Twenty Two
Darkness surrounded me for only a heartbeat before colors returned, bright and overwhelming. Disoriented, I sucked in air and braced my hand on a nearby wall. Wall?
I slowly looked around, my eyes narrowed to slits until they had adjusted to the yellow glow of the nearby lamp. A moment ago, I had stood outside in the Enwyld Forest, but now I was in someone’s bedroom.
“Are you all right?” Thea asked, snapping my attention to her. She stood nearby, wringing her hands and avoiding my gaze. “Glimmering for the first time can be unpleasant.”
“Glimmering?” I managed to ask.
“Yes, glimmering,” she said quietly as she met my gaze. Her eyes were apologetic. Shadows lurked in them, painfully similar to those I had seen in Adrian’s eyes.
Though the term ‘glimmering’ was unfamiliar to me, I quickly figured out its meaning.
One moment, I had been in the woods, and the next, I was somewhere else entirely.
All in the blink of an eye. Gripping the wall for support, I swayed on my feet, instantly lightheaded.
Dread pooled and settled as a heavy weight in the pit of my stomach.
“Emelin…” Thea whispered, her eyes glistening as if she were on the verge of tears.
I should be the one crying. “What is the meaning of this?”
“We’re in Aubrielle. I’m… Let me show you.”
She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, transforming right before my eyes.
Everything about her appearance became sharper and more vivid.
The red of her hair intensified, and the green of her eyes turned even more vibrant.
My heart stuttered when I noticed the delicate arches of her ears peeking through her hair.
“You’re a faerie.” Fearing that my legs would give out, I closed my eyes and sagged against the wall.
“I am. I’ve dropped my glamor.”
Glamor? All those times I had noticed a faint shimmering effect around her hadn’t been a trick of the light.
“Who else?” I asked in a resigned voice as I opened my eyes.
“Tom,” she answered hesitantly.
I hesitated, too, reluctant to confirm what I already knew deep down in my heart.
“Adrian?” I whispered.
Silence stretched as Thea lowered her gaze to the ground.
I stopped breathing as I waited for her answer.
Everything that mattered to me hinged on one simple word.
Yes or no. Had the past few weeks of my life been a lie?
Was the man who had been healing my broken heart not a man at all but a creature I had grown up fearing?
“Yes, Adrian is a Fae,” Thea said quietly as if the low volume of her voice would make the truth any easier to bear.
A whimpering sound left me as I slid down the wall until I was sitting on the floor, surrounded by my skirts and my misery. At once suffocating in my cloak, I clawed at the clasp until the garment glided off my shoulders.
This can’t be happening. Was this a nightmare I needed to wake up from? I brought my trembling hands to my face and patted my cheeks to wake myself up. When the action had confirmed I wasn’t dreaming, tears rose up and forced their way out.
“I’m so sorry,” Thea rasped, dropping to her knees in front of me.
I didn’t want her apology; I wanted an explanation. My mind flashed back to my father standing on the border, resolute despite the crippling weight on his shoulders, and I channeled his strength, trying to calm my racing thoughts and my hammering heart.
“Have you been weakening the wards?” I looked at Thea, suppressing a shudder upon seeing her true form.
“Yes,” she admitted, quickly wiping away her own tears. I was perplexed by her reaction. Why was she distraught when their plan had succeeded?
“How did you get through the barrier in the first place?” I asked, trying to collect as many pieces of the puzzle as possible.
I resolved not to allow shock to override my senses, no matter what revelations came next. I would gather the information and process it as much as I could. The rest—the heartbreak, the betrayal—I would let all that truly sink in later.
“The wards have weakened enough for the strongest of us to slip through. Lady May was the first one to come over.”
“Lady May?!” I exclaimed a second before my world became muted. I was underwater…drowning. “But she has served the royal family for years!”
“She has created that illusion using magic. She is a very powerful sorceress, even by Fae standards.”
“She deceived my father into trusting her?!”
“Yes. She positioned herself in Zalie and began chipping away at the wards. When your father noticed the barrier deteriorating and asked her to move to the capital to train your brother, she agreed, not wanting to raise suspicion by refusing. Adrian passed through the wards to take her place in Zalie, and he brought his guard with him.”
“So the Fae can sense the magic of the wards… Wait, his guard? Do you mean Killian?”
She nodded. “Tom and I came over as well. We wanted to help.”
“Help,” I bit out. “You wanted to help make my kingdom susceptible to an attack.”
“We had no choice! Our kingdom is dying.”
“What do you mean it’s dying?” I narrowed my eyes at her.
“Aubrielle is bound to the royal bloodline. The king has to release the ancient magic flowing through his veins into the land, but he is killing it by doing so. Our climate has been deteriorating, with rising temperatures affecting our agriculture. We’ve struggled for years and now have barely enough harvest to feed our population. ”
“But our climate is also changing,” I said, pondering what she had revealed. Emeraldia had been experiencing climate change like Aubrielle, but while my kingdom had been losing magic, the Fae kingdom had been gaining a surplus of it.
“Our king believes that invading Emeraldia will alleviate the pressure of the excess magic on our realm because then the ancient power will be dispersed over more land.”
“But that solution will be temporary,” I pointed out.
“It’s the only solution we’ve got.”
“Invasion of my kingdom is your only solution? What kind of twisted logic is that?” I spit out bitterly.
“We’re desperate.” Thea’s eyes were pleading with me to understand. She was asking for the impossible. I could never understand how overtaking one kingdom could be the only way to save another.
Using the wall for support, I rose to my feet. Thea stood up as well.
“Where am I?” I demanded, folding my arms over my chest.
“We’re in my bedroom in Vasara, the Dellari Province. This was the first place my mind conjured up when Adrian yelled to get you to safety.”
“Safety?” I scoffed. “I’m on the enemy’s territory. I’m not safe here.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” came a high female voice from the entrance to the room.
I turned my head to look at the faerie who had uttered the words.
Like Thea, she was beautiful, with red hair and green eyes.
Sisters? I quickly scanned the newcomer from head to toe, picking up on the similarities but also differences between the two.
The Fae’s long hair was reddish brown, not ruby red like Thea’s, and her eyes were forest green, not jade green.
Still, it was clear that they were related.
“My sister Cora,” Thea introduced her, confirming my suspicion. “Cora, this is Princess Emelin Clairborne.”
“Shh,” Cora shushed her before she closed the door and walked deeper into the room.
“Keep it down. Our parents are not here, but there are still plenty of ears to overhear. What is she doing here?” she whispered, stopping before Thea and peering at her face.
She was speaking in the old language, and it took me a moment to reset my mind and catch up to what she had said.
“We were on the border. Someone fired an arrow at the mortal king. Adrian asked me to get her out of there. Where else was I supposed to go?” Thea replied, also in Stellian.
“Not here, where she can be easily discovered. You’re harboring a mortal. A royal one at that. You don’t think they’ll come looking for her?”
“I wasn’t thinking.” Thea dragged her hands down her face. “Everything happened so fast. I didn’t know we were going to attack today. That was never the plan.”
“The plan must have changed because of the prophecy.”
“What prophecy?” I asked in the old language, looking between the two sisters.
“But the wards still hold. We can’t launch a full-scale attack,” Thea continued as if I hadn’t said anything.
“What prophecy?” I repeated the question.
“The king must have a plan. Who knows what goes on in that depraved mind of his?”
Tired of being ignored, I grabbed Thea by the elbow and forcefully spun her around to look at me. “What prophecy?” I asked for the third time, my face inches away from hers.
Her gaze grew distant as if she were reading an invisible text in front of her. “A child of light will slay the Fae king to take power from the most powerful, and the world as we know it will cease to exist.”
I let go of her and asked, my voice shrill with disbelief. “My father was attacked because of a prophecy that might never come true?!” His cry of pain right before Thea had whisked me away echoed in my mind. “I have to go back!”
“What?! No!” Thea exclaimed, shaking her head furiously. “Adrian wanted you out of there.”
“I don’t care what Adrian wanted! Take me back!” I demanded, my eyes boring into her.
“Your Highness,” Cora said calmly, grasping my shoulders to turn me away from Thea to face her. “I know this is a lot, but you need to regain some composure.”
“Composure?!” I exploded, twisting out of her hold. “I don’t know you, and I don’t trust you! I don’t trust any of you!” My gaze darted frantically between the sisters. I felt cornered, like an animal caught in a snare. “I’m going back!” I declared as I rushed past them to the bedroom door.
“Emelin, wait!” Thea shouted behind me as I yanked the door open and burst into the hallway.
I broke into a sprint as if my feet could carry me away from the situation.
I wished I could leave the devastating truth I had learned behind, but it had latched onto me, weighing me down and slowing my steps.
Still, I kept running, struggling to breathe through the tightness in my chest. The end of the hallway approached faster than I had expected, and I made a sharp right turn only to collide with a hard chest. Two hands gripped my arms, fingers digging into my flesh to the point of pain.
It instantly became clear that I wouldn’t be able to escape the hold.
“Well, well, well, what do we have here?” my captor drawled, his voice eerily soft. It was the kind of softness that hid sharp and jagged edges underneath, raising the hairs on the back of my neck.
I sucked in a thin breath and looked up at the one who had trapped me. His handsome face was contorted in disdain as he stared down at me.
“You are the mortal princess everyone is looking for,” the faerie said, his eyes flashing.
I tried to jerk away from him, but as I had suspected, I couldn’t break free from his vise-like grip.
“Tarn,” Thea uttered from behind me, the stir of air announcing her and her sister’s arrival.
“Theadelle,” Tarn purred, his gaze darting to her. “There had better be a good reason for why a princess of Emeraldia is wandering the halls of your home.”
When Thea didn’t respond, Tarn’s mouth stretched in a sinister smile, showing off his sharp, pointy canines, which were longer than humans.
“She wasn’t wandering the halls,” Cora chimed in. “She was running, trying to escape. Thea was going to deliver her to the king.”
My heart dropped at her words, even though what she had said didn’t make sense. If that was Thea’s plan, why had she brought me here instead of taking me straight to the king? Tarn must have been thinking the same thing as his gaze flicked between the sisters.
“Well, I’ve got her now, so I’ll deliver her to the king myself,” he hissed, his eyes gleaming with malice a second before the world plunged into darkness.