She meets my eyes with a smile as she says, “The princess will just be a moment. The young prince decided that now is a good time for a diaper change, guests or no guests.”
She makes herself busy as she collects the baby items and puts them away, carefully restoring the area to its perfection. I have to bite my tongue not to stop her. There's nothing wrong with the signs of a growing family, nothing to hide about the messy and joyous evidence of the hard work that comes with tending to a baby's needs, but it's the high-fae way and none of my concern.
I move to place the tray’s contents on the table and gesture for Reed to take a seat, but he shakes his head and takes up watch by the wall, a good vantage point for the entire room.
I scoff at him. “You can't honestly think I'm going to hurt the princess or the baby! You people are ridiculous.”
He shrugs and crosses his arms, choosing to stay silent. Before I can push him further, the princess walks in, her arms filled with a squirming baby and a smile on her face.
“I’m supposed to be hosting you, and as my guest, you’re not supposed to be setting the table. We're doing everything wrong,” she says, but she laughs and joins me, holding out her son for me to hold.
I take him and admire all the growing the young boy has done, the alertness in his eyes as he stares up at me and makes faces. With a grunt and a big yawn, he settles himself in my arms. I check his color and his reflexes subtly, careful not to alarm the princess into thinking anything is wrong, but when I look back up, she’s watching with a knowing eye. “He looks good, doesn't he? Firna and the maids keep saying he’s growing well, even with his early arrival.”
I nod and idly stroke a hand over the crown of his head, watching as he yawns and snuggles into me, content in the warmth and safety of my arms. “He looks perfect. It's an old habit—I can't help it. It's been a long time since I've held a baby for any reason other than to offer care.”
Airlie smiles and nods, slowly pouring out a cup of tea for each of us, and when she spots her son taking a nap, she gently takes him from me and eases him onto the small blanket where he’ll be in our view at all times. I wonder if the small boy will ever draw a sword or learn to ride a horse—by the looks of things, his mother will never allow such things to happen.
When I murmur this to Airlie, a smile on my lips as I sip the tea, she laughs, a bright and joyful sound. “I’ve already told Roan, no swords. He’s never allowed to ride off to war with his father. If anything should happen to him, I will simply die. I’ll lie down on the ground and expire instantly, racing after him to the clutches of Elysium.”
I look back down at him and find myself thinking the same thing, an affection for this baby that I haven't felt in years pulling at me.
In the Seelie Courts, I knew my duties as a healer—to give the utmost care and support to those who needed it, but to hand the responsibility of loving those infants to the mothers and the families and continue down the path before me. Growing attached to babies is dangerous, even in the most peaceful of kingdoms. The work of a healer is hard and requires a soft heart, but one that can also let go and move on to where it’s needed most, never straying from our calling.
“I’ve been reading a lot since the baby's birth.”
I smile back at the princess, prepared for an idle conversation shared between friends, nothing too serious, over a simple lunch. A breath of fresh air for the princess as she adjusts to her new life as a mother.
I should’ve known better.
“There's an old tome that Firna brought to me that was hidden quite well in the library upstairs. It discusses the cycle of the earth in the Southern Lands and who’s responsible for each of the rites.”
I put down the cup of tea and sit back in my chair, watching as she picks at her food and nibbles away at everything, trying to be delicate and polite as she was taught but with the rabid hunger of a breastfeeding mother. The girl who picked idly at apples, leaving much of them behind, is long gone.
She glances out the window at the clouds lingering above Yregar. The days are growing colder around us, the warmth of summer long gone. The next shipment from the Western Fyres will need to include firewood, or we're going to freeze before hunger sets in.
“The tome says that the autumn equinox is an important time to replenish the earth and replace the magic so it may recover during the long sleep of winter.”
I nod at her slowly as she picks up another slice of apple and crunches away at it. I slide the plate closer to her, encouraging her to eat more.
Explaining the traditions of our lands isn’t a labor to me; it’s a joy to share them with her. “There are rites to be performed at each of the seasons’ peaks. The autumn equinox is vital, but so is the winter solstice, spring, summer—all of them come together. The magic weaves through the land and holds it safe so it will prosper.”
Airlie nods, looking back down at her son. “If we were to perform these rites at the autumn equinox, it would be enough to start the earthweavingonce more, wouldn't it? We have to start somewhere.”
I'm desperate to look over my shoulder at Reed's face to gauge his opinion of such things, but instead I nod. “It would be a good place to start, Princess, but there's no hiding an equinox rite. The sacrifice that a witch makes isn’t going to go unnoticed, and Prince Soren will never agree to it. Burying the wards was one thing, harmless talismans he doesn’t understand the power behind, but watching as I call on the depths of my magic to pour it into the land will definitely alarm him. The magic moving through me and into the land will be felt by all the people of Yregar, regardless of their own magical abilities, and the males of your family will see it as a threat.”
Her eyebrows pinch together, her mouth setting into a line. I take a deep breath to prepare myself for the temper tantrum at my reluctance. She doesn't immediately snap back at me though, and it’s clear she’s different from Princess Sari. Airlie is a calculating sort of wit who doesn’t accept no for an answer—she’ll work endlessly for what she believes are the right results.
“Your wedding to Soren will be held on the winter solstice, and very little would need to change to incorporate those rites. There's already going to be a feast and a ceremony, rituals, and sacrifices—I’ll tweak everything with my mother. I’ll hate every second of working with her, but it’s easy enough. The real challenge here is the equinox. Our best chance at a good spring and the land waking up renewed once more is to start the ritesnow.”
I tilt my head, considering, and then shrug. “The best time to start anything is right now, but I have no desire to find myself locked in the dungeon again or to suffer the demise that Prince Soren describes to me every time he loses his temper. The people won't starve before midwinter now that the provisions have come in…but the first crop of grains will be meager at best without the rites.”
Airlie scowls and pushes her seat back. She stands and disappears for a moment into her bedroom, then walks back to the table with a large tome in her hand. The old language is written on the spine in gold ink, flaking away with age, the leather cracked. Airlie drops it onto the wood with a thump and flicks through it until she finds the page she's looking for. The artwork in it is stunning, ink paintings of golden leaves falling to the ground, red and yellow flowers decorating the pages. It's a beautiful representation of the equinox that quickly approaches.
Her hands run over the black ink on the page, her mouth moving slowly as she reads through the old language with narrowed eyes as though looking for something that could convince her cousin. “Pouring your magic into the land on the eve of the equinox as the moon hits the sky, giving abundantly and without demand, will send it into the long sleep of winter with stores.”
I nod my head. “If I were to do it, and a high fae as well, it would be a strong start. The earth hungers so ravenously, it’ll take everything we give without question.”
She looks up at me, her bottom lip pinched by a row of perfectly white teeth, and her eyes flick to Reed for a second before coming back to me. “Tyton has magic. He doesn't know how to use it, but he has it.”
