-eyed stable boy who came to take her horse, releasing her magic and allowing her mount to dissipate so that it deposited her neatly on the ground. His mouth dropped open as the rest of us allowed our own mounts to evaporate in the wind, until he finally noticed the stable master yelling for him to take one of the irin from the soldiers. A swarm of palace staff ushered my family inside, up the massive stone steps and through the greeting rooms. A great hall was being prepared for us for the midday meal—apparently, we’d made better time than expected—and so we were welcomed into an enormous solarium by the royal family instead. Bright sunlight streamed through ornate windows larger than most houses, and paved pathways meandered through the perfectly manicured indoor garden full of tropical flowers that could never have grown in this kingdom’s climate otherwise.
I kept to the edge of the cheerful gathering, watching the happy reunions and pleasant greetings, disturbed by the cacophony of voices and bustling servers. Trays of appetizers were offered as refreshments to our party, but I refused them because the nervous feeling in my gut hadn’t abated at all. The room was very bright, and I pulled my magic around myself as I drifted farther from the group, seeking the dimmer solitude under one of the sprawling trees, hoping the light-bending properties of my shadow cloak would keep me from having to talk with anyone who didn’t know to look for me.
I felt my cheeks heat when that was how my grandmother found me, seated on an ornately carved bench, watching the group’s interactions from within a cocoon of my own shadows. Like I’d done when I was a child. But she didn’t comment on it at all, just sat down beside me and watched with me as my family was pulled into further negotiations with the bride’s family. I steeled myself, waiting for her to insist that I introduce myself to my future in-laws.
But that wasn’t what she said. “I don’t know why they’re bothering. I’ve already worked everything out with Queen Danica,” she muttered. “I wouldn’t be surprised if your sister demands a bevy of goats in exchange for your hand.”
I looked at her out of the side of my eye, but she just continued grumbling.
“Since the queen isn’t in attendance yet, nothing about the arrangement can be changed anyway. Yearly visits this, weekly stipends that. What do they think we are? Savages?” She huffed, clearly as over the pleasantries and chit-chat as I was. “Aren’t you hungry?” she asked me abruptly.
I shook my head slightly, too nauseated to consider eating.
“What do you want?” she asked quietly, matter-of-factly, her piercing eyes raising to mine as she studied me intently.
“I want to meet her.”
Chapter 4
Grim
Ithadbeenamomentary, ridiculous hope that I might escape with no introductions at all, but at least my grandmother kept it to a bare minimum before pressing a cup of hot, honeyed tea into my hands, saying, “Drink this. It will settle your stomach.” It did not.
The blood rushing in my ears made it difficult to hear the nattering, one-sided conversation kept up by the young fae girl with wispy blonde curls tasked with escorting the two of us to the royal family’s residential wing. She wasn’t as experienced with holding on to a single form, and shimmering, ethereal wings flickered in and out of existence behind her as she led us down halls filled with antiques and up stone stairs covered in the plushest carpet. The girl paused to knock at a polished wooden door, opening it wide when we were called to enter. There, on a massive four-poster bed laden with heavy blankets, lay my wife. Perhaps “betrothed” was the correct title, as we hadn’t performed the ceremony yet, but to me it didn’t matter. She would be mine, and so she already was.
I didn’t see the people moving hectically about the room, rushing to put away the shimmering gown that hung in the corner, preparing poultices on the sideboard, or shooting us uncomfortable looks as they tucked her bed linens around the mattress. My eyes found the small woman with blonde hair and an unhealthy, grayish cast to her fair skin and stayed there as I took in her broken form. She was horribly ill. The circles under her closed eyes were sunken in a way that told me dehydration had been her companion for a very long time, and her cheeks were gaunt and hollowed. Her wings, a feature that every other adult fae had taken pains to hide from us outsiders, were prominently on display, crumpled things tucked beneath her as she lay resting on the bed. Small, dainty antlers arched from her brow to hold back her hair—another feature that healthy fae would never show to a non-fae. Truth be told, this sickly creature looked closer to death than many of the bodies I’d collected souls from. I couldn’t imagine her suffering.
