12. Present Day
12
PRESENT DAY
Caly
M y eyes refused to cooperate, remaining tightly closed behind the layer of fluffy, lemon-scented pillows I had pressed against my face. Between the excitement of finally being here and the anxiety I felt when Queen Saracen demanded I marry into the family, it was no wonder I had just had the most vivid dream of my life.
The warm and toasty smell of wood burning mixed with something delicious and spicy caught my attention, and I smiled. The smell seemed to be everywhere I was—the comforting scent that reminded me so much of Mendax. I had even gotten myself to believe it belonged to Mendax last night in my dream.
A great honk of a snort left my nose with a short laugh that was thankfully muffled by the pillow that remained on my face.
They used wood-burning fires to cook. That’s why I smelled it last night at dinner and again now for breakfast.
I couldn’t help but wonder why they didn’t use magic to cook. It seemed like it would be so much easier. I made a mental note to find out everything I could about their magic and idiosyncrasies. Perhaps I could take it easy the next few days and read up on Seelie fae. I was sure I could find my way to a library in town if they didn’t have one in the castle.
My body sank deeper into the large, comfortable bed as I really let myself relax unguarded for the first time since…well, since I could remember. This was dangerous. I could have stayed inside of this dreamlike serenity for days.
I stuck my leg out to test the temperature of the room and immediately pulled it back into my homey pocket of warmth. The air outside of the bedding was crisp and cold, while the heat I had cultivated under my sheet was surprisingly warm and cozy. I was in blanket prison.
It would be best to stay here until someone came for me. I just knew the marble floor would be like ice on my bare feet. The unrelenting scent made my muscles relax and settle even further. I had made it here. I could finally relax.
Today would be a great day. I felt happy and rested—not something I was able to declare very often—but if I didn’t get up now, blanket prison would keep me trapped and lazy all day.
At last, I shoved the mound of white pillows away and rose from the bed. Stepping out of the tangled white sheet and bracing for the touch of cold marble, my foot landed on something soft instead.
My plaid night shorts.
I suddenly realized I was completely naked from the waist down.
Heat rushed into my face as I remembered the details of my dream. I must have taken my shorts off and touched myself while I was dreaming.
The dream.
Oh my god, what the hell—or Tartarus now—was wrong with me?
I nearly fell to the ground pulling my shorts back on. I couldn’t even think about that right now.
What an absolute mess of a person I am. Dreaming about the enemy, the one who viciously terrorized my family, watching me finger bang myself?
I scanned the room, taking note of the now yellow sun blazing across the empty fireplace. The smoky scent was so potent now, I expected to see the fire going.
Could he have…?
There was no way. No. See? This is what happens when you never relax. The first time you get to, you forgo calm and immediately turn paranoid and lonely.
I had no idea what time it was here. One of the few things I did know was that time worked differently in each of the realms. The difference in proximity to the moon and the sun made things faster or slower. I couldn’t help but feel a little disheartened realizing that science, my one real comfort, was basically nonexistent here. Those laws didn’t apply in these realms. Magic didn’t care about molecular structure or quantum particles.
Still, it would be a new area of study for me. Excitement gently stirred in me. I loved learning and was excited to understand more about Seelie and its inhabitants. I climbed back onto the fluffy bed, my legs dangling over the edge. Would I marry Aurelius if that was the only way to become a Seelie royal? Saracen still retained half of my heart. What more did she require?
I pulled in a deeper breath, my nose searching for the comforting scent only to be disappointed when I couldn’t grasp hold of the spicy, warm fragrance. My mind scanned its cabinet of memories for an impression of comfort in its absence.
My mother sat on a tattered picnic bench in our old backyard—at least I thought it was my mother. Most of my early memories had blurred a bit as soon as the more…unsavory memories were created. I didn’t really mind. They didn’t belong in the same space.
Adrianna, my younger sister, cuddled on her lap while I sat atop the gray-brown table, painting my mother’s face with one of her metallic-blue eyeshadow palettes. Acorn, a friendly squirrel we had made friends with, sat on my lap nibbling one of my shirt buttons.
Tears filled my eyes at the memory. I had been only a child then, almost eight years old and my sister a few years younger. That was right before they were taken away from me, before they left me all alone. That was the last time I had felt whole. Now it only ever felt like my soul was shredded and furious.
My mind threatened to cave, as it so frequently did whenever I thought about Mom and Adrianna. The sheets dragged against the back of my thighs as I slid to the hard floor, my eyes filled with tears.
A loud knock sounded at the door, startling me.
“Calypso, get up. Eli sent me to wake you while he gets ready. Apparently I’m no more than a lady’s maid now.” Tarani’s voice was muffled from the other side of the door.
Quickly wiping my eyes and smoothing my hair, I leaped up and flung the door open to a very disgruntled princess.
Twirling blond hair around her fingers, Tarani looked up at me coldly from under her sparkly gold eyelids. She waltzed into the room, making no secret of inspecting it as if making certain I hadn’t ruined anything.
“Is that what your kind sleep in?” she asked, looking me up and down with a flat expression.
Princess Tarani was once again in a beautiful white dress that trailed just slightly behind her. It had to be absolutely horrible to wear these dresses every day. Didn’t she ever get to wear pants? I looked to my barely there yet obnoxiously comfortable sleeping shorts and then back to the princess, who was so sweetly scowling in disgust. I wouldn’t hold it against her—she had obviously never worn flannel pants covered in kittens and didn’t know what she was missing.
“Yeah, this is pretty much what humans sleep in. Feel how soft though!” I said, grabbing a wad of the buttery-soft fabric and pushing my hip out.
“But what about your kind?” she asked with a small smirk and a mischievous twinkle in her eyes.
I took a few steps back from her. Ah. She came to rub it in my face that she knew I was Artemi with no real powers.
“You probably don’t even know what shorts are, do you? Do you always wear such fancy dresses?” I questioned, watching the blonde woman continue to wander aimlessly around the room with her hands clasped behind her back. I stole a glance at the hallway, hoping Eli would save me from this awkwardness, but it was empty.
“Not always. Unlike you, I’m able to wear the fur of a fox on occasion,” she sang matter-of-factly.
She poked her fingers in one of the corners next to the window, where I had hung the bedspread, slightly scratching the molding in the process. She had found the one goddamn blemish in the room in less than thirty seconds. She was smart and perceptive. I had a feeling she was underestimated quite a bit.
It was clear she was still angry about my arrival and was trying to show how different I was, to make certain I knew I didn’t belong here.
But I would try to play nice. It might be important that she like me if I was going to become a Seelie royal. I didn’t know how much sway she had with her mother.
“Your brother was beautiful in his fox form. From what I can remember though, a much thicker, shinier coat than yours,” I muttered as I leaned on the wall near the window she was still inspecting.
I said I’d try.
Tarani’s smug expression fell and surprise filled her large honey-colored eyes. “You remember,” she whispered so softly I almost didn’t hear, even as close as we stood.
Okay. Not the reaction I’d expected.
“When your brother saved my life in Unseelie? I remember you there as well, though of course I didn’t know it was the two of you at the time. But I put it together when I learned Eli shifted into a fox form. Thank you, by the way. After they stabbed me, I was sure I was going to die,” I said, suddenly feeling my eyes get hot and prickly.
They had risked their lives to save mine.
Tarani looked absolutely horrified. “Believe me, it was Eli’s choice to save you, not mine. Had it been up to me, your kind would have all died,” she snarled.
“What is your problem with me?” I asked, taking a confrontational step forward.
“You think you are really special, don’t you? Aurelius and Mother only spent time with you in the human realm because they thought you were a freak. Why do you think they chose you to go whore yourself out to the Unseelie prince? They knew he couldn’t resist an easy target or an evil freak like you,” she spit out, taking a step closer to me.
Fuck. Freak or not, I could’ve already had her large intestine tied around her throat if I’d wanted to. She needed to watch her tone or I would snap before it was time.
“Listen, you’re a lot gutsier than they led me to believe, and I respect that, but you don’t even know me,” I said, tightening my jaw. “If you’ve got some sort of jealousy issue, take it up with your mommy.”
The princess’s sunset eyes locked on mine. Her autonomic nervous system’s sympathetic branch was stimulated, causing her pupils to dilate—I had triggered her fight-or-flight response.
I took a step toward the door. I didn’t know what her full magical abilities were, and besides that, I definitely didn’t think it would help my standing here if I knocked out the princess on my second day.
“Don’t you dare bring up my mother,” she spat out, clenching her hand into a fist so tight, her knuckles were white.
“Tarani, leave her alone,” a strong voice sounded from the door.
Tarani and I snapped our heads in unison to see Eli filling the doorway, an uncomfortable look straining his face.
“She remembers everything you did!” Tarani shouted at Eli, raising her arms in frustration before they dropped back to her sides.
“Tarani, this shouldn’t be done this way,” Eli said warily, glancing at me uneasily. “She doesn’t know, and I don’t want her to.”
I should have known it wouldn’t have been as easy as I had hoped.
“She needs to know, at least for your own safety, Eli. She is unpredictable and weak,” Tarani said, looking me up and down.
Unpredictable and weak?
While they continued arguing, I grabbed my duffel bag from under the large bed, pulling out an oversized sweatshirt and moving closer to Tarani. As I pulled it over my head, I gripped the karambit I’d also collected from my bag and secured the circle of the curved blade’s handle over my thumb, pushing it out of the sweatshirt sleeve and locking the princess’s elbows behind her back. The double-edged blade pressed into her neck just below her jaw. She moved into place without resistance, realizing too late what had happened. Both Eli and Tarani gasped in unison.
“Unpredictable maybe, but this blade at your throat negates your claim of weak,” I whispered. Adrenaline had sparked to life under my skin, sending tingles across my skin, and smoke flowed over my arms and into her face, dissipating as her slightly opened mouth pushed it away.
“They’ll kill you for this.” She smiled. “Mother will send you back to the humans as soon as she hears of this!” she barked triumphantly, sounding surprisingly unafraid when I pressed the blade harder against her throat.
I wasn’t stupid. I held it flat against her skin, so I wasn’t actually about to hurt her, but she couldn’t feel the difference with her adrenaline spiking.
If the need arose though, it would take me half a second to do it. Some part of my instincts begged me to swipe the blade across her throat and make my life a lot easier here.
“Knock it off, both of you!” Eli shouted, stepping in close to tower above us.
“This is exactly what I mean, Aurelius! Do you see what you’ve done? You will both be killed before the week is through!” Tarani shouted, starting to fight back against my hold.
What was she talking about?
I didn’t want to hurt her yet, and I wasn’t stupid. Whatever a SunTamer could do would be far worse than anything I could. The energy in the room was explosive, each of us waiting to see what the other would do.
“Remove the knife from my sister’s throat. Suns, Calypso! Sometimes I wonder if Unseelie wouldn’t suit you better with the way you turn so dark,” Eli grumbled.
His words shouldn’t have hurt, but they did. I’d even wondered the same thing myself several times. I had foolishly thought Mendax was the only one to see my darkness, but apparently that wasn’t so.
“Before you accuse me of being full of Unseelie-like darkness, remember who trained my hands.” I shoved Tarani to her knees, maintaining my grip on her.
“You’re nothing but a fool,” Tarani said quietly from below me. “You act like you have a craving for death, and now, because of my idiot brother thinking with his dick and saving you, your lives are tied together. Forever. Now fuck off and get out of my way.” Tarani burst into a glowing orb of yellow light that sent such intense heat to my fingers, I was forced to drop my hold on her.
I needed to find out more about her powers.
She stood up as the bright light faded and moved to stand next to Eli with her arms crossed.
“What do you mean our lives are tied together? I don’t understand anything you just said.”
My friend began to pace, running his hands through his thick, blond hair. “I couldn’t help it! The pull—we were in our fox forms when I found you. I-I couldn’t let you die. I was the reason you were there in the first place!”
“I don’t understand. Isn’t that something all fae can do? Why is that so dangerous?” I asked, gripping the warm metal of my karambit for comfort.
“No one can know what I did, Caly. Mother doesn’t know. No one can know. It’s incredibly dangerous for anyone to know what I did for you,” Eli said seriously.
“And what exactly did you do?” I asked, feeling suddenly unsteady.
“Just before your heart stopped beating, Eli infused you with his power. His Seelie royal powers. It is forbidden in all realms of faerie to disrupt what the Fates have decided, and what’s worse”—Tarani struggled to get the words out—“is now Eli’s life is tied to yours and vice versa. Should one of you be killed, the other will also die.” Her voice cracked on the last words.
Me? I was going to pass out. “That…can’t be. Fae are immortal. I’m basically human! I’ll be lucky to live another fifty years. Then will Eli die as well?” I asked, beginning to panic.
No wonder Tarani had been so upset with me.
“Fae are immortal, but that just means we aren’t affected by illness and death in the same way that humans are. We can still be killed,” Tarani said as she sat on the edge of my bed, her demeanor now thoughtful.
“I know, a wound through the head or decapitation. Sometimes between their wings or their belly button, depending on their kind,” I responded.
“Uh…gross,” replied the princess.
“I can only tie to Artemi powers, Caly.” Eli stepped in front of me and gently squeezed my shoulders. His normally lively face had fallen, the smile lines by his eyes pulling down.
I stared at the small points of his ears.
“That’s how I really knew you weren’t human.”
I took in a breath and prepared for everything to slip through my fingers before my eyes.
“I knew you weren’t human as soon as Mother started telling people she blessed you with animal powers, and I hadn’t even met you. She couldn’t bless you with anything—she doesn’t have powers beyond that of the lowliest Seelie,” Tarani bit out.
I could tell her patience was waning. “Eli, I’m not—” I started.
“We think your father might have been an Ancient, Calypso,” Eli said, moving closer to put his arm around me and guide me to the edge of the bed. “It’s the only thing that makes any sense.”
I shoved his arm off and stepped away from the bed. The rage that bubbled up when I thought about the man who left my family poked me like a red-hot iron. “What do you know about my father?” I shouted, feeling that rage start to surface.
“We don’t know for sure, but from what you’ve told me, the timeline would make sense, and you share an uncanny resemblance to one of the newer Ancients in particular. He used to come around before he ascended. He was good friends with our dad. It’s the only explanation we have been able to come up with,” he said as his jaw clenched. “If it’s who we are thinking, he is an Ancient, a child or grandchild of the old gods.”
I couldn’t be doing this. The last thing I had been prepared for today was to talk about my father with Eli and Tarani.
Trying to remain calm, I moved to the cool wall and pushed my back against it, needing something, anything, to support and hold my frame upright. “So how can I get to my father?”
“Well…Artemi are rare, and they have several powers that make them unbelievably dangerous, one of them is their connection with nature and animals. Most of them were peaceful and noncombative, which is probably one of the only reasons they were able to be destroyed as easily as they were. The ones still hidden ascend at a certain time and go to Moirai with the other Ancients.”
“Just tell me how I can see him.”
“I have no idea.” Eli shrugged. “Ancients are only ever seen when there is a huge metamorphic event that could change the course of fate or if the Fates demand an inquisition. Even then, you must receive an invitation in order to even pass through the gates of Moirai.”
I stared wide-eyed, choosing what to ask next. “Eli, I’m not what you think.” I shook my head. “My sister…” I trailed off.
“As far as we know, your mother and sister were human. None of it makes any sense, and it’s just a theory. I don’t know much, but it seems like your father might have tried to hide you in the human realm. But either way, you most certainly are not human.”
“But do Artem…”
“Art-em-ee,” Eli offered.
“Thank you,” I grumbled, absently touching the tips of my ears and feeling the uneven scars I’d had since I was a child.
Eli looked at his sister.
“We think someone modified your ears, cutting the tips off,” Tarani said. “Artemi have slightly pointed tips. Eli told me that there are scars on yours, that you thought they might have been from an accident when you were little, but most likely it was your father who did it so you would blend in more with the humans. It really was smart. As for your lack of power—” She trailed off.
I felt numb. And what was worse, I had no more answers than before. No matter where I went, desolation followed.
My veins began to burn like fire. I needed to get out of here before I hurt something or someone.
“Are Artemi allowed in Seelie?” I asked. Just hold on a little longer, just a little longer.
“Yes, they are allowed anywhere they want to go once they have been registered. Until then, they can’t use the portals. But, unfortunately, they are not safe until they ascend. There is no better place for you than here at the castle. We will keep you safe,” he rasped softly, his own eyes moistening.
“Why are they not safe until Ascension?” I questioned.
“Because nearly every creature with the tiniest amount of power fears the Artemi will take their powers and leave them for dead. The more powerful they are, the more they have to lose with an Artemi alive. Every kingdom on this side of the veil fears the takeover and destruction of their courts and realms. It makes for some pretty dangerous and affluent enemies.”
Great.
Something inside me snapped. “How does the tie work?” I asked Tarani, unable to look at Eli for fear I’d punch him.
“Artemi are the chain that ties all of nature together. They have the ability to manipulate nature to their will and are generally incredibly peaceful and loving.” Tarani rubbed her neck with a scowl. “The blood that created shifters came from the oldest of the Artemi. Because our royal blood is so pure?—”
Eli cut her off. “Pure-blooded Seelie royals who have the ability to shift are capable of tying themselves to an Artemi. It’s not a known thing anymore because the only Artemi anyone knows of are gods or Ancients,” he said, moving to my line of vision.
“So, what? Any shifter can save my life and tie themselves to me?” I asked as I watched him closely.
“Artemi send their powers to the child of their choosing. Every generation gets stronger, so they have to choose carefully. They could have seven children, but the most powerful parent chooses which child they send it to before they are even born. Just as only one child can get all of the powers, only one shifter can be tied to that one Artemi,” Eli said. “All it takes is the tiniest amount of Artemi powers to tie with ours.”
“Eli, I can’t be responsible for your life. This will ruin everything!” I shouted. How could he have done this?
“It can’t be undone,” Tarani bit out. “The only way it breaks is if one of you dies, killing you both.”
“I… This is too much. I’d like some time to think. Please leave,” I begged, trying my hardest to keep it together until they left. I wanted to strangle someone.
“Calypso, please. I’m certain you have a thousand questions. Please let me stay with you,” Eli said, grabbing hold of my arms.
“I have all the answers I need,” I bit out.
“Remember, no one but Eli, myself, and our mother knows you are Artemi. Do not tell a soul, or you put your life at risk, which means you put my brother’s life at risk. The three of us in this room right now are the o nly ones that know about the tie. Keep your mouth shut,” Tarani snarled as she turned and walked out of the door.
“When you are ready to talk, I will be here for you with answers and a trip to town for lots of books,” Eli said. “If you are open to a longer trip, we could also go to the town of books in Parable? That might be safest once your heart is whole though.”
The town of books?
“You are undetectable as Artemi to other fae without your whole heart. Mother must have taken the part with most of your powers. It keeps you safe, Caly. And you were the one who freely gave it to her. How long has Mother known you are Artemi?” he asked gently.
“Queen Saracen has known I was Artemi since the first day she saw me,” I stated.
“I wish you would have been able to tell me who you really are. It could have made this so much easier for you,” Eli replied softly.
“I know,” I said, nodding slowly before closing the door and sliding to the ground.