Chapter 6 Auria #2
But I would not leave a man—or fae—stuck like this when he had already saved my life. And offered me a much better version of life than I currently had.
With the hand not holding Rat, I gripped one of Abigail’s shoulders and spoke louder. I did not want the bear—fae—to miss any of this. “Abigail. I’m grateful for your concern. But I’m sure we both want this. I need your husband to help us. Isn’t that what humans do? They help each other?”
Maybe that was pushing it. I didn’t know anything about these humans, besides their unwelcome stares.
But maybe not. Abigail was trying to convince me not to marry a bear. Surely that was out of some kind of sweet camaraderie. She clenched her teeth and twitched her head in a jerky nod. “Yes,” she said, as if convincing herself. “Yes, we do. You’re sure this is what you want?”
I threw one arm around her neck in a quick hug and then stepped back. “Yes. I am. And we really are in a hurry.”
“Very well.” She folded her arms and turned to her husband. “You can marry them right here.”
I stifled a laugh, but could not stop grinning when he bobbed his head at his wife and then turned an anxious face to the bear. “It’s just as well. You’d never fit inside the church, much less my office.”
I patted Abigail on the arm and walked back to where I could set a hand on the bear’s leg. It seemed appropriate to touch him while we agreed to a marriage.
“I’ll need your names,” the mayor said.
The bear responded first. “Bylur, Lord of House Umbran.”
Lord? Did that make him some kind of fae ruler?
Reginald interrupted my thoughts. “And you, my dear?”
I rolled my shoulders back. I hadn’t used my full name in over a decade, and I suddenly found it difficult to share.
I hadn’t shared anything personal with anyone in years.
Maybe this really was too much too fast. I didn’t know this fae.
I didn’t know what he looked like or why he was cursed.
What if he deserved it? What if the bear form actually trapped a more terrible monster that needed to be contained for the world’s safety? What if I freed him and he destroyed—
“You will be safe.” Bylur rumbled slowly. His words settled in my core. “But if you have changed your mind, I will leave—”
No. No. No. I wasn’t changing my mind now. “Auria.” My words came out breathy in my haste. “Auria Davina Stonesetter.” I had memories of my parents saying my name with love and adoration, but it didn’t have nearly the same elegance or power that Bylur, Lord of House Umbran did.
“Very good, very good.” The mayor rubbed his hands together and clasped them at his waist. “I know you said you were in a hurry, but I would be negligent if I did not take a moment to tell you that committing yourselves in marriage is the most meaningful promise you can make in life. Take care—”
He paused to swallow and focus on Bylur. “—of each other. Do not let any selfish thoughts interfere with the joy you can find—” He swallowed again, and then finished. “—together.”
His chest heaved with a deep breath, and his wife elbowed him again. “Right,” he said, avoiding looking at her. “Do you two have vows prepared?”
Vows prepared? Of course not. We’d only just decided—
“Yes,” Bylur’s deep voice answered. I turned to look up at him in my surprise, and he swiveled his great, white head toward me. “I vow to do everything in my power to keep you safe and happy. It is both the most and the least I can offer.”
I nodded. That made sense. He couldn’t offer his heart or affections when we didn’t know each other at all. And I’d worked so hard just to survive that I would take “safe and happy” any day.
But what could I offer that would be comparable? He was only doing this to break his curse. He’d said there was more involved than this, but we didn’t have time to discuss it.
His curse. That is how I would make this worth his effort.
With my brightest smile, I focused on his blue eyes. I imagined them in a human-like face. “And I vow to end your curse.”
The mayor turned a hesitant expression to his wife, and she pointed at us with her chin.
He cleared his throat. “Then, by the powers vested in me by the Sun King, I pronounce you… er… fae and wife. You… are married.” He shook his head.
“I will go prepare the documents. Would you like to wait for them or have them sent somewhere?”
“Does the Sun King provide courier services for you throughout the fae realms?” Bylur asked. I did like having a name for him in my head.
“Yes,” the mayor answered, “as long as the addresses are recognizable.”
“Then send them to the Winter Palace in Kalshana.” Bylur dropped the instructions as if they weren’t completely mindblowing (the winter palace!) and then turned to me. “If you’ll return to my back, we can—”
“Wait.” I stepped closer to the mayor and Abigail. “Is there anything you can do for my bird?” The poor thing hadn’t moved since he’d hit the ground in the grotto.
Abigail ran the tip of her finger along the edge of Rat’s wing. “What’s wrong with him?”
Bylur blew out a huff. I didn’t know what he meant by it, so I ignored him.
“He thought Bylur was mad at me earlier, so he flew into his face. He’s normally very smart, but…
well, he didn’t realize that Bylur’s face was as hard as a brick wall.
After he crashed into it, he fell to the ground and hit some stones. ”
The mayor folded his arms. “We could watch him to see if he wakes up, but if you want to heal him, I’d ask your new husband. A fae lord should be able to fix a concussion.”
I whirled around and found Bylur with his head hanging low, looking very much like a scolded puppy. “You can heal him?”
He dropped his head even lower. “I… yes. If he isn’t dead.”
I had so many questions. Far too many to start dropping here in the field of curious humans. But Rat—
I inched closer to the bear. Bylur. My husband.
“Will you? It… would make me happy.” I bit my lip.
Was that pushing him too far? Only moments after he promised to do everything he could to make me safe and happy?
A prickle of guilt flickered in my chest. Abigail had called the fae manipulative, but I was willing to say anything to help my bird.
A spiralled horn materialized on top of Bylur’s head. He stepped back and touched the tip of his horn to Rat’s still body, clutched between my arm and my chest. Light and shadows shimmered around the bird, visible spirals of magic wrapping him in layers of blues and blacks.
After a few seconds, the magic faded and Rat stretched a wing.
I blinked back tears as he wobbled into an upright perch on my arm and stretched his other wing.
He was alive and awake. He clambered up my arm and squawked in my ear.
A laugh burst out of me, and I covered my mouth with a hand. He was going to be fine.
I sniffed up the rest of my emotions. “Thank you, Bylur. Should I get on your back again?”
The bear nodded, and I clambered up much faster with both my hands free. Once I situated myself, he called up as softly as he was capable. “Hold on.”
* * *
Bylur lumbered to the back of the park and stepped under a tree with leaves as big as my face. All the light was snuffed out in an instant. I gasped, clutching my hands to my heart. I couldn’t breathe in the dark, couldn’t think—
And then it was over. The blackness faded away to a dim twilight. We stood on a mountain trail with a steep drop off on my left and dark paths in front of us. I leaned forward, pressing my body closer to Bylur’s back and hoping he didn’t intend to flinch and throw me off the cliff.
I shivered at the thought of a dark fall. Bylur wouldn’t do that. He’d promised to keep me safe.
His deep, slow voice broke through the night air. “Are you… concerned about something?”
“No, I… I’m fine.” No fear. “I’d just like to keep moving.”
A low growl vibrated through his back, but he started walking forward. After a few seconds, he spoke again. “You do not have to lie to me. I will keep my vows.”
The trail narrowed and the edge of the cliff loomed closer.
I flattened myself to his back and closed my eyes.
His fur smelled like the forest with a hint of ink.
I was sure I smelled ink this time. I shook my head, throwing off the distracting scent and focusing on his words again.
I’d promised to break his curse, not tell him my deepest fears.
That required trust, and I didn’t trust people. Or bears.
He didn’t say anything about the way I clutched his fur and pressed my body against him. Maybe he guessed that I was nervous. Or maybe he was starting to regret the hasty decision we’d made.
“Can you hear me if I speak while your head is buried in my fur?”
Well, cancel that. He did comment on my change in position. Sort of. “Yes,” I answered.
He kept walking. “I need to tell you the rest of the details about the curse.”
Right. I needed to hear that. But his voice was loud enough that I’d hear him even if I covered my ears with my palms. And maybe it would distract me from the mountain we were walking along. “That sounds good,” I said.
“The Queen of Kerebos wanted to marry me,” he explained.
“We are in the winter kingdom of Kalshana, and Kerebos is the winter kingdom nearest us. I tried to send her home, but she refused to leave. In a hasty decision, I tried to force her to leave with magic. She managed to harness the magic and throw it back at me, with her own conditions.”
I already had questions. “Are her conditions the curse? And how did you try to force her to leave with magic? How did she throw it back? Is—”
He cut me off with a growl. “Too many questions we do not have time for. Yes, the conditions are the curse. A curse is simply a magic attack that can only be thwarted with specific conditions.”
I got the distinct impression that if I had grown up with the fae I would not have nearly so many questions.
But I hadn’t. “Will you… explain more when we have more time?” I could tell him it would make me happy, but I didn’t want to wear out that line.
This was not necessarily the most urgent request.
“Yes,” he said. We turned a corner and the sharp drop off faded away, replaced with stony ground and lots of trees and boulders around us. “What is important tonight are the first deadlines that she thought I could not meet.”
“Oh?”
He sighed. “When she flung my magic back on me, she added her own to it, forcing me into the form of a dyrakongur, a very rare magical bear native to our kingdom’s mountains.”
I knew we were in mountains!
He kept talking. “The conditions to break the curse were meant to make me feel spurned the way she felt spurned by me. At night, when I am in my fae form, I must share my bed with a woman, but she can not look at me. If she sees my face, the magic will take me to the Queen of Kerebos and tie me to her as a slave.”
“What?!” That was as bad as the elves.
He turned another corner and spoke as if I hadn’t interrupted him. “We must continue in that arrangement, sharing a bed, but never looking at each other, for a year. Then the magic will dissipate, and I will be free of it. I had one month to begin the year, and that month ends today.”
This queen sounded horrible. I sat up straighter, my fears about falling off a mountain fading away as the cliff disappeared behind us and large stony boulders lined the path.
“Let me make sure I understand this. You had one month to find someone to marry. If you didn’t find someone, then you’d remain a bear forever.
If you did find someone, you couldn’t look at her for a year.
If you do, then you belong to the queen?
But if you do find someone, and you last a whole year without looking at each other, then her magic falls off you and everything is nuts and seeds? ”
“Nuts and seeds!” Rat repeated.
Bylur stopped walking. “I do not know what you mean by ‘nuts and seeds.’”
I rolled my eyes at Rat. “Sorry. They’re Rat’s favorite things. Nuts and seeds. Basically, everything is great.”
“You call the bird ‘Rat?’” Bylur always sounded upset, but I imagined a bit of humor in that question. A bear’s voice couldn’t sound very entertained, after all.
Rat took that moment to let out a loud squawk. “Raaaaaaak.”
I shoved a sunflower seed in his mouth. “Yes. Because he does that.”
The bear huffed a cloud of warm air, and I realized how very much colder this forest was than the park with the humans. The cliff must have distracted me from it when we first arrived.
Bylur walked around another pile of boulders.
“Your summary was mostly correct. However, I can look at your face. If you see my face, as a fae, then I will belong to the queen. Also, the curse did not require me to marry. That was a complication I had to add because I will not invite a woman into my bed without marrying her. It is another reason why the queen was sure I would fail.”
“Oh.” I rubbed my cooling arms. “I don’t like her.”
The bear’s shoulders vibrated. “Nobody does. She is cruel and unpleasant.” He finished rounding the boulders and stopped again, facing a massive castle.
The setting sun outlined it, so it stood out like a silhouette against a blend of dark blues and purples behind the ominous building.
Enough light remained that I could make out several towers, a wall, and a huge gate in front of us.
Bylur’s bear voice cut through the evening. “Welcome to the Winter Palace of Kalshana.”