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Keep my head down, my mouth shut, and follow orders.
Thatis how I’ll get through this.
So, I’m silent and stiff on the steed as the trot eventually slows to a wander and the blackness—broken by not even a glimpse of light—presses down upon me like a heavy, thick blanket.
In the dark, I feel the tug of the reins shift to the left. The steed follows its guidance until I hear the squishing of mud beneath its hooves.
Quiet has its arms wrapped around us for the whole time we wander over the mud, and continues to carry with us as the squishing sound shifts into something harder, like stone. I suspect we are inside a cave. Each step of the hooves on the stone echoes around us.
Then I feel it.
It’s not something I recognise, exactly. But in the village, I have heard some of the bargainers tell of the shudders that washed over them when they went through the split tree.
It’s just like that.
A damp, zapping sensation rolling down me from my scalp to my curling toes, prickling my skin and shuddering my whole body.
The prince is as still as a statue behind me.
Then suddenly, in one blink, the darkness is partially banished—and I’m faced with a whole new world. One that I definitely don’t belong in.
I feel it right away.
The darkness is thicker here, heavier. My lungs feel weighed down.
I draw in a long, shuddering breath that tastes like saltwater and it seems to have a faint burn to my lungs.
Distantly, I’m aware of a sound I’ve heard only once in my life. Waves rolling over a rocky shore—a cliff, maybe. It drags me back to a time with Father, when we had to take the now-poorly farm horse to a seaside village to find the right soil for our farm. There was a shortage at that time. The dark fae seemed to have abandoned us for months. No imports or exports, our village came to a total standstill and we relied solely on each other.
Then they returned, much to the dismay of myself, but the relief of many others.
There was no doubt about it in those dark, cold days when even the warmth of the day didn’t come, and the morke inched ever closer to our village, that weneedthem.
The dark fae somehow control the darkness that swallows up our world, they feed us and keep us safe with their wicked bargains.
Yet, how I despise them. That’s how all fear manifests, right? Into hatred?
Because really, at the core of it all, it’s pure fear I harbour for them. It’s icy and strong, pumping through my veins even now as the steed draws us over to a faintly gleaming white path. As we inch closer, I can better make out the pearlescent blocks of stone that make up the path, and it winds all the way ahead to what looks like a midnight-blue grass hill split in half.
The Valley of Royals ...where all the princes and princesses live.
I’ve heard about it—from those bargainers back at the village. There aren’t many of them left these days, but the stories linger. Another part of their stories is that not all of them return. Too many threats here to speak of—the dark fae being the main ones to worry about.
Fleetingly, I wonder how many of the bargainers camehereand then met their ends.
Death feels as though it belongs here. The natural light from the pearlescent path and, ahead at the valley, the dark-glittering blades of grass and rising crooked trees whose branches shimmer a pale blue, all might be so spectacularly beautiful that it all steals my breath—but it is haunted.
Darkness still lingers. It still drapes over this part of the realm like a thick, heavy blanket made to draw out fever sweats (the sort of blanket every grandmother seems to have in store).
Distantly, I’m aware of the rush of water nearby.
We are taking the path at a glacial pace, feeling the warmth brushing over us, when I spot the source of the noise. The path lifts up a small hill and over there, at the bottom on the other side, glitters a spanning pink lake. White foam gathers at its sandy edges, and I’m struck speechless (not that I’m allowed to talk anyway).
As if smelling the awe radiating from my pores, behind me the prince speaks for the second time since he stole me away from my home—
“Avoid that lake. I intend to make use of your servitude, and the pink lake has a tendency to drown humans.”
All the colour drains from my face.
