Episode 121 A Trap for a Faerie
A Trap for a Faerie
Stardust is so happy to see Tharios that she almost breaks down the door to her stall, and Viala watches with amusement as Tharios gives the creature a mock glare.
“Are you making a good impression on your new human friends?” he asks.
Stardust calms as Tharios stares her down, and Viala shakes her head while the grooms watch with wide eyes and parted lips.
Tharios is using his magic to calm Stardust. It won’t last long.
It never does. Unicorn magic is too strong to be affected by even Tharios’s powerful life magic for more than a few minutes.
But it will help them get her out of the stall without her breaking anything in her exuberance to see her beloved Tharios again.
Meanwhile, the humans just think Tharios is a master unicorn handler.
The stable master says something to Tharios in Nunian, and Tharios responds in kind.
Viala tries to pick out some words, but nothing familiar sticks out. It’s such a guttural language. Not like Lothlesian and Elvish, which flow like silk across the tongue.
Will she ever master it? In Lostariel, it never mattered that she hadn’t yet learned Nunian.
But in Nunia, it’s been a lonely few days as everyone speaks Nunian to benefit the humans.
As they should. But even Tharios has been so distracted by other things that he sometimes forgets to translate for her.
As he does now.
With Tharios’s magic calming Stardust, he quickly saddles her and leads her from the stable just in time for his magic to wear off.
Stardust prances around him and shoves her nose into him so hard that he stumbles backward.
“Yes, I’m happy to see you, too. I’m sorry you’ve been neglected. I’ve been a little busy, you know.” He speaks Lothlesian, as he always does when he’s conversing alone with the unicorn. She responds better to the language of the people who bred her than she does to Elvish.
Thank the fates for that, though. It’s the reason Tharios learned Viala’s language in the first place. So he could talk to a unicorn. Such a Tharios thing to do.
He had no idea he’d bind with a Lothlesi princess someday.
Stardust shakes her head and huffs, and Tharios lifts empty hands to her.
“I don’t have any sugared plums. Not everything is about you, you know.
Just be glad I’ve come to liberate you from your poor existence being traumatized by humans who don’t understand that water can only be drunk from a river or lake.
Have they been making you drink from a trough? ”
His tone is mocking, but Stardust lets out the most mournful whinny imaginable, and Viala struggles not to smile.
Father has a unicorn, too. Viala’s witnessed plenty of unicorn shenanigans during her lifetime.
“I will do my best to find you a creek to drink from, but as I said, tonight’s not about you. It’s about her.” Tharios juts his head toward Viala, and Stardust prances again.
“She’s so enamored with you that she only just noticed me,” Viala says, laughing as she steps closer so Stardust can maul her, too. “Not that I blame you in the slightest,” she says to the unicorn. “He’s pretty amazing, isn’t he?”
The unicorn pushes Viala toward Tharios, and Tharios grins at Stardust. “Yes, I still love Viala, she’s still mine, and your matchmaking services are not required. Well, beyond the fact that I’m planning to romance her tonight, and you’ll have to come along for the ride.”
Despite Tharios’s reassurances, Stardust nudges Viala toward him again, and he finally ducks to give Viala a quick peck on the lips.
They’ve already drawn a few onlookers. Who knows what the humans are thinking now?
But Stardust seems satisfied that her dear Tharios is still happily in love with his Lothlesi princess.
Finally, the unicorn stands still enough for Tharios to mount, and Viala climbs up behind him, resting her cheek against his back and wrapping her arms around his waist.
Let the humans think what they will. This elf is hers.
“Where are you taking me?” Viala asks as Stardust gallops on and on, and Tharios doesn’t rein her in.
“Far from everyone and everything, where my only thought is you,” Tharios says over his shoulder, and warmth fills her.
He eventually slows the exuberant unicorn to a walk and crosses the border into Lostariel and the Wildthorne Woods, which Viala wasn’t expecting.
“I thought it might be wise to choose a more isolated location to tempt you to fall in love with me all over again,” he says.
She smiles at his words, resting against his back. Who knows what prompted this behavior from him tonight, but she won’t question it. She’ll just enjoy this uninterrupted time with him.
And a unicorn.
Tharios pulls Stardust to a stop in a small clearing, and Viala looks around. He must have been feeling the terrain with his air magic to locate this spot. He doesn’t have the forest memorized the way Cerian does.
Tharios’s head is full of far too many other random bits of knowledge to make room for all the maps Cerian holds in his head.
Reaching back, Tharios helps Viala off Stardust before climbing down beside her, and he immediately sweeps her into a kiss.
Before she has time to react, he groans and pulls away. “I wasn’t going to do that. I was going to wait to kiss you. Spend the evening talking and laughing and gazing into your eyes first.”
“You really do mean to romance me. Tharios. I’m already desperately in love with you.”
“And I would like to keep it that way, faerie.” He presses his forehead to hers, and memories of the first time he did that warm her heart. How much it meant to him to share that with her. How terrified he was to admit he had fallen in love with her.
How hard she fought her own truth. That her heart already belonged to him.
And when he rests his forehead against hers now, she feels what his words don’t say.
That whatever twist of fate dragged them together, kicking and screaming, he’ll spend all his days fighting to keep them together. That he still wants more than a binding based on convenience. On alliances. On fixing mistakes between them and their kingdoms.
That he wants her. He wants them.
Just as he did that day when he said he wanted love to go with the passion. And he’d do whatever it took to win her heart.
The heart that was already irrevocably his.
Her heart is still his.
And it always will be.
“This is me fighting for you, Viala,” he says softly. “For your heart. For every part of you. Forever.”
Her eyes prickle as she blinks back tears and clings to him. And he holds her in the quiet of the forest, leaves scattered on the ground around them to mark the changing seasons.
Soon, winter will come, as it always does. But eventually, flowers will bloom again. Birds will sing. The beauty of change surrounds them on every side.
It’s one of her favorite parts of this life above ground he introduced her to.
But through it all, her constant is him.
“Dance with me,” he whispers near her ear as the sky grows dark above them.
An elven dance, with its perfectly choreographed steps? That seems out of place here in the forest. And the human dances are so formal. Proper and perfect.
She knows what he’s asking. And her heart pounds at the request.
“Forgive me,” he says. “I promised myself I wouldn’t bring up your magic.”
“You’ll guard it?” she asks, her voice barely audible.
“Yes.”
Breathing out slowly, she nods, and with a caress of his magic, he lets hers go.
It rushes through her like a tidal wave, overwhelming and powerful. Too powerful. Too much to control. Frightening in its strength.
But she harnesses it as well as she can. “Sing for me,” she whispers to the trees. To the leaves and the branches.
Tharios could do it with his plant magic, too, but he always says her magic creates far more beautiful symphonies than his ever could.
And they dance. It’s a give-and-take full of the sensual. Full of touch. Her hands on his neck. His chest. Never leaving his body as they move together to nature’s serenade. His touch makes her flesh sizzle as their magic meets in tiny bursts whenever their hands brush against each other.
He catches her against his chest as stars hang overhead, the passage of time meaningless between them. His breath is heavy on her neck, and her own heart pounds.
“I need you,” he groans. Then he laughs. “We were supposed to talk.”
“Entire conversations can be held without words, my love.”
“And what does this one say?”
“Isn’t it obvious? At the end of the day, there’s only us, Tharios Westaria.” She stares into his eyes as her chest heaves. The intensity of his gaze makes her body tingle with every memory of their shared touch, even as their magic sizzles between their joined palms.
And then the heat of their magic vanishes, his own magic a shield around hers once more.
“I’ve laid a trap for a faerie,” he whispers. “And she fell right into it.” He kisses her with a passion so intense she can barely breathe. Then he pulls away, whispering against her lips. “At least that’s what I thought. But all along, it was her trap snaring me.”
And he finds her lips once more.