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Especially because of the magic Father wasn’t aware I possessed.
So many of my childhood memories were gone, swallowed by the winds of time. But a few remained as clear as paintings, the details pressed into my mind. One was shortly after Mother died. My nursemaid, Aila, moved into my room and slept on a cot beneath the windows. She woke me one night, shaking me hard. “Master Lennox, wake up.”
Ice crusted over my sheets, and I shivered as gooseflesh rose along my arms.
Aila scooped me into her arms and moved me to her cot. Outside the window, the courtyard stretched pale blue in the moonlight, and I spread my fingers over the panes that separated us. The warmth of the glass startled me. How was my bed covered in ice if it wasn’t cold outside?
“Are you all right?” Aila brushed hair back from my forehead.
I sniffled. “I had a bad dream.”
I’d remembered Mother dancing with me, but then she tripped, and I hadn’t been able to catch her. I was too little, too weak to stop the inevitable. The image of her falling from me, her green eyes wide with fear, had tattooed itself into my mind.
Aila pulled me closer. She trembled, and that’s when I shook off the remnants of the nightmare and noticed the wrinkles marring her brow. “It’s important that you listen to me, Lennox.”
I knotted my hand into her robe. Something in her voice frightened me, and I’d already woken with my heart racing.
“You have elemental magic,” she whispered.
“What’s that?”
“It’s… dangerous.” Her voice frightened me. “There’s a prophecy that the bearers of elemental magic break the fairy courts. If your father finds out…” She gave her head a shake. “He cannot know. Do you understand?”
“I can’t use my magic in front of Father?”
“Nothing with ice or fire or anything like that.” She gripped my arms. “You must promise me, child.”
She’d never spoken to me like that, and I crouched away from her. “Okay, Aila. I promise.”
Later that day she’d appealed to my father to have my zevar and true name set early. I’d stood at her side as Father frowned at her. “He’s scarcely old enough to select a name yet.”
“Yes, Your Highness, but the young master’s magic is very strong.”
He scoffed. “In glamour? What’s the worst he can do?”
“Grief over his mother,”—she bowed a deep curtsy—“begging your forgiveness, Your Highness, is making his magic flare. I believe a zevar would help him adjust.”
Father slipped his gaze to me, then back to her, and gave her a glare that I would one day learn was his ‘you’re not Seelie and don’t believe I’ll ever forget it’look. It was probably being raised by Aila—a Froh and a compassionate woman—that had saved me from becoming my father. “Very well.” He waved his hand dismissively, and Aila rushed me out of the throne room. A few days later I had my true name and a new stone which pressed against my collarbone.
I could barely remember not wearing it.
Or not having control over my magic.
I sat up and Shaan’s drawing of me crinkled with the motion. I smoothed it out and set it on the table. My problem was ice had never been my natural inclination. Fire had.
Right now, with my emotions warring—my regrets and disgust with myself over the choices I’d made with Shaan, my anger with Father, worry over Lira who the guards hadn’t located, and my concern for the Seelie and the Prasanna as we headed towards a war that might destroy us all—my magic could burn this stone fortress to the ground. It took everything in me to keep it tamped down.
Someone knocked.
I held in a groan.
Father hadn’t called for me yet, and I was hoping to avoid an audience with him. Perhaps it was just a serf wishing to tidy the room. The shadowed forms of scattered clothing, toppled furniture, and piles of papers I hadn’t sorted through defined the space. I’d gathered up Mother’s bracelets and salvaged Shaan’s drawing as best I could. But I hadn’t found the energy to do anything else yet.
“I’m indisposed,” I called out, hoping it was a serf and they would heed my command and move on.
“It’s me, Master Lennox.”
Oh. Aila.
