Chapter 28
brOWN NIBS
My feet flew across the stone floors as I raced to Elden, the strange brown bits tinkling in the jar like silver bells.
I followed the murals, turning the opposite direction of the pointing fingers and robin’s beaks until I came upon the enormous room hollowed out of the side of the mountain, the Christmas Room.
And there he was. The Elf King. He lay out on the red couch by the blazing fire in the center of the room, exactly how I’d left him.
It struck me then, how very…real he was.
He was no longer just a tall, looming creature who stole me away from my family.
He was a caring guardian of his people and his land, though a desperate one.
One who put others first. Who put me first. Who saved me again and again without thought for his own life.
I rushed to him. His breathing was labored, black poison spreading across his neck and chest like putrid cracks in porcelain.
“Elden.” I knelt by his side, worry sticking my heart together like molasses. “You are going to be alright. I solved the riddle of my magic. I found the cure.” I jangled the brown bits.
“And now I’m going to cook it for you.”
A smile spread slowly across his face. That side smile I was learning to appreciate. To love. “Just seeing you again is all the magic I need.”
My face flushed, and a keen warmth thrilled throughout my body as if I’d just taken a sip of hot tea. I needed to hold on to that feeling. I’d need it for what came next.
“Here.” I placed the scroll in his hand. “It’s the treaty, right?”
I hadn’t taken the time to open it, but I knew what it was the moment I saw it in that mural.
“It is. You found it,” Elden said in both awe and relief as he unrolled the scroll.
He sat up with considerable effort and laid the ancient scroll across his lap.
“Please don’t take too much upon yourself,” I cajoled.
“I must. I am the only one who can read Elvish.”
Well, he had me there.
Elden’s breathing was labored. He held a hand to his chest as he began to read, “Here we make an accord, the first of its kind, between human and elf on this day, the twenty-fifth of December.”
On Christmas? I looked up at the smiles on the human queen and Elf King’s faces painted on the wall before us.
They were celebrating more than just Christmas; they were celebrating the merging of their two peoples.
Elden coughed, and I watched as the inky black poison spread closer to his heart with every beat through his open shirt.
I didn’t have time to sit and listen.
“You read.” I held the brown nibs up to the firelight. “I’m going to make you my own special potion using this cure.”
I turned from Elden and brought out my magic spoon, father’s cookbook, and trusty pan.
Time to cook up some magic.
“For if this treaty is broken by either party—” Elden continued. “A great and dreadful curse will encompass the lands. For whoever allows hate in their hearts, it will fester until it consumes you and your descendants.”
Your descendants. Was this why only Elden and his father suffered from the same shade monster curse?
Elden coughed and shook. I glanced over at his weakening form.
I had to hurry. First, I needed to assess the strange brown bits in the jar.
I opened the glass jar and breathed in the aroma.
They smelled a bit nutty, like coffee. I licked one, and a bitter taste filled my mouth.
I would need lots of sugar to combat this bitterness.
“For then shadows will wreath the land of the fair. Elven and human magic will fail. Only love that is true between the elves and humans can restore the bonds of this magic. Only then may peace and good will to all be restored.”
I put my spoon to work, grinding the nibs into a kind of brown paste in the base of my pan. Worry for Elden pounded through me. I couldn’t falter. I used a small amount of the bits, in case my first try with the cooking was incorrect.
The bitterness of the nibs reminded me of the first meeting I’d had with Elden. He’d cried and destroyed my kitchen, then stole me away from my family. But that first bake had still gifted him hope.
I added a bit of sugar Scarlet had given me to combat the bitterness. Elden’s and my relationship had grown sweeter as we’d gotten to know each other on our travels. As we’d served each other. The sweetness was much like the mincemeat tarts I’d made with Aldaar when I’d baked peace.
Lastly, I splashed some milk into the paste to create a broth. The milk was nourishing, just as our love had started to nourish me. Give me life. Give me purpose and meaning. I cooked the concoction over the heat of the blazing fire, willing it to meld together.
I stirred the strange brown liquid and closed my eyes.
I would need to force my intent to the forefront of my thoughts.
Truthfully, I could think of nothing else but this desperate prayer in my heart.
Please fill Elden with all the peace, hope and…
love that I feel toward him. Help him feel it.
Let it fill him and banish the shadow curse from his heart and the lands. Banish the shadow curse. Banish it.
I thought this as I stirred the potion, praying that it would be enough, that my love would be enough to save him.
Because what was a kingdom without its King? And who was I now without my Elf King? My Elden?
The concoction built to a simmer, and I pulled it off of the fire, afraid to scald the milk. The liquid smelled delicious, and looked curiously a lot like the hot beverage the queen and her king held in their hands on the mural.
“Please work,” I prayed again over my potion. If cooking was indeed like magic, then I had followed my instincts the best I could.
Elden’s life slipped away with every shaking breath.
I placed my saucepan on the floor of the palace, then pulled Elden into a sitting position.
He was so large and wide, it took considerable effort.
I sat directly beside him as he lay against the back of the couch, utterly spent.
It felt strange to have him so close. Thrilling, yet frightening.
I scooped my magic spoon into the brown liquid, blew on it to cool, then held it to Elden’s mouth.
He’d felt my hope. He’d felt my peace. There was only one other magic I could give him.
“May this help you feel the…love I have for you,” my voice echoed in the cavernous room. My heart leapt, and a warmth spread through me. The warmth was now familiar to me. It had to be my magic. It was working.
I felt it all the way to my bones.
“Love?” Elden questioned with a tender whisper, looking up at me with his golden eyes.
I nodded, a slight smile touching my lips. “Love.”
Elden’s lips twitched, but he coughed before the smile could reach them. I prodded the liquid to his mouth, and he took a long sip. Hope and terror raged competing wars in my heart.
I was his only hope for a cure. I was his only hope for his life. And he was my only hope for love and survival out here in the cursed mountains.
Elden coughed again, then he pulled in ragged breath after ragged breath, as if he couldn’t get enough air. I held him in my arms as his breathing turned shallow. I grasped onto him, pressing him into my bosom in horror.
With a final gasp, his breaths sputtered and his chest fell still.
“No!” I cried as I held him to my chest. “No!”
He fell limp in my arms.
“No.” I gasped, staring at the handsome male before me. At his lips that would never give me that quirked half smile. His eyes that would never be filled with mischief as he called me his Little Baker.
I searched for something, anything. I looked to the mural, fire flashing on the magical painting. To the queen who earned the love of a king. To the king who endeavored to earn the heart of a human, then turned to hate and death. Who cursed our lands forever.
“No!” I sobbed into the echoing chamber. Love a gaping wound in my heart. An ache rising like yeasty bread. “Elden!”
I stared at the first Elf King on the wall.
His eyes full of love toward his wife. Love could mend, bring people together, but in an instant, become a poison.
Just as I’d allowed the love I felt toward my father to poison my heart against the elves all these years.
But I would not go down the same path that King Theronvere trod.
I would let love and compassion fill me from now on. I would not close off my heart to this love who sat so vulnerably before me. I would work. I would fight—for him.
A mighty warmth filled my chest with a great rushing of winds, stronger than before. I clasped my hands over my breast and gasped as a golden light burst forth from me.
It was as if a great dark splinter had broken loose from the bindings of my heart, allowing it to feel…
everything! At the same moment, a glow emitted from Elden’s heart, very much like the golden light of the mural in the queen’s art studio.
The glow spread across Elden’s body, lifting him from my arms as it spread, until it reached his fingers and toes, vanquishing the black lines of poison along the way as a fresh rainfall cleared a muddy stream.
Then he fell gently back onto the couch. Whole and beautiful, and glowingly ethereal. My love.
I inspected Elden as he lay breathing and blinking. He was blinking!
“Elden?” I stared down at his sublime face. His exposed chest was smooth and clean and perfect—the inky black geometric lines banished forever.
Elden shot up from the couch, gasping. He inspected his hands, his arms, and chest, then looked down at where I sat, his mouth hanging open in shock.
I shook my head in wonder. He was glorious, my Elf King.
Elden stared at me then, deeply into my eyes as if the entire world hung in their spheres.
A smile teased on his lips, then bloomed over his entire face.
He was beautiful, effervescent. His white hair glowed in the flickering firelight, his open shirt crusted in blood, but his wounds completely cured. Gone.
As if a mighty sorceress waved an enchanted hand, all the gemstones in the castle burst forth with light.
The large throne room outside the doors of our carved-out chamber erupted with a pure golden glow.
The crumbled pillars and crushed floors stood out in strange relief to the rest of the immaculate corridor.
I spun, taking in the chamber and the castle with new eyes.
The beauty, the details before lost, now here to discover.
But in a flash, a mighty heat pressed over my leg like an oven mitt held too close to the oven.
I yelped and grabbed onto my leg with surprise.
Almost as soon as the burning seared through me, a cooling warmth trickled through my entire body, like a cool drink of water down a parched throat.
I pulled up my stockings only to find that the splintering black lines of the infection were scrubbed clean.
“You are a wonder!” Elden laughed a deep throaty laugh full of awe, then he pulled me into an all-encompassing embrace. Through the rumbling of his neck next to mine he said, “You did it, Noelle. You saved us!”
The heat of his words sent a warmth down my back, causing my toes to curl. He set me down and looked into my eyes. Truly looked at me, his features softened by the caressing glow of the rumbling fire.
“Noelle, I know there is nothing I could say to hope for your forgiveness, but I…You have cured me heart and soul. You have mended the very fabric that binds me, and I love you.”
“And I, my Elf King, love you too.” I smiled.
I hadn’t made a love potion, not one like in the cautionary stories about magic, no.
This potion was one of love. Of that good feeling you get when you cuddle a little puppy, or the love of a mother for a daughter, or the love between friends.
Love existed in many forms. The love I felt for the Elf King and he for me, it was all of those things, but also new.
It was ours. It filled my heart, though I had not tasted of the potion.
My heart pounded, and the room melted away, leaving only Elden standing before me, so tall, so strong. My pulse quickened as I leaned toward him. His smell of fresh pine and crisp snow was oh so delicious.
I reached up, and I wrapped my arms about his neck. Then, before I could think better of it, I hopped on the tips of my toes, as I’d imagined doing so many times before, and pressed my lips to the Elf King’s by the ever-burning fire of Winterthorn.
Elden matched me, meeting my lips with his own.
He pressed in to me and I to him. He tangled his hands in my hair and I followed, reveling in the feel of his silky white hair on my hands.
It was not a gentle kiss but one of hunger, of elation, of amazement.
Warmth flowed from me like my own burning fire, melting my body into Elden’s with every kiss. I felt him, wanted him…loved him.
And he loved me.
Elden and I stayed in our new and tender embrace, not quite knowing what it all meant, but without a care—
Until, with a gust of frigid wind and a howl, a mad yeti burst into the hollowed-out sanctuary. It roared in anger, spittle and hot air blowing out toward us.
The shade monster of the mountain had returned.