Vidar
My dreams have been infected. I dream every night of her in her cage and I wake, shocked and bereft every morning. These are not dreams as they were before – otherworldly and ethereal, this is like living in a different world – a world that descends when I sleep and rips itself from me when I awaken.
In my dreams, she strokes my hair and whispers to me of her hopes and dreams – of a quiet home far from man or fae, a place to catch sleek fish under the cold flow of water and listen to the song of frogs at night. And I remember every detail.
In my dreams, she kisses me with a passion I’ve never known in a dappled wood under warm stars. In my dreams, she calls me fair names and blesses me with her caresses. And I remember every single second of it.
And though I push aside such musings in the daytime, they have still affected me. By now, she is likely married to that mortal prince, and yet I have built the very home she has dreamed of, sequestering it in a hidden spot deep in the Mountains of Morrow, far from Iceheim, far from any fae courts or mortal kingdoms where none will ever find it. I have outfitted it with every furnishing she has spoken of. I have prepared it as one would prepare for a bride. I have protected it with every enchantment I could learn, beg, or buy as if to protect it from a siege.
And I despise myself for my weakness. I despise myself for my hidden secret – that I have been conquered by a mortal. That I have let her ensorcell me with her strange dreams and her long silences and taunting looks, and her ridiculous understanding of who I am and dauntless acceptance of it.
I avoid her because I fear that if she sees my face, she will know what power she has over me. Worse, I fear she will not be there to see at all. That the mortal will have succeeded. That she is perhaps already mortal again and dead and buried.
I dare not think of her. I dare not return to her. Our ancestors would laugh to see me make such a fool of myself. All my previous objections have not changed. She is still only mortal to my immortal, only human to my fae, fragile, vulnerable, and easily hurt by my enemies. But I find she has planted a shoot within me and without me knowing, it has blossomed and grown into a mighty oak. There is no uprooting it now without taking all of me with it.
I throw myself into my work. I am the King of Iceheim’s sinister hand still. He has whittled me down – taken from me everything and left me with nothing but bleak service to him and this secret desire I nurse in the sanctuary of my heart. He has stripped me of the right to show my face in court or anywhere in Iceheim. I am bound to cover the lower half of my visage with a scarf. Bound by a geas he set on me that leaves me powerless to refuse.
He thinks I am his tool and nothing more. He thinks I am not even a person. He might be right. With our alliance to the Court of Pleasures, he dares not place his hope in anyone but me in the shadows and Precatore in the spotlight – and so he slices me away bit by bit to keep me his creature, to focus me only on his goal. To make me the stalking goat for all of Iceheim.
He thinks I am a genius of political maneuvering. I know the truth – that I have a secret weapon.
Her vision had shown me the bees of Eassom and with care, I stole two of them. One, I gave to the Queen of the Court of Pleasures, and with that bee, I sealed her alliance against the Court of Madness, for the bee goes forth and listens and when it returns, it buzzes all it has heard into the ear of the listener.
Such deep magic is precious to us – so precious it can be worth fighting a war to keep. But without the Mayfly Seer, I would not have seen where the nest was and without the nest, I would have found no bees and without the bees, there would be no alliance.
I sit on the steps of the home I’ve built, and I look at the second of the two bees in the small woven basket I keep it in. I’ve kept this bee for a long time. It is wrought of magic, neither dying nor fading over the years. I know who it should belong to.
But I don’t dare face her.
Not now.
Not when my shame is apparent to all and will be immediately obvious to her with her grey eyes that see all.
I have finally fledged. And on my back, my wings are iridescent and lovely – to anyone who doesn’t know the truth.
I have fledged mayfly wings. And I have done it because my heart is ever fixed on my Mayfly Seer.
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