Chapter 5
VALANCE
I watched the sunrise, the sky alive with morning fire through the trees. Free from the human’s arms, who slept curled into a ball beside me.
Birdsong filled my ears. I ate some of the berries Kormac had picked last night, watching another deer cautiously approach the spring.
A pleasant morning, the cold fading away.
We were lucky to still have our lives. Goblins were notoriously dangerous. Tricksters, always hungry. I’d even used them before as a form of execution for unseelie prisoners deserving of such pain.
Very lucky to see this sunrise indeed.
As I sat and waited for the day to begin properly, my mind drifted, turning over many things. Such as having to endure sleeping upright, for the most part, in the arms of the human.
Endure? You would deny enjoyment? Even excitement?
As if sleeping in his arms was the greatest of my worries.
Far more concerning was my curse. Its instability.
At any moment, it could take me over, send me into a murderous spin.
Kill indiscriminately, suck at my energy like it had in the goblin tunnels.
Hurt Kormac. Hurt the old woman, maybe. And then what?
Only, it hadn’t hurt Kormac. This had been the first time it’d risen in his presence, and I’d… I’d spared him.
The soul bond…
There must be a spell out there to break this curse. Maybe not through seed magic, but maybe through shadow magic. After all, Ren had put this on me. It must take another unseelie shadow sorcerer to remove the stain.
Oh, but to find one willing to help a seelie prince. Possibly a reluctant yet willing friend of Kormac’s?
No. The north would set me free…
We’d see. For now, I had to try to cope with it as best as I could.
I didn’t want to be this monster, this murderer.
Whatever Kormac thought of me, my nature wasn’t fully dark.
I loved. My heart beat for those who filled it.
By Danu, I had loved Maeve and Boyd with all I had.
Loved my mother, my sister, and brother.
Even my father. Whatever my reputation, whatever my malicious proclivities, love sat at my center.
I hurt and tortured my enemies for love, to keep my people safe.
An iron fist was required in Faerie. There were too many terrorists, too much evil.
If you hesitated, the opposition got inside.
Somewhere along the line, I’d hesitated, or at least lost my senses to let Ren and his magic get so deep.
Kormac was that disturbing force. His gruff beauty imbalanced me, had left my brain in my cock, the rest of me craving a rough night of his dry hands on my throat as he pummeled me.
Foolish of me. Yet I wasn’t dead. I wasn’t done.
I may be down, far away from home, trapped in this situation.
But I would rise again. I would avenge my friends, my family, and I would take a throne I hadn’t wanted before.
Now I did. And I wanted to flaunt it with blood and rage, to never let Lasair and Lord Florent be queen and king.
The image of those crumbling ruins flashed before my eyes.
The ruins. I’d had a dream of crumbling ruins, a place of gray stone. The past week, they flickered in my vision at random moments, a brief flash. A sign of the north? Winter would certainly be nothing but ruins, a land full of ancient remnants and ice.
My dark caress…
Kormac stirred, warmth in my chest.
He wakes. He is here.
I craved answers more than anything else.
Was I ready for them?
Yes! Oh, yes. They were all the hope I had now.
A yawn from beside me, a big body of muscles sitting upright.
“Good morning,” I greeted him softly.
“Morning.” Another yawn, stretching. “Did you sleep well?”
“As well as anyone can in this place.”
He nodded, getting to his feet. The cave was just about tall enough to accommodate him. “We should move on.”
“Eat first. Drink.” I held out some berries for him.
He took them. “Thank you. I’ll be glad to have a hot breakfast again.”
“I’d rather a hot bath.”
“That too.” He popped berries into his mouth.
I pulled my hair back, wishing for something to tie it with. While my armor now smelled of sickly sugar, my hair still reeked of dirt. Not as badly as Kormac’s, but he was human. They always got the raw end of stench.
I suppressed a laugh at my pathetic humor and got to my feet.
“Sleeping served me well,” I said, stretching the last traces of sleep from my muscles.
Kormac chewed, nodding in agreement. He removed the wooden compass from a pocket on the side of his leather armor. I moved closer to see the needle hovering in its permanent position. Always pointing northwest.
“When shall we leave?” I asked.
“Whenever you’re ready,” he said, dropping his hand with the compass snug in his palm. “But very soon.”
Dark caress…
My dark caress…
He was right. Delaying here only led to being found. The sooner we were out of Rosestar Forest, the better.
Hoping for the White Wastes? What madness I now found myself in.
That terrible wilderness was the last place in Faerie any rational person would want to find themself.
Yet it was the better option for me, and we had a compass to guide us.
With that instrument in hand, there was no chance of getting lost.
“I’m ready,” I said.
Kormac ate two more berries, then took charge.
I followed him out of the cave into the sunshine, startling a rabbit drinking from the water.
How different the forest looked in the daylight.
Summer sun glistened on the surface of the spring, streaking through the trees to paint the forest floor with warm golds.
The heat had chased away the chill of the night.
Pleasant now but set to reach scorching levels within hours.
Usually, I enjoyed Summer’s heat when I could bask in it. Not when on strange quests with smelly hair.
After washing our faces with the warm water, we climbed up a small incline into thicker trees, finding a dirt path further along. More silence between us, nothing to say. I tried to think, only stare at his back and listen to the songs of the forest. To try and be empty.
I failed miserably.
Memories of Maeve’s butchered body by my hand flashed before me.
Boyd’s last breath, the corpses of my father, his guards.
The screams, the terror I’d inflicted in the palace and at the fighting pit of Titheden City.
I trembled, still reeling from the goblin slaughter.
A necessity, yet a reminder of my curse, of what I’d done.
I tried to stop the silent tears rolling down my cheeks.
Caught some, others spilling past my dams. I willed the human to not stop, to not look back at me.
Seeing him look at me with eyes that battled between the truth and the soul bond’s lies would sting.
Not that I cared to have his sympathy, but because he should not see me like this. He’d already seen too much weakness.
He did stop, though, as the path curved to the left.
“I know this place,” he said, turning to face me. “We’re… Oh.”
Goodness! I turned, wiped at my tears. “We’re what?”
He didn’t speak.
“Well?” I tried again.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.” A deep, shuddering breath. The tears were drying up, but my eyes were raw and gritty. “Finish what you were saying.”
“We’re almost at the village of Whistoning. I think. It sits on the edge of the White Wastes.”
I still kept my face hidden. “I know. I should be the one leading you there. These are my lands, remember?” I spoke too bluntly. “Sorry if my tone offended you.” By Danu, talking was exhausting. “How do you know about this village?”
“I… I was told about it.”
By Lasair? “I see. To be honest, I wasn’t paying attention to our direction.” I noticed the ground, though. Pieces of chalk lined the path. I crouched and picked one up. “I should have noticed.”
He didn’t answer.
Yes, I should have noticed. I was letting this human guide me across my own lands. Charged with protecting me or not, I knew my realm better than him.
I considered demanding the compass but refrained.
“The village is on the southwest of the wastes coming from the direction of the palace,” I added.
“Yes. I guessed we’d be reaching it soon.”
“A map in your head?”
“No. Just a guess,” he said.
“Guess is a weak word for it.”
He shrugged. “Assumption? A bit of knowing?”
Were we really having this conversation?
I ended it. “Whistoning is a place I’ve not seen for myself. I do not make a habit of coming over here. They make lovely, perfumed powders, though.”
“Apparently.”
“We could both do with plenty of it.” I faced him now. A ghost of a smile on his full lips. “There are steps cut into the cliffs feeding into the wastes. We shouldn’t have a problem getting down.”
“Hopefully.”
“Your compass really is useful,” I said.
“Thank the gods.”
I shuddered at his words. The gods. There was only one goddess, and that was the blessed Danu, not a collection of three gods. An unseelie belief, a refusal to see the light as always. The true light.
More fool them. More fool this human.
I winced.
Different gods, but the same dogma on the heavens, on the seven hells. At least there was something both sides agreed on. That and the past unity against the Tuatha fae back in ancient times.
Tuatha… Former powers of Winter. Deadly. Cruel. Tyrannical, seeking to cast eternal winter over Faerie. To them, according to records, there was no such thing as the four lands. Only Winter and the Winter Court. No others. No alliances, no shared power. Only the Tuatha’s utter dominance.
Rightfully extinct.
Whereas my bloodline held power and the throne, others governed their countries under us. At least the seelie-aligned. Leading in our stead. To a Tuatha, that could not happen.
Some said the Tuatha fae held a different magic. A darker power with a frozen cruelty. There was no name for it, but it was often cited as the tool to bring eternal winter. Was such a spell possible? I shuddered at the thought.
What kind of becoming could possibly await me in that terrible place?