A Cursed Son (Remnants of the Fallen Kingdom Book 1), page 23
We enter a large, tall hall, simple like the exterior, its walls made of rough rock, with moss growing among some crevices, and a set of wooden stairs leading to a kind of mezzanine. This place looks even more unfinished than the house on the island, and I’m wondering at the fae standards of living.
The guard climbs the wooden steps and we follow. Upstairs, I understand why this is a palace. It’s still made of rock, but with many glass windows. There are tapestries on the walls and many types of fur rugs on the floor. A woman is lounging on a chaise, two fae servants massaging her feet, while another massages her back.
Some ten guards stand at some distance from her. There’s a table on a corner with fruit, cheese, meat cuts, and drinks. Although the space is simple, everything in it is luxurious.
The woman—I can’t believe it. Her chest is not exactly bare, but all she’s wearing is a necklace with thin silver chains, as if decorating her rosy, taut nipples. Her hair is black, but it’s so shiny that it looks almost silver. Her skin is light and perfect, as well as her sculptured features and piercing gray eyes.
I glance at Marlak, just to see his reaction. I never took him for the gawking type, but in front of this queen, even I want to gawk, and I’m not even into women. He doesn’t look impressed or surprised, and maybe that’s not an unusual fae attire. The idea of me suggesting walking into his room, tits out, sounds a lot less alluring if it’s something fae can do so nonchalantly. Suddenly my transparent nightgowns make even more sense.
I don’t like it, though. I don’t like to understand so clearly why Marlak can stare at me in the face and tell me I’m unattractive. Compared to this queen, I am.
He approaches her and kneels. Kneels! Then he takes her hand and kisses it. “Queen Berta. Your beauty is as astonishing as always, more dazzling than the sun.”
Great. I want to puke. But I don’t want to feel like an idiot, so I decide to act like an idiot and follow suit, kneeling by her after he gets up. She frowns, but I ignore it, and take her hand. “Your tits are incredible, as appetizing as ripe mangoes.”
She widens her eyes, and I feel Marlak pulling me back to a fur rug, where he sits cross-legged. I do the same beside him.
The queen has her eyes on him. “Oh, princeling, what a scare you gave me, when I heard you saying the Crystal Court King was here. You made me think of your odious brother.”
Marlak’s eyes twitch, but it’s the only sign he didn’t appreciate what she said. He smiles. “It’s me. Your devoted ally.”
The queen gets up, and I notice that her long skirt is partly transparent. She kneels in front of Marlak, then puts her hands in front of her, so that she’s on all fours, her necklaces dangling in front of her. Her voice is husky and seductive as she says, “I want more, though. You’re of age now.”
Something bitter is stirring in my stomach. The position she’s in, I wouldn’t doubt she’d ask him to go behind her and get into the action, and I don’t know if he’s the type of man who would refuse such an opportunity.
I want to look away, afraid of what I’ll see, and yet I want to keep looking, to make sure I’m wrong. I know I’m not supposed to care about him, but he’s still my husband, and I don’t want to go through the humiliation of witnessing him make love to another woman right in front of me.
“Indeed I am,” he says, his tone neutral.
Queen Berta leans back and sits on her heels. The necklaces settle between her breasts now. “Then my proposal is the same, princeling.”
He lowers his head. “A very generous proposal. It would be quite tempting, but I’m already married.”
Her eyes finally set on me, and she sneers. “To this one, I suppose.”
“Indeed.” His voice is level except for a subtle, sharp edge, like a splinter in an otherwise smooth piece of wood.
The queen pouts. “I’m not the jealous type. As long as there are no bastards, you can keep her as your bed servan—”
She doesn’t get the chance to finish the word as her eyes go wide, and she moves her hands to her throat, as if suffocating. I look around to see if the guards are going to move, but they’re all surrounded by ice. The temperature in the room plummets. Ice covers the windows and then the glass blasts into thousands of pieces.
Marlak gets up and extends a hand to help me do the same, then points at one of the broken windows. “That’s our way out.”
So we’ll… jump? I can hear steps down below, and don’t need to be a genius to guess that there are more guards coming. Marlak walks to the window. There’s a precipice below us, much unlike the side of the hill from where we came. I assume we’re on the edge of a plateau.
He opens his arms, and I don’t need to wait or ask. I lean in and let him hold me, then close my eyes as he embraces me—and jumps.
I thought he had air magic. Or that we were about to land on Cherry Cake or something.
No. We’re falling.
This is not how I’d like to die. Dying in my kindred soul’s arms, though. Not exactly a tragedy.
My kindred soul. I love him—in my dreams. And I’m about to die because he’s an idiot in real life. I think about the Almighty Mother, think about light, but I can’t come up with a way to save us.
The ground is about to squash us, when a powerful gust of wind finally slows us down. Not slow enough, as I soon reach the earth beneath me, hitting my feet with a thud. My balance is all wrong, and I fall—on top of Marlak.
My chest touches his, and he stares at me and chuckles, his eyes a mix of relief and amusement. “You thought we were dying.”
In less than a second, I release my grip on him and get back on my feet. “Oh, yes. That’s hilarious.”
Slowly, he rises and stands beside me. “I didn’t mean that.” His voice is soft, but he chuckles again. “I… for a moment I feared I’d fail. My magic slipped, but then…” He pauses, and smirks. “It came back.”
“How great to hear you almost killed us.”
He places a hand over his heart. “You mistrust my magic that much?”
Nuts. He’s the one who said his magic failed! But I focus on something useful—and a thousand times more urgent—and point to the top of the hill. “How long until they send someone to kill us?”
He narrows his eyes, as if calculating. “Three, four minutes, I’d guess. Quite enough.”
“Enough to escape?” He must indeed be crazy, or else he has a plan I don’t understand.
“We just have to reach the river.” His voice is calm, and he points in the direction opposite the hill.
“And they’ll magically leave us alone?”
“Exactly.” He snaps his fingers. “Let’s go.”
He tugs my arm before I register what he wants me to do: run.
As we dash through uneven terrain, leaping over tree roots and prickly bushes, I thank Otavio and all his grumpy assistants who kept me in shape. There’s no sound of footsteps behind us, but a bell rings in the castle, now getting farther and farther behind us. Despite running the fastest I can, I struggle to keep up.
Relief comes when I spot the banks of a river. This is not a wide, lazy river, but one with a fast current and a foaming white surface.
I trust Marlak as he pulls me, thinking he’s going to glide us to the other side, but instead, we fall into cold waters. Soon I feel that strange air bubble around me, Marlak holds me, and we spin.
When we stop, I open my eyes, wondering if we’re in the Nymph Court, but we’re just in another river. It’s not the Queen’s River amidst the Eternal Mountains, but there are too many trees by the banks for me to know where we are.
Marlak pulls me onto firm land.
While thankful we escaped, I’m wet, tired, and dizzy. His mood is definitely different, as he sits on the muddy bank and bursts out laughing.
I want to punch him. “What’s so funny?”
“I’m just relieved, wife.”
I decide to voice the question that has been bugging me. “Did you have to do that?”
His laugh stops. “Yes. Fae respect oaths, but they also respect power. And they’ll test your boundaries. What do you think she was doing?”
I shrug. “Trying to seduce you, I suppose.”
He wrinkles his nose, as if smelling something putrid. “She’s delusional.”
“She’s gorgeous.”
He huffs, rolls his eyes, and stares at me.
I don’t know what all that meant, so I ask, “What?”
“If beauty swayed me, I’d be on my knees for you.”
Oh yes, I’m so beautiful, completely drenched here. And I don’t know why he keeps saying he or his brother would be on his knees. I would be the one on my knees if we ever… I’m pretty sure I’m going gaga.
“I thought I was unattractive,” I remind him.
“You are.” He shrugs. “Like I said, beauty doesn’t sway me.”
“Fine.” I get back to the point I was trying to make. “Did you have to almost kill her?”
He frowns. “She just passed out. Astra, she suggested I should keep you as my bed servant. That’s a royal prostitute, in case you don’t understand. If I let her insult you like that, I’d be letting her insult the Crystal Court Crown, insult me.” So that was what it was all about. Of course. “It was a test.”
“Now you passed it, and made a lifelong enemy.”
“Doubt it. She’ll laugh about it tomorrow.” He pauses, then rubs the back of his left hand, over the new, jagged scar. “I might have to pay for her windows, though. I…” He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, then looks at me. “It was the right thing, considering her insult.”
“We could be in an old library now, instead of drenched here.” I’m still wondering what I could discover in ancient books, still carrying a sliver of hope that there’s something about my people I was never told. Stupid hope.
“There are more libraries.” He waves a hand, then stares at me with his impossibly dark eyes. “You don’t care about what she said? What she did? The way she ignored you?”
What I hate was the way he was ignoring me when we first came into her presence, but I don’t want to say that. I snort, as if the idea was ridiculous. “Should I be jealous?”
He fiddles with his rings. “Not jealous. Insulted.”
“When someone’s beneath me, I don’t care about their opinion.” This sentence was part of my training to act like a princess, but it’s a good reminder for myself. I often forget it, but not always.
“True.” He tilts his head, considering. “They still shouldn’t say it like that.” He then stares at the river, as if looking for something, then back at me. “The coronation is tomorrow.”
I’m surprised at the change of subject, and not only that. “Already?” In my mind, we still had some two or three days before it.
He nods. “We can set up camp now, so we don’t need to travel again.”
Camp? “Can’t we travel in the river, or with Cherry Cake? Or a fae portal?” Then I add, “I’m just curious.” And it’s true.
His eyes are unfocused as he shakes his head lightly. “Not really. And camping is safer.”
Camping without supplies, near a castle where they want us dead, in an area where someone might try to kill him—that sounds fantastic. I keep the thought to myself, though, and smile. “All right.”
He points further down the river. “There are small islands there.”
We walk by the margin until we approach the “islands”. They’re more like sandbanks with some sparse ground vegetation.
He holds me, then we float gracefully across the river to an island smaller than our kitchen in the hideout. Now that I’ve experienced the clumsy way he stopped our fall, I’m not so sure his magic is that controlled.
“Couldn’t we have escaped like this?” I ask. He blinks, and I add, “From the castle. Floated to the river?”
He walks around the island, as if to double check that it’s indeed tiny. “Air is not my primary magic.”
It makes sense. “It’s water, right? Or rather, ice?”
His steps falter and his eyes widen for half a second, but then he raises a shoulder. “I suppose.”
“I mean ice because you can only chill water, not heat it, so your magic is different. It’s not really water magic.”
It’s as if he’s not even listening to me, his eyes far away, and yet he says, “Indeed.”
At least I learned something about his magic, but it didn’t feel like a win.
I shiver in my drenched clothes, not looking forward to beg him to dry me or to spend an entire night like this.
He notices me, and says, “You’re cold.”
“A little.”
“Hang on. It will get worse before it gets better.”
So many things are like that. I sense some air around me, and it indeed makes me feel colder, until it doesn’t, and my clothes are dry.
“Thanks.” I manage a sincere smile. He’s still wet, his thin tunic sticking to his body. I wonder if he knows how stunning he looks, or if he truly thinks he’s ugly. “You should dry yourself.”
He glances at his clothes. “I’m not cold. I rarely feel it. Perhaps you’re right that my magic is ice, not water.”
His chuckle sounds wrong and bitter and pained.
Does his limited water magic bother him? He’s so powerful, though. I can’t imagine him upset about any magical shortcoming.
I take a deep breath and try to change the subject. “So we’ll stay here until tomorrow?”
He nods. “Night will fall soon, and I’d rather not travel during that time. Tomorrow, the Court of Bees will be secured. There’s a peace treaty that prevents anyone who visits a coronation from harming another guest. We’ll be safe there.”
Meaning that we aren’t safe here. And it looks like we’ll spend hours and hours without anything to do, anything to eat. I try to look at the bright side. At least here, I don’t suppose he’ll storm away if I approach a touchy subject.
“Will the Nymphs keep us safe?” It’s a guess, and something I want to confirm.
“Yes, obviously.”
“You really trust them.”
“I don’t trust anyone.” He shakes his head and laughs, then raises an eyebrow. “But I have alliances.”
Interesting, interesting, interesting.
“Queen Berta was your ally.”
“And as you saw, she wanted to reinforce that alliance. Had she not offended me, we might have come to some profitable agreement.” He sits on the sand and plucks some of the thin grass barely covering it. “At least I know where she stands.”
The wind pushes a strand of my hair onto my face and I notice how opaque it looks compared to the beautiful fae queen. “Will there be more queens like her?”
“Like what?”
“Wanting to marry you.”
He exhales in what almost sounds like a chuckle. “Most definitely. If not for the advantage of the Crystal Court, for strong heirs, because of my magic. They’ll want me to be their breeding stallion.”
I sit beside him, over a fallen branch, thinner and more uncomfortable than I expected. “Is the idea so despicable?”
He eyes me and snorts. “To be wanted for my power? Obviously.”
True, but still. I want to understand why he married me. “You could forge a strategic alliance. That could help you.”
He rubs his face with his hands, as if tired. “No. I don’t need an army or funds or soldiers. I don’t need another kingdom.”
That must mean that he’s not planning on waging war against his brother, or he would delight in an alliance with a powerful queen. “What is it you need?”
He runs his hand through his hair. “You’ve snatched a lot of secrets from me today.” That means I won’t be getting an answer. How surprising. With eyes set on me, he asks, “What about you? Aren’t you going to tell me about your magic?”
I exhale, partly annoyed, partly tired. His question poked that constant, buried fear deep within my chest. “I worship the Almighty Mother and she gives me strength when I need it.”
“Is that true, or what they trained you to say?”
“You saw it. She gives us light.”
He blinks slowly. “I did. You were glowing. I had never seen anything like that.”
“You had never seen anyone who had faith.”
He grunts. “Fair. What about… your mind magic?”
I shake my hands in frustration. “I don’t have any mind magic, unlike you. Ask yourself what happened, not me.”
He takes a deep breath. “So you know nothing about dreams?”
I shrug. “A little, yes.” I’m going to give him a completely useless, generic answer. “Dreams can sometimes have meanings. It can be something you’re worried about, something you fear. It can also be something you want, like a repressed desire.” I keep my face straight, even though deep down I’m snickering. “But what does it have to do with mind magic?”
His gaze is piercing. “Sometimes I wonder, dear wife, if you take me for a fool. You did something and you know it.”
If he thinks he’ll make me confess, he’s delusional. I feign confusion. “When? Tell me. Tell me what I did. Maybe I can help you understand it. I don’t do well with riddles.”
He looks away and strokes his chin. “Me neither.” He pauses, then looks back at me. “Maybe your magic came about because of faith. I’ll accept that. Have you ever wondered what you could do if you had more control over it? Yes, it’s great to connect with some power when you’re desperate, but perhaps you could do more.”
This change in subject catches me by surprise. “I should call upon the Almighty Mother more often?”
“Yes. Understand that presence within you. Some people say that magic has a cost, but for people like us, with power coursing through our veins, magic as part of our nature, it’s the opposite. The cost is in not using it, repressing it. Magic is life and energy, and it needs to flow—like water. You keep it stagnant, and it spoils. Your magic is your energy, Astra. You need to control it and allow it to flow.”
