Chapter 7 Andar
We rode south until the sun settled below the horizon.
A few minutes after it sank behind the treetops, the queen stopped us in a large clearing.
This meadow was not crusted over with ice like the last one we’d been in, but patches of frozen water imprisoned tufts of hardy grass.
Splotches of hard-packed soil covered any portion of the clearing without ice, and around the edges of the meadow blossoming plum trees mingled with evergreens.
I swung down from my horse and dug a dried horse snack out of one of the supply bags the musicians had deemed not important enough for them to carry after losing two horses.
My gelding drooled on my hand as he greedily gobbled the treat.
I stroked his mane. When I was younger I would have named him, fawned over him, and grown attached within minutes of taking possession of him.
But that had been another life, before my rise to power and fall to the prison of a lamp.
“This is a good place to stop for the night,” the queen said, dismounting her gelding. It was the first she’d spoken since we started riding. “I’m going to make arrangements for us, and then you’re going to tell me what you’ve been holding back all day.”
I bowed politely, the gesture no less painful than the first time I’d done it, but she hardly noticed. She pointed her hands at the middle of the meadow and waved them upward. The air rippled with magic she directed into a fifty-foot high pillar of ice.
She threw her hands out, and spears of ice burst out of the pillar, growing into castle-like towers and walls. Doors and windows erupted out of sparkling crystals, revealing furnished rooms and glistening halls. A wall rose around the small castle with deadly spikes and strategic crenels.
In mere moments an entire fortress had grown in the middle of the icy meadow.
It was only three stories high and clearly not meant to host the hundreds who would normally live in a castle, but it was still an incredible display of magic and precision.
She turned to me and raised a brow, as if asking what I thought of her work.
I dipped my head toward her. “Impressive.”
Her lips tilted into more of a smirk than a smile. I hadn’t seen her truly smile yet, but she seemed pleased with the compliment. She valued my good opinion—an important step in convincing her to use her last magical request on me.
She retrieved my lamp from her horse’s saddlebag and waved a hand at the ground, melting a large patch of ice and exposing several meals’ worth of grass. The geldings headed instinctively toward the food, and the queen gestured at the small palace. “Let’s talk.”
This was it. The time to test the best of my powers of persuasion. I would have no magical assistance, no help from the mind-influencing magic I’d once studied. Nothing beyond my observations of her desires for connection and the efforts I’d made to convince her that I would provide some.
Would it be enough?
I tied the horses’ leads to a tree and followed the queen into a frozen sitting room, complete with icy imitations of plush chairs and a comfortable settee.
The detail was stunning. I had never attempted to create such a structure from nothing but raw magic and loose water particles, but it would have required a considerable amount of practice for me to come close.
As we settled into ice-made chairs, a concerned expression flitted across her face. “Will you be too cold? You said you knew the summer courts.”
I waved aside her worry. “I am originally from a summer court, but my bond with the lamp removes any discomfort I might feel from temperature.”
“Will you tell me more about your bond to the lamp?”
I nodded. This was what she needed. More trust. More vulnerability from me.
Nothing would drag her to my aid faster, and I could keep my emotions separate from the vulnerability she needed.
“I once led a simple life. I lived on a farm on an island with my grandmother. My parents had died in a war before I could remember them. But I was happy with my grandmother until our island started dying.”
She straightened. “Dying?”
“Yes.” I tapped my finger on my knee. “An island in Veran should grow food easily, but our crops wilted and died. Our animals weakened and died. It seemed our entire island would die if we did not find a way to fight back. Some fae left, but my grandmother was too old and weak. If I could not save the island, she would die along with it.”
I paused to collect my emotions. They’d surfaced somehow, despite my lack of permission for them. Gran was the only person I had ever loved, and discussing her loss hurt in places I couldn’t bury.
I shook my head and continued. “Everyone knows that fae are born with an ability to use wild magic in our natural world, but my grandmother was older than most, and she knew things—”
My voice caught again, and I swallowed quickly.
“She taught me that fae are also born with a well of magic inside ourselves. The size of that well limits how much magic we can harness around us. It’s when we try to use too much that we pass out or hurt ourselves.
She also taught me that we can collect additional magic, learn new ways to harness it, and add it to our natural abilities.
Nobody studied these things then, and I doubt anyone does now.
Everyone just assumes that we have limits, and those with more are noble or royal and those with less are not. But—”
I leaned forward in my seat. “That. Is. Not. The. Case.” Perhaps it was not wise to tell an unbalanced former queen that she could be more powerful than she knew, but it was not likely to make much of a difference.
I’d studied and collected magic for decades before I’d gathered more than my king.
And much of that had been under my grandmother’s tutelage.
But she tipped her head thoughtfully. “I have seen some of this.”
“Oh?” I leaned toward her. “What do you mean?”
She tapped a finger against the icy arm of her chair. “Many years ago, I discovered a way to harness magic in crystals. I wrapped it into lattices and added it to the magic I normally had access to. It allows me to use more magic in stronger ways than most fae.”
I waited for her to elaborate, but she did not.
Apparently that was all the information I was getting from her, so I finished telling the story she’d asked for.
“I left the island hoping to discover what had attacked us and a good way to fight back. Instead, I collected enough magic to distract myself, take over the Sun Kingdom, and be tricked into binding myself to a lamp that limited my power to the wishes of others.”
She folded her arms. “I would like to hear more about being tricked to bind yourself to a lamp.”
Of course she would.
“Brintontoven,” I muttered.
She arched an eyebrow.
“The Sun King’s friend,” I explained. “He was far more conniving than I gave him credit for.” At her silence, I elaborated.
“He brought me the lamp and—under the guise of conspiring with me to finally take the throne—told me that he’d found a way to collect magic in the lamp’s metal, and anyone who bound himself to the lamp would have access to that power.
I felt the magic brimming, ready to burst out of the lamp.
He must have colluded with a dozen other fae to bind so much power.
I bound myself to the lamp without even asking about the limitations of the bond.
His expression when I spoke the binding—”
Fury threatened to overtake my voice. I still remembered his bland smirk when he’d lifted the lamp and waved it tauntingly at me.
“He told me the limits after I tied myself to the lamp’s magic—that I would only have access to the magic to answer the wishes of the fae who owned the lamp, and that I would have no choice in exercising the power to grant such wishes.
I was a slave, held captive by whoever held the lamp. ”
She contemplated my words with a royal expression I could imagine her wearing when petitioners asked her for boons. “And that is why you called me, ‘Master?’”
“Yes.” I clenched my fists to avoid grimacing.
“And now you would like my help in freeing you from the lamp?”
Here was the moment. “I would beg for your help.” I shifted closer to her in my chair, catching her eyes.
“It would be no small favor, and I would hold you in the highest regard for the rest of my life.” I had to be careful not to put myself in her debt or promise any favors.
I needed freedom and could not promise anything that would limit my ability to use that freedom in the future.
I could—and would—hold her in the highest regard without being obligated to do anything further.
She leaned closer to me. “What would you need from me? To be free?”
I dropped her gaze. I could not hold it while I asked for something so big. “I need you to wish me free. To request it from the lamp’s magic. To use your power in holding the lamp to release me from it.”
Silence.
One second passed. Then two and three.
My heart pounded in my chest so loudly she surely heard it.
I had to check her reaction. Had to look at her, knowing I’d asked her to give up access to unlimited magic—something I hadn’t been able to do—in exchange for nothing. For a fleeting hope at a relationship with a fae she’d only met this morning.
She’d leaned back in her chair. Her lips pursed, and her eyes narrowed. When I met her gaze, she spoke. “You want me to use my last request to free you?”
“I do not want it,” I quickly corrected. “I wish there were another option. But I am sure this is the only way for it to happen.”
She drummed her fingers against the armrest of her chair. “I intended to use that magic to help me get revenge on the humans who trapped me in a cavern for forty years.”
Forty years were nothing compared to the centuries I’d been imprisoned, but I doubted that information would help convince her. No, I knew the draw of revenge. I couldn’t expect her to give it up for—
But what if she didn’t have to give it up?
Words rushed to my mind. I rearranged them and substituted them, manipulating the ideas so they’d imply what I wanted. I unclenched a fist. This could work.
In a smooth motion, I shifted from my chair to the ground in front of hers, kneeling.
“Your Majesty,” I said with as much sincerity as I could muster.
“There is no reason for you to give up your revenge. Even without the lamp’s magic, my power is strong enough to achieve almost anything.
I would support your quest for vengeance.
I would bring the world to its knees, at your feet. ”
I spread my arms to my side and bowed while still kneeling. “You should consider me your most loyal companion.” It was a cruel statement, suspecting how much she craved loyalty, but my silver tongue was my only tool in this quest for freedom.
She tapped her chair again. “I will think on it tonight. For now, I’m going to dig through those saddlebags to find something to eat. Perhaps you should take care of the horses?” Her expression was blank, a mask that gave me no hint at her reaction to my proposal.
I stood up. “Very well. Thank you for considering it.”