Not today.
We ride through the short night and all through the next day, the air heating up the farther north we travel. We don’t stop for anything until we arrive at Yregar Castle the following evening, just as those same orange streaks across the sky harken the arrival of the summer solstice. My soldiers are well versed in what to expect from me and what I demand from them, trained to serve without question, and so there’s not a single complaint about the hard journey home.
I need to leave again quickly, but I also need to bring Roan back to his wife.
My cousin, Princess Airlie Celestial Snowsong, is the strongest and most capable female I’ve ever met. A danger to the snakes within the Unseelie Court in her own right, she’s no wilting rose who needs to be coddled by her husband or the males in her family at all, but there are extenuating circumstances.
She’s pregnant.
After losing their first son to the curse the witches cast on all full-blooded high fae, for reasons she’s been unable to explain to me, Airlie decided to try again. Centuries have passed since the last high fae baby was born to the Unseelie Court and yet, my beautiful, intelligent, stubborn cousin insisted on it.
I’m both horrified at what may come to pass for her and desperate to break the curse before it takes another babe from her arms. This one is due at the autumn equinox, but with the swell of her belly growing daily and the way she already clutches at the furniture around her with random bouts of pain, I fear she’ll go into the birthing rooms early.
When we arrive at the stables at the base of the castle, we find her waiting for us, her belly round and her cheeks flushed, her hands on her hips as she watches us dismount and hand off our horses to the waiting stable hands.
Without preamble, she scrunches her nose at us. “You all smell like rotting witches. I’ll be damned if any of you are invited to dine with me tonight likethat. Fix it.”
As he removes his helmet and hands it to one of the squires, Roan’s eyes twinkle at his wife. The blood of our enemies still drips from his gloves as he unbuckles his iron breastplate and lets it fall from his body. It’s been too badly damaged to use again, so he’s not worried about babying it.
Where Airlie looks every inch the Unseelie high fae princess she is, all pale skin, blue eyes, and white-blonde hair that falls to her waist, Roan’s lineage shows in his own coloring. Brown skin, golden eyes, and tightly curled dark hair that he keeps cut close to his scalp. They’re a striking couple, and one the Unseelie Court always has a lot to say about.
I couldn’t care less that Roan’s mother was a princess of the Seelie Court, beyond the fact that, ever since she married his father—a fated union—she was loyal to me and to her son. I’ve long since suspected my own mate is a Seelie princess, and if she’s half as loyal, capable, and beautiful as the Outlands princess was, then the Fates will have blessed me beyond measure.
Impatience itches down my spine, the last few hours of waiting possibly the worst so far, but I fix a blank look on my face to hide it from my family. Years of longing for my croí have helped me develop a cold and impassive mask, hiding the maelstrom of frustration the Fates have cursed me to bear. Even a single word from her has been denied to me because of her captivity, and the deaths I will deliver to those who took her from me loom, the wait finally drawing to a close.
“Beloved, that’s the exact welcome I have been dreaming of all these nights away from you. You never fail to sweet-talk me, though I don’t deserve such a reception from a princess like yourself.”
Her eyes narrow at his irreverent reply, but a frenetic sort of joy oozes from them both, a relief at being reunited despite the death that surrounds us. “You’re not going to talk your way out of this, Roan Snowsong. If you don’t climb into a tub of boiling water and start scrubbing right this instant, you’ll be sleeping in the kitchens with the rats!”
He clutches his chest, and Tauron drawls, “There had better not be any rats down there. I haven’t eaten anything decent in weeks. I’ll have someone’s head.”
Tyton shudders before he cackles, nudging his brother with his elbow as though Tauron’s told some great joke.
Airlie rolls her eyes at them only to focus on me, her brows whipping up alarmingly. “Well? Any news, or are we just going to continue on in this hellish wasteland forever?”
I’m hyperaware of the bodies around us, the soldiers working diligently to untack and rub down the horses while the stable hands get them all fed and settled in their stalls for a well-deserved rest. In the distance, the gardeners are moving about the yard, trying to keep up the appearance that the castle is unaffected by the war and the toll on the lands.
It’s a game I play with my uncle, the regent, his whispers of my savage nature and unworthiness for the throne rising every time the Unseelie Court arrives at Yregar only to find it operating as it always has. The façade is rapidly failing, the land too far gone now, but that’s always been the regent’s plan. He stays safely in Yris, untouched and suspiciously well-fed, while he lets the kingdom die to keep the power he holds.
My uncle’s apathy for the war combined with the sigil carved into his shoulder that matches marks I’ve found on our enemies’ corpses has confirmed to me that he’s complicit with Kharl’s madness. The High Witch incited the war by killing my parents as they slept, aided by my uncle’s treason to gain access to the impenetrable castle at Yris. He then sent war bands of witches through the kingdom to kill any high fae, lower fae and part-bloods under the rule of the Unseelie throne. He’s responsible for the curse on the Unseelie high fae and the reason entire generations of high-fae babies have died.
As I answer Airlie, I unbuckle my own armor and hand it off to one of the squires waiting to assist me. “We took out one of the smaller war bands. It was a win for us today.”
Only Airlie’s closest family and friends could tell that my words are a blow. Her face doesn’t change save for her lips tightening just a little as one hand slips down to rest over her swollen belly. Every time we return with news of killing witches but nothing about the curse itself, I see another little piece of her crushed, the weight of her first son’s passing to Elysium still heavy on her heart.
It’s cruel of me, but I can’t tell her that there’s no need for her devastation. Never have I let slip the details of the time and day of the arrival of my fate, but she’s here, finally within my reach, and with our union will come the end of this war and of the curse that has taken so much from us all. Her voice is still clear in my mind, shyly speaking the name she gave me because I hadn’t told her my own. Every syllable and turn of phrase she used during those weeks that our mind had connected through our shared fate before she was ripped away from me echoes in my memory. The Seer told me, time and again, that the Fates were teaching me patience, and no matter how hard I tried to find a way around it, they forced me to wait nearly one thousand years.
During that time, my kingdom fell further into ruin while I was forced to watch, unable to save my people from Kharl or my uncle’s indifference. Here at Yregar, I’ve protected a tiny fraction of the population—a handful of villagers and refugees, my family, and those most loyal to my claim to the throne—but the rest have suffered and starved at the whims of the Fates.
No more. The wait is finally over.
We ride out tomorrow to find my mate.
* * *
Dirt and ash, as far as the eye can see.
After a long bath and a terrible night’s rest, Tauron, Tyton, and Roan are accompanying me—along with a small and carefully chosen group of my most trusted and capable soldiers—to meet my fate. With weapons dripping from our bodies and cloaks in the royal colors draping our backs, we leave absolutely nothing to chance. Without the use of the fae door, the journey is difficult, but I’d make it a thousand times over.
