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“But I thought you said humans attacked her?”
He turns, releasing a frustrated growl. Not at me, I don’t think—more at the wounds of centuries past that still bite at him now.
“Who do you think crept over to the human realm and started whispering in the idiot king’s ear? Who do you think told him about our one, true weakness?”
“Iron? I thought that was a myth.” Superstitious people still bury bottles of nails and hammer horseshoes to their doors, but I’ve never seen any proof it actually keeps the fae at bay as intended.
“Not if you make it properly,” he grinds out. “It’s a secret that was lost to the humans before Cebba and Ilberon enlisted the king to do their dirty work for them.”
“But why would the king comply?” Most humans are far too fearful to try to strike at any fae, much less the fae queen, who an entire nation would flock to defend. Such an act seems reckless to the point of madness.
“They told him that mother could revive his dead wife. Nonsense, of course. Even faerie magic can’t undo death, but it was what he wanted to hear.”
“All so they could make Cebba queen?” I ask, appalled that someone could do that do their own mother in the name of power.
“Ilberon hated her for making peace with the Unseelie, for marrying my father in the first place. It was his faction of elitists at court who pressured her into a ‘pure’ marriage after my father died, but he had no love for her. He only loved power, and he thought he would have it once his child sat on the throne. When Cebba was old enough to be trained, Ilberon began filling her head with promises of all she would have once she achieved her ‘rightful place.’” He shakes his head before continuing.
“My mother’s attempts to also improve relations with the humans was just another crime in Cebba and Ilberon’s books, and it provided the perfect opportunity for them to remove her. Very few things can challenge a High Queen’s power, but she is fae like the rest of us, and Cebba and Ilberon put the one weapon they couldn’t wield themselves in the hands of someone cruel and ignorant enough to use it.”
I exhale, imagining it. “Banishment seems almost merciful after that,” I say.
His eyes burn with the same dangerous rage I saw at the garden party.
“She’s still my sister. But I can assure you that Ilberon, and the human king and his court, didn’t get anything resembling mercy.”
A prickle of apprehension triggers something in my memory—a history lesson from school about some civil war that took place in Styrland about two hundred years ago…because the existing king and all his heirs had been brutally murdered.
The thought instinctively makes me recoil, but then I give it more thought. If I found out my mother had been maimed and tortured, if I had Ruskin’s power and had been brought up in his strange, violent world…what would I have done to the people responsible? It’s impossible to say…and I find it almost as impossible to know if I should judge Ruskin for this or not.
This story has to have a point. All this is linked to the gold somehow.
“But now the realm’s being punished, isn’t it? The gold in the plants and animals?”
“Astute as ever,” he says, raising an eyebrow. “Cebba got quite far while I was rescuing our mother from the human realm. She is powerful and cunning, there’s no denying that. She passed most of the stone’s tests, even got the start of her name inscribed, but then she must have hit an obstacle she couldn’t power her way through. The stone can be tricky. My guess is that it didn’t like the fact that she hadn’t been named as heir, not when there was a named heir still living.” He jabs a finger at himself. “Or maybe it simply didn’t like her. Who’s to say? For whatever reason, it put up resistance. Made the last trial it laid for her too hard to pass. But when I found her, I realized it had gifted her something for her efforts.”
“Gifted? But she didn’t finish. What do you get for half inscribing your name?”
“A half power,” he answers. “If she’d succeeded, she’d have the full strength of the realm as hers to command. But the power she got instead is twisted and incomplete, like her inscription on the stone. A shadow of the High Monarch’s abilities, but potent and dangerous nonetheless.”
“And then she cursed the Seelie realm?”
“The land she so desperately wanted to rule?” He shakes his head. “Not likely.” There was a grim humor to his expression, macabre and disturbing. I’m suddenly afraid of what he’s going to say next.
“I can only assume what’s happening now is a side effect she hadn’t anticipated. She cursed me, Eleanor.”
He waves his hand and what I guess is a well-worn illusion is lifted. Where I could see only bare skin on his chest before, now his left pectoral is crisscrossed with glimmering threads, golden tentacles coiling outwards from the spot above his heart. It’s as if he’s been shot in the chest with a poison-tipped arrow, but the spreading toxin has been gilded for all to see.
I lift a tentative hand to trace the shape of it, cold and hard as one of my creations. Ruskin suddenly looks exhausted as I try to make sense of what I’m seeing.
“Cursed to bear a heart of gold, unless I can find someone who can change it,” he says, as if quoting the words of another. “The High Monarch’s power is linked to the land and so what’s happening to me is seeping into the realm too. Mine isn’t the only body being overtaken with this damned substance, it’s just the plants and animals who are suffering first, since they don’t have the defenses to combat it.”
“But…how are you alive?” I ask. My stomach is doing strange flips. Ruskin has seemed so indestructible until now, and this sudden proof of affliction is sucking the breath out of me.
“The transformation has been slow. My magic’s fighting against it every step of the way, but it’s in a losing battle. There’s only one loophole with this curse, and you’ve heard it already.”
“Someone to change your heart?”
“Yes.” His gaze brightens as he focuses on me, giving me that look that’s piercingly clear, as if he’s seeing me in a way others don’t. “Imagine my thoughts when I met a woman who can manipulate gold in a way I’ve never heard of. Someone who can change one thing into another. If she can make gold, why not unmake it as well? Perhaps her gift could be used to rid me of this curse, and thereby save my kingdom.”
