“Whatcurse?” my king throws back. Spittle flies with his words. “What curse?”
“The curse that turns your men to demons the moment we attack them.” Precatore’s voice is low and hateful. “The curse that makes them taller than walking trees with mouths of fire and bodies that swell and wane like pillars of smoke.”
I feel my eyes widening and my jaw go slack as I see the same in every mortal man around me.
“But … but that’s what your kind does,” Randalfur, the captain of the Royal Guard, says, and then closes his mouth hard. He didn’t mean to speak. That’s what you get for not keeping your words down tight.
“Ourkind?” Precatore clutches the pommel of his sword as if he might draw it, but at least that means one hand has left Iva’s shoulders. “You must be mad, for it is you mortals who have cursed us somehow, blinding our eyes to your true forms when you engage in war-play against us.”
“There’s nothing about war that’s play,” my king snarls and Prectore waves a hand dismissively.
“We want it gone. We want the curse lifted. It’s why we are willing to agree to peace. Why I’m willing to take this husk of a bride to my home and bed.”
I’m shaking so hard that I’m surprised my teeth don’t rattle.
“But you’ve sold me a bucket with a hole in the bottom,” Precatore says, leaning forward and seizing a handful of Iva’s hair right at the scalp. He lifts her from the horse and her teeth clench in pain as her hands fly up to grip his arm, desperately trying to relieve the pressure from her hair. “You’ve deceived me and tricked me and …”
He doesn’t get farther than that, though I’m sure there was more.
I’ve crossed the remaining ground without realizing it, leapt nimbly up, my foot finding purchase on his own where it sits in the stirrup, grabbed his forearm, and lowered his arm to take the tension off of Iva.
His eyes snap to mine as he tries to shake off my grip.
“You pay for this,” he says. “Your hands have touched your better.”
“So have yours,” I say mildly.
I don’t care that he is insulted. He’s said there will be no peace. No peace for us means no Iva for him. He can’t keep only one half of his dread bargain. But perhaps he needs this situation explained to him.
“You married the wrong woman,” I say simply. And I mean that in many ways, even if he can only grasp one of them.
“What?” his eyes flick from mine to my king’s.
I don’t waver. I keep my gaze level and firm as I lower myself to ground, removing my hand from his forearm.
He lets go of Iva’s hair and she slumps down and to my surprise, slips from the unicorn’s side and to her feet on the ground. He hasn’t stopped her. She’s watching me as everyone is now, I realize.
I’m going to have to speak, and I’m not very good at speaking. I swallow twice, my mouth too dry to get the words out. I have eyes only for her.
Which is why I can see it when understanding dawns in her face. Her eyes go wide. She looks at her father and then her bridegroom and then at me again.
My mouth works again, and this time I manage the words.
“She who nearly usurped the place, Of her with greater royal grace.That’s the prophecy. It doesn’t refer to birth. It speaks to action. Lady Fliad tried to take Lady Iva’s place along the journey here.”
That’s the best I can manage.
“Is this true?” my king asks over my head.
I hear Lady Fliad confirming it, but I have eyes only for Iva. Her face is wet with tears, but there’s something in her eyes I haven’t seen before, and I can’t look away from them. It’s like she sees peace in my face.
“Then annul this sham marriage and let us proceed with the prophesied bride, or is it your intention to trick the trickster?” the fae king is asking, and I realize he must be truly as desperate as we are to have condescended to marry a mortal and now stand here in the mud and debate which one it is to be.
I step back, and I feel my face flaming. My purpose here has been met and it’s not for me to stay and to watch. Among all present, my place is lowest. I turn my gaze down, wrenching it from Iva’s. It’s not my place to stay with her, though I wish I could. She’s the daughter of the king. She should be honored by him and surely, she will be when these speeches have passed.
I find my horse as I hear Lord Beecher speaking the words of severance over Iva and Precatore, King of Iceheim, and then the words of binding over Lady Fliad and the king who is now her groom.
I peek over my shoulder then, just in time to see a glow surround them, and then Precatore sighs, and the sigh runs all down the line of men and fae. We all freeze. No one needs to tell me that peace has come. I see it in the postures of both armies. I see it in the slumped shoulders of the nearest royal guard.
