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Ilvaris can’t afford another war—not one that would shake the entire world. There are things slithering in the depths of our world which cannot be awakened. And a war might just manage it.
Then, we’d all die, screaming.
I personally can’t say I’m all that fond of being alive, but the thought of my brother, my crow, and even the least of my subjects ceasing to exist when I can prevent it is unsettling.
So, here I am, because there are rites coming, and none here but me has proven capable of winning them.
“King Ryther!” Grimgol breathes in horror and delight, just as the last of my flesh forms around my shadows.
The gray, stout powrie is a lord in his own right, king in his halls, so while he bows, he doesn’t bend too low, unlike most in the great cavernous keep.
The courts were divided long before I came to be, first into kingdoms, then, when there came a high queen, in smaller halls, who each deferred to the seat in the Hollow. But the queen’s been dead for a millennium. Now, the lower courts of the unseelie shores truly bend to only one power. Me. They named me unseelie king nigh on seven hundred years ago, at the dawn of a war I ended by beheading seven lords and tossing their heads in the sea.
Though I’ve been away for a century, all bend, and whisper, and shake in fear or glee.
Relva alone doesn’t think to present her throat, though I could have her neck for the offense. She’s too stunned and too hurt to think of deference. I pardon her foolishness. One moment I was in her bed, and then I was gone—stayinggone for long, long years.
“You’re alive,” the sea heiress whispers, her jade eyes filling with tears—of rage or joy, I cannot tell, and don’t care to try.
She likely wonders if my absence had something to do with her, and in part, she’s right. I was ever so tired of her games.
“Your king leaves for a few score years, and you presume him dead?” I laugh, strolling to the empty throne carved of bloodstone. “Ye of little faith.”
I sit, the cool stone accepting my touch even as it would have burned anyone else who’d dare attempt to claim it in my absence.
Most lords of the courts similarly charmed their seats of power against usurpers, much to our sorrow.Those in power have only one fear: losing it.
High Queen Morrigan protected her throne, and her crown, and her scepter, and the red doors of her keep, and the waters of her lake, and the fruits from the tree of knowledge. Nigh on everything in the Hollow that housed her high court was thus poisoned when she fell.
The heirs of the house of Harthorn long in vain attempted to open the doors, to coax the keep into accepting that their master had changed, but although they shared old Mor’s blood, ever do they remain shut. So the high court fell. So the power of the Folk fades, because of magic none here can tame. Everyone wondered why no cousin, no sister, no aunt could open the Hollow.
Everyone but me.
Since Morrigan’s demise, it was decreed that every hundred years, there would come a conclave to determine which house would be regent of the realm.
I ruled the civilized folk for as long as I could bear, though the dull burden of politics goes against my nature; my spirit does not like to confine itself to the bounds of the courts. But after centuries, I did not attend the last rites.
I expected that the great Grimgol, or Caenan, my own ward, or perhaps Relva, of the treacherous seas, would win the reins of our world when I retired. To my knowledge there was no one else who could compare to the might of the unseelie lords.I thought I could pass the mantle to someone younger, someone who’d know how to wield the authority.
Instead, the regency went to Valdred, a seelie princeling, green behind his ears and with too many stupid ideas.
I never even considered him a prospect. He never made himself known before the conclave—a strategy that served him well.
Valdred may be young, but he proved to be a redoubtable foe all the same. The blood of the eldritch flows in his veins, like it does in mine.
By the time I knew he could win, he had, and returning home was pointless, lest I wanted to start a war myself to steal the regency back from his clutches.
I thought about it. And I would have won, too. But a war shaking the core of Ilvaris is exactly what I am bound to avoid at all cost.
A hundred years, the courts have suffered under seelie boots, and if I let things go on any longer, chaoswillclaim this land. The seelie meddle in all affairs, crafting laws and rules, seeking to make order among the folk, when order is against our very nature.
And so here I am again, to reclaim the regency for the good of the realm.
But first… “What does a king have to do get a drink in his hall?”
The horde of gentries, lords, and creatures of the wild howls and claps so loud I don’t doubt Valdred feels the ground tremble under his pointed boots, from his keep across the vale.
I smirk.
