AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The urge to shift was becoming almost impossible to ignore. I didn’t think I’d ever gone this long without doing it since I’d first shifted into a blackbird as a child.
The first time I’d done it had been an instinctual attempt to escape from my brother. Balor had been chasing me through the palace—I still didn’t know what he’d intended to do to me—and utter terror had flooded my small body, pure adrenaline buzzing under my skin like an angry swarm of wasps.
I remembered wishing I could just fly away to escape, like the birds I’d watched constantly from my bedroom window. Get high up into the air where he couldn’t touch me, where none of them could touch me.
In the next instant, I had been. My vision had shifted, the sides of the room that had been in my periphery suddenly far more visible, disorienting me. I’d been rising higher and higher into the air, a strange sound filling my ears as newly sprouted wings flapped on either side of me.
I’d panicked even more, dipping in the air and rising back up as I struggled to acclimatise to this new body, these new senses. But I’d still been keenly aware of the predator behind me, and it had forced me to beat my wings harder, to fly higher and higher so he couldn’t reach me.
Balor had stared up at me with a sneer once I’d alighted on a wall sconce, well out of reach, and blinked down at him, tucking my new wings protectively against my body.
“Well, what a fun little trick that is,” he’d drawled. “It seems your worthless father did give you something other than his dreary looks after all. Shall we see what Mother thinks of this?”
I hadn’t shifted back for hours that first time, not knowing how, and far too scared to try as my mother and brothers had congregated beneath me.
“A blackbird,” the Carlin had spat. “His vile father could shift into anything he wanted, and the boy chooses a pathetic little bird?”
Bres had been moodily swigging from his flask, eyes bored as he gazed up at me. But Cethlen’s head had cocked, a tiny cruel smile tilting his pale lips.
“His little heart is thrumming so very fast,” he’d murmured. “It might even give out before he manages to shift back.”
“Boy,” the Carlin had barked up at me. She hadn’t bothered to give me a common name before that day. I’d simply been the boy, or the runt, when she wasn’t using my true name to order me around. “Shift back now.”
I hadn’t, not knowing how and not being able to tell her that. I let out a single panicked chirp, tiny body trembling with fear. Her eye had flashed with fury, bronze teeth clenching.
“Get out,” she’d snapped at my brothers. “Out.”
They’d dutifully filed out of the room, Balor narrowing his eyes up at me until he’d vanished. Once they were gone, she’d stepped closer and lowered her voice.
“Eliatha-Tethra de Cailleach, shift back to your true form now.”
I’d felt it start immediately, pain streaking through my body as she forced the shift. I’d barely had time to flap unsteadily closer to the floor before I was falling the rest of the way, back in my normal body, more pain flashing through me when I thudded onto the cold stone in a heap.
Before I could even lift my head, she was snatching up my ear and forcing me to stand. My legs had scrabbled desperately, weak and shaky, my head still spinning as I blinked fast.
“What else can we get you to become, hmm?” She’d dragged me across the room by my ear, ignoring my pitiful mewls. “No child of mine is to be a spiritsmith that can only become a bird. I hadn’t thought you’d inherited any of your father’s power, but I’m not surprised that you chose to turn into something so weak and fragile. It suits you.”
“I’m sorry,” I’d whimpered, wincing as her sharp talons had cut into the shell of my ear, drawing hot blood. “I didn’t… I didn’t mean to—”
“I finally have a name for you, at least.” She’d grinned down at me, teeth gleaming in the cold light of the palace. “Lonan. Little blackbird. Pathetically fitting. But let’s see if we can shape you into something better than your namesake, shall we?”
I’d been five. By the time I was seven, I could also shift into a crow, a cat, a rabbit and several insects, thanks to her whipping me until I achieved it. That wasn’t good enough for the Carlin. She had wanted more impressive beasts, stronger animals. A wolf. A stag. A vulture.
At least my new forms had allowed me to go and watch Ash undetected. As soon as the Carlin received news from her spies that the seelie prince had been spotted crossing over to the mortal world, she’d sent Folk after him to try and capture him, already obsessing over how she could beat the Brid, how she could take over all of fae land by sapping seelie blood from the prince’s veins.
The Golden Son had been quick and clever. They hadn’t been able to catch him, but the Folk she’d sent had returned with the news that he was visiting a young boy. A boy that seemed to have some fae in him.
I’d been too young to truly understand what was going on, but I remembered hushed conversations over dinner between the Carlin and Balor, wondering who the boy was. Realising that despite the Carlin’s spies telling her the seelie queen had been round with child several years ago, no new prince or princess had ever been announced.
So the Carlin had decided to watch him too, to try and work out if Ash really was the Brid’s illegitimate son.
I’d followed some of the unseelie Folk who’d started visiting him one day, darting between the trees as a rabbit while they trooped through to the mortal world. And then I hadn’t been able to stop going back, to watch the boy who had everything I didn’t, whose smiling face made my stomach clench into an inexplicable knot, whose nearness comforted me and made me feel even lonelier all at once.
Sometimes, I still couldn’t quite believe that I had him now. That he wanted to be with me. That he loved me. Sometimes, as I lay beside him at night with my head or hand on his chest to feel his steady breaths, I struggled to equate the man he now was to the boy I’d so desperately pined after for years.
He was fae now. He was a king. But he’d lost so much to become those things, and I didn’t know whether he believed it all to be truly worth it. Whether, if he had the chance to go back, to never be taken by the Folk, to remain mortal, to never meet me, he would take it.
I wondered how my life would have turned out if the Carlin had failed. If I’d managed to convince Ash to go back inside his cottage that night before Belial could reach him. Not that she would have given up after a single attempt. The moment he’d turned twenty-one, she’d begun planning to steal him, after years of fruitlessly trying to find Nua in the forest.
