Wander The Night, page 21
Oberon’s silver-green eyes meet mine.
SCENE 3
Oberon takes one look around the room—at me, bruised and bloody; Kavi, restrained and on his knees; Titania, standing and stricken; the crowd, waiting and wanting—and stalks toward Mab. “What is going on?”
“Hello, Oberon,” Mab says drily. “Showing up uninvited must be a family trait.” Her eyes trail pointedly to me and then back to Oberon. “When were you planning to tell us that your daughter is, in fact, third in line for your throne?”
Oberon’s face is impassive, the mask of a king. “I have not come to talk politics with you.”
Mab hums. “I’m sure you haven’t, darling. Here to claim your sons then?” She huffs a laugh. “Perhaps you should have done that a long time ago. It’s a little late now, but I suppose you may leave with the younger one. The other has agreed to give me his Name in exchange for his brother’s freedom.”
Oberon stares at her and then turns to me. “Is this true?”
I’m not sure who he’s addressing, but I find my voice, small and shaky as it may be. “She was going to kill him. I didn’t know what else to do.”
Oberon’s eyes are anguished, apologetic. He turns his gaze back to Mab and takes a breath. “I’ll offer you a sweeter bargain. Let them both go… and you can have me.”
“No!” I shout at the same time Titania says, “What?”
Mab preens with delight. “What an intriguing development this is. Why ever would you make such a deal?”
Oberon bows his head. “It is far past time I took responsibility for my failings, as a father, as a husband, and as a king.” He lifts his head and regards Titania with the same repentant expression. “Titania, my love, my bride, I never meant to hurt you, but that is no excuse for what I did because it hurt you all the same. For that, I am sorry.” His eyes shift to Kavi and back. “But I hope you understand my lack of contrition for what I gained. I only wish I could have been better, for everyone.”
“I only wanted your honesty,” Titania murmurs.
Oberon holds her gaze for a moment and then turns to Mab. “Will you accept my terms then?”
The Grey Queen raises a finger to her lips, turns her black eyes to the ceiling in thought. Then—
“No.”
Oberon’s face contorts in anger. “And may I ask why you refuse my offer?”
“You may,” Mab says, mocking. “I refuse your offer because the offer is yours. In other words, it’s what you want, and the last thing I want to do is give you what you want.”
“Then you would prefer war and violence.”
“That’s not what I said,” she clarifies, gesturing with a slim hand. “I can’t deny I would like to see you brought to your knees for once. But stars above, I can’t have you in my service. I hardly wish to look at you every day.” Her head tilts, lips curving in a smile. “No, I have something better in mind.”
Oberon bristles. “And what is that?”
“I want your crown."
The room is silent for a breath. Then Oberon laughs. “You have some nerve, to ask for such a thing.”
A sharp grin of too many teeth. “I rather think we’re past asking. You can give up your crown, or I can have your boys killed.”
The guard behind me grabs my hair and wrenches me backward. I claw at his hands, heels digging at the floor as he drags me back, but his only response is to press his dagger under my jaw. Kavi’s guards force him to the floor and cross their swords over the back of his neck. Titania gasps, eyes not on Oberon but on Kavi.
“What will you do, Green King?” Mab asks. “You cannot fight off all of my soldiers. You seem to have come here so stupidly alone, after all.” Her smile turns malicious. “Perhaps if you put on a good show, I can allow you to save one of them.”
Oberon considers her. I hold my breath, awaiting his response, hoping but doubting that he will choose Kavi.
After a moment, he says, “I will not give my crown to you, Queen Mab.” He holds up a hand when the surrounding crowd screeches and heckles in disappointment. “But I will give it to my queen.” His silver-green eyes meet her brown as he removes the antlered crown from his silver brow. It shimmers and fades into a simple golden circlet, a twin of the one in Titania’s hair. “In return for our safe passage from Grey lands, I offer you rule of my court.”
Titania stands staring, face pale and eyes wide. When she recovers, she dons no mask of indifference I’ve become so accustomed to. Rather she just seems regretful.
Aren’t we all these days?
“I want Kavi as well,” she says, surprising me.
Oberon appears surprised as well. “Why?”
“If he leaves the court, where will he go? He has no practice in magic, and you cannot protect him if you are not king. Let me honor the promise I made to his mother and love him as I should have long ago.”
Stillness reigns as the king decides.
“Very well,” Oberon finally says. “We have a bargain.”
Kavi’s guards lift their swords and release him, and he stands, a protest on his lips. “But I—”
“She will keep you safe,” Oberon interrupts. “She will be better than I was.” His eyes soften, imploring. “Please.”
Kavi looks at me, asking yet saying nothing.
“Please,” I mouth to him.
He nods and glances at Titania. Her arms open to him. When he approaches her, tears in his eyes, she cups one hand under his chin and smooths his hair back with the other. Her lips move, words only for him, and he nods once before moving away. Kavi casts one last long glance at me before vanishing into the hallway toward the royal chambers. No one follows.
“The crown then,” Mab says. Fury simmers beneath her skin, held at bay only by the knowledge that the events unfolding are sealed with magic. She can’t interfere without consequence.
Oberon takes a breath and steps forward. He holds the golden circlet out for Titania to take, but when she closes her hand around it, he doesn’t let go. Instead, he leans forward, whispers something against her ear, and presses a kiss to her forehead. Her eyes shine with tears that don’t fall.
When Oberon backs away, Mab motions to the guard at my back. The dagger comes away, and I’m jerked to my feet by the back of my collar. I grit my teeth as my battered body is jostled further, but I manage to stay upright without swaying.
On the dais, Titania places Oberon’s circlet upon her head, atop her own circlet. Crowns of Faerie are not simple pieces of jewelry for signifying royalty. They are pieces of magic from the land itself, changing to fit the ruler they adorn. Mab’s crown is made of black crystals and looping silver chain. While it belonged to him, Oberon’s crown—and by extension, Titania’s, as hers was crafted from his—was antlered like a deer. When Titania left her husband’s court, her crown became a simple smooth circlet, a symbol that she had left her throne. Now, upon her head, the two circlets meld into one, shifting together into a new form. Golden roses bloom along her hair, and spikes radiate around her head, giving her the appearance of a sun and its rays. The gold is dazzling against her red hair.
Gazing at her, I can only hope she will lead well. She is the sole ruler of the Green Court now.
“It suits you, sister,” Mab purrs.
I hope, for one brief and fleeting moment, that she is content, assuaged by what has transpired.
And then she turns, looking from Oberon to me and back, and addresses her guards. “Bind their hands.”
Oberon balks in protest at the same time Titania whirls on her sister, both of them speaking at once.
“Now see here, Mab—”
“Sister, this is not what was agreed—”
Mab holds up a hand to shush them. “We agreed to trade the boy and the crown for Oberon and the puck’s safety and freedom,” she says, as though everyone isn’t aware of the terms. “And so they shall have their safety and freedom. Outside of Faerie.” Her black eyes flash with triumph. “I hereby banish you both to the human world. A return to my realm or my sister’s will result in the forfeit of your lives. Bind their hands.”
Numbness creeps over me. Titania makes a remark about intentions, and Oberon curses Mab in every language he knows. But I do nothing, just allow my hands to be tethered at the wrists and myself to be led off.
Oberon and I are taken outside the Mound and down the stone stairs to the road lined with toadstools. We wait in silence—he fuming with indignance, I lost in the abyss of thought—while mounted riders come around from some back entrance to meet us. Mab leads them. Titania has not come. Our bindings are tied to saddles, the meaning clear. Keep up or be dragged behind. After all, accidents happen, and even a faery promise can’t prevent an accident or two.
“Where do you intend to drop us off then?” Oberon asks the queen.
She grins down at him. “I thought we could take a trip north.” It’s not a very complete answer, but it’s all she offers.
She snaps an order at the assembled soldiers, and the riders spur their horses onward. Our tethers pull taut, and I stumble forward, off guard. The set pace is brisk, but we’ve been left little choice in the matter.
As we head north, the only consolation I have is this: maybe Titania will love and care for my brother as she does my sister.
SCENE 4
The trek Mab leads us on is grueling. At peak health, it would be a task—between the swift pace and the distance that proves daunting after a while—but at least it would be feasible if challenging.
As it is, I am not at peak health. My body is a map of blooming bruises. Blood dries along my cheekbone. My cracked ribs ache with the effort of breathing, and the stab wound in my side—from a time that seems so long ago but isn’t—burns with the tightness of skin being pulled too far. My pulse throbs in my temples. I wish desperately for one of Ariel’s cloud steeds.
At the memory of the fate I’ve helped to doom Ariel to, I reroute my thoughts and focus my attention on the chore ahead of me.
The first couple of hours are bearable, not fun but not awful. Oberon and I converse in low voices, both of us welcoming a distraction.
“You’ve developed quite the recent knack for worrying me,” he says. I start to apologize, but he shakes his head. “I understand why you did it. I suppose that’s something you got from your mother. You seem to run toward problems. It certainly didn’t come from me. I only seem to be able to run from them.”
His words strike me silent. We don’t speak of my mother often.
Oberon sighs. “I would have made her queen if she had stayed. How different our world would be.”
I would have been raised as a prince. Kavi and the princess probably wouldn’t have been born. I might have had other siblings in their place. Titania would not have turned Green. Mab might have continued her war against us. We might have wound up here all the same.
How different indeed.
“How did you know where to find me?” I ask, shifting the topic.
“I didn’t. Mustardseed came to me.” He glances askance at me. “I was wrong in my treatment of her, and of Moth and the changeling girl.”
“So I told you.”
He breathes a laugh, amused and self-deprecating at once. “Yes, well. She told me you had left in the human world while she and the others slept. She wasn’t particularly happy with you, either. She said she suspected you had gone to the Mound, and I thought it sounded like a horrible enough idea to be true.” He raises a silver brow. “And it was, of course.”
“I... I’m sorry.”
“You owe me no apologies,” Oberon says, and his tone brokers no argument.
“I never meant to choose between you and Kavi,” I whisper.
He regards me with an indecipherable look. “You never should have had to.”
We continue on, topics taking on a lighter vein until fatigue starts to set in. As the hours pass, Oberon’s steps remain light, though he looks as if he would appreciate a break. I’m not faring quite so well. Recent ordeals are taking effect. I trail off in conversation, and Oberon glances at me in concern, fully aware that I’m only quiet when something is wrong.
“I’m fine,” I mumble, which isn’t a lie. I’m tired, and everything hurts, but I can go a while longer.
What is it they say about counting your chickens?
Something makes a loud crack from a copse of trees to our right, and the horse we’re tied to startles. In a rare stroke of luck, it doesn’t go tearing off across the way, but the ropes fastened around my and Oberon’s wrists pull taut and jerk us forward. Reflexes dulled with exhaustion, I fail to catch myself. I hit the ground hard with my face and chest, fire blazing across my ribs as something makes an audible pop. I cry out—or I would if I had the breath to, but the air has been knocked from my lungs. The most I’m able to manage is a choked huff. The only thing that follows is pained gasping.
The horse has stilled, but Oberon tugs backward at the ropes, creating some slack to work with. He bends down beside me, bound hands running lightly over the back of my head and down my spine. His voice rumbles, but my air-starved mind can’t make out the words. After a second though, they start to gain clarity.
“—you hear me?”
I nod against the ground, dragging in too-small, shuddering breaths that burn against my ribs.
A heavy, semi-relieved sigh rustles my hair from above.
Hoofbeats close by, and Mab’s imperious voice.
“Get him up.”
I feel Oberon shift at my side, feel his glamour simmer beneath his skin, and I know nothing good will come of whatever he might say or do next.
I force myself to heave in a deep enough breath to speak. “Don’t.” Still, I’m not sure it’s loud enough to be heard.
But the magic below Oberon’s skin calms and fades. He helps to get my hands and knees under me and then tugs me to my feet. My vision hazes with lightheadedness, and I sway before Oberon’s hand steadies me.
The next hour or so of travel is spent, as far as I’m concerned, staggering and stumbling and sipping air that doesn’t fill my lungs. After that, leaning against Oberon is the only thing keeping me upright.
Dawn is breaking by the time we arrive at the faerie gate that will transport us to our exile. We’re close to the northern border of Mab’s lands. So close, in fact, that the River Wild is visible at the edge of the horizon. Night-ruled land lies beyond it, kept at bay by the water’s wide expanse.
When the horses stop, I let myself sink to my knees and then collapse onto my side, careful of my cracked ribs but desperate not to move for as long as possible. The grass is wet with early morning dew and feels cool against my cheek. My eyes slide shut. Sound filters in and out as I drift.
Oberon and Mab’s voices are nearby, and then a hand is on my shoulder. I open my eyes to see Oberon kneeling beside me, his hands unbound and reaching out to free mine. He levers me up so I’m sitting, and I hiss in pain.
“I know,” he murmurs, brushing my hair back. “You can rest on the other side.”
I nod and accept his help in standing.
“On your way then,” Mab says.
I look up at her, seated on her horse in her revel-wear and resplendent with victory. Here, at the end of it all, I want to lash out at her, hurl curses at her, at everything and everyone that has led to this conclusion. But I can’t. It was Oberon who started it and I who drove the final nail.
If I had been in Mab’s position, I might have done the same.
Oberon and I are guided to the gate, a weeping willow with branches so thick, the space beneath it is cast entirely in shadow. A charmed human archer stands to the side of the tree, an arrow nocked to his bow. At first, I think the obvious: he’ll shoot us if we resist. But then I realize what that arrow is.
From where I stand, several feet away, I can feel the hum from the arrow’s power. I’ve never seen one before, but I’ve heard stories, tales of their use by the Wild Hunt, a nightmarish group that prowls the night ruled lands. The arrows are crafted with the ability to strip glamour, to destroy magic at its source. The points are created from molten iron, mixed with clover and salt, and cooled in running water. The shaft is made from wood infused with glamour, and the end is fletched not with feathers but with the petals of St. John’s Wort.
The effect is deadly.
“I plan to seal you in,” Mab says, voicing my train of thought. “Once you’re both through, the gate will be destroyed—so do remember to duck.” She smiles like a cat. “And if either of you ever graces this realm again, I’ll do the same to you.”
If she is destroying this gate, that means it must be the type that allows Exiles to travel back into the realm of Faerie. It’s what is referred to as an ‘open’ gate, one that does not lock itself against those who have been cast out.
A soldier shoves us from behind, and we stumble forward. Oberon grabs the back of my shirt before I can faceplant again. As he releases me and disappears through the tree, I cut a backward glare at the one who pushed us and take a breath. As much as I hate what’s about to happen, I’m gaining nothing by postponing it. If I have to leave, it will be of my own will.
I step forward, part the branches of the willow, and leave Faerie behind.
I come out into the human world in what seems like a park. It’s night. There are trees. Some grass. A little path down the way. And—
And none of it matters because a breath full of iron-laced pollution has gone straight to my head. My lungs burn, and my ribs scream in protest. My pulse pounds behind my eyes.
I hear Oberon’s footsteps returning.
Hear my name.
Hear nothing.
Feel myself falling.
Feel nothing.
SCENE 5
I wake to the feeling of something rough against my face. It caresses my cheek, combs through my hair. A leaf, or something like it, brushes my nose. My eyes flutter open, and a girl stares down at me. Her skin is brown and bark-like, her slender fingers like branches. Ivy trails from her scalp in place of hair. Her large eyes are black as pitch from edge to edge.
