Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
In the depths of the abyss, a gentle hand touched my face.
Then I heard someone call my name. Soft. Anxious.
“Ottoline.”
Groaning, I cracked my eyes open, processing as the blurry image before me came into focus. As I recognized him, I could have sobbed from the relief.
Roderick was leaning over me, an unreadable yet intense expression in his silvery gaze. It took a while for what had happened to come rushing back into my hazy mind. Once it did, I unstuck my tongue from the roof of my mouth and rasped out, “They locked me in the vault.”
Disapproval pulled his brows together. “Yes.”
Remnants of the terror I’d felt made my heart flutter. I clutched at my chest as I blinked away the traces of sleep, taking in deep breaths through my nose, feeling the precious air fill my lungs again.
I took in the domed ceiling above me and the columns that held it up, the gaps in between them all open windows, revealing a cloudy blue-grey sky. “Where am I?”
Hand under my upper back, he helped me sit up. “The belvedere atop the palace.”
On my elbows, I looked around, careful not to make myself dizzier. I was on a cushioned seat and he was watching me with uncharacteristic concern.
“They’ll notice I’m gone,” I said, feeling scared. “You have to put me back.”
He carefully sat at my feet. “I will, just not yet.”
Somehow, his promise, his calmness, soothed my anxiety.
I lay back with a ragged exhalation, unable to stop watching him.
There was something strange about seeing him in broad daylight, I could see the faint wind play in his white hair, notice that his skin had a pearlescent sheen to it, and that his eyes put the sky to shame.
“How did you find me?” I asked.
“I told you I was going to check up on you,” he said, voice deepening with what sounded like anger. “I didn’t expect him to lock you in a vault with his money.”
“Then what did you expect?”
He looked away, out into the distance of the palace grounds. “The same as the first time.”
“Well, you were wrong.” I sniffled, hand still on my heart. “I felt like I was dying.”
“You could have died,” he said, somber. “I always knew he was cruel and unreasonable, but locking you in there posed a real danger to your life, and therefore to his plans.”
“I think he was punishing me,” I said in a small voice, still feeling weak and cold. “He wanted me to turn the whole vault to gold in an instant and was furious when I couldn’t, so he just…left me in there.”
Left me in there to die.
“People who can’t use magic underestimate just how taxing it can be on the person conducting it,” he said quietly. “He needed to level his expectations.”
“He’s a king. He’s used to having his expectations matched or exceeded, or else heads roll,” I said bitterly.
He huffed an exasperated breath. “That is why I had to take such measures with him, to have any chance of changing his mind.”
I sat up and pulled my legs to my chest, resting my chin on my knee. “On what? Giving citizenship to all the denizens of Faerie, so you can annex the Northlands?”
Sneaking a glance for his reaction, I caught him rolling his eyes. “You think they’d invade the Northlands all of the sudden, when they’ve been right across the ocean for the gods know how long? Or that they’d wait for citizenship to do it?”
“Does that mean it’s all right for you all to come into our lands, and toy with us to your heart’s content, just so you can get what you want?”
Roderick leaned in, elbow on the base of the window frame. “Are you seriously taking Wilhelm’s side in this, after what he’s just done to you?”
“I’m on no one’s side. I’m just trying to understand why I’m in the middle of this mess.”
His eyes met mine, brows slightly raised. “I told you why.”
“And you made no sense. Why would faeries want to be a part of human society if we can’t be a part of theirs without proving ourselves?”
“I don’t want for all faeries to have the right to come here, only those who’ve been here for generations and can’t live in Faerie. This is their home now, for better or for worse. I’m just trying to remove the ‘worse’ part of the situation.”
“So you can be accepted by those who call you Herr Spitzohren?”
“So we can all be protected by the law and be viewed as equal under it as well,” he said, voice harsher with the passion of his conviction. “That will never happen without the king’s approval.”
“And that approval can only come by holding his grandchild hostage,” I concluded dully. “But why do I have to suffer through all this? Because unlike Gertrude, you found me agreeable?”
“Because you will get all the benefits you always wanted when this plan works out,” he said softly, something like regret tingeing his gaze.
“What if it does, and I still don’t get what I wanted?”
He frowned, looking confused. “Why wouldn’t you?”
I turned my head, smushing my cheek against my knee as I looked up at him, heart fluttering again as I met his eyes. “You’ve seen what Wilhelm is like. What if he doesn’t care that his first grandchild is taken away, and just orders me to birth another one?”
“I hadn’t considered that,” he admitted. “But he wouldn’t, not when that would get his entire court to look down at him for such brutality. He might not care about his blood, but he cares about his standing.”
“If he cared what anyone thought of him, he wouldn’t be mistreating the princess new to his care.”
He reached out a hand, as if he wanted to touch me, soothe me, before he curled it into a fist. “No one but Heinrich and select guards know that you’re being mistreated.”
“Roderick, he’s ready to go to war if he doesn’t get his way.” I finally gathered enough strength to sit up, swinging my legs to the floor.
“It’s just a threat,” he said, but didn’t sound too convinced himself. “He wouldn’t sacrifice thousands of his men for this, especially not after he had them fight for Avongart’s sake.”
“I think he would,” I said shakily. “He’s stubborn to the point of madness.”
“Then what do you suggest we do now? Swap you back with your mistress and hope he doesn’t throw her in the dungeon, and fight her father anyway?”
Taking in a deep breath then letting it out, I stared down at the grounds, unfocused. “I can only do what’s required of me: turning the contents of the vault to gold.”
“But it will take days for you to do it. He’ll need to be convinced of that, without keeping you in there for that long. I can try to suggest it to him.”
My mouth dropped open. “You can influence thoughts?”
He sighed. “To a very limited extent. I can sometimes plant suggestions, but nothing more than that.”
“Please do it! This way I can survive doing what he wants and be done with it.”
He mirrored my position, this time resting his hand on my knee in reassurance. “I will, tonight.”
Feeling daring and exasperated all at once, I kicked his leg. “Why not now?”
The corner of his mouth quirked, then he withdrew his touch to wave me off. “I’m not in the mood right now.”
“Then what are you in the mood for, my faerie lord?” I said sarcastically.
“Talking about literally anything else.” He ran a hand through his hair, making it stand up in silver spikes. “Anything but what I’ve been planning for years.”
Glad for a distraction, I searched my frazzled mind for a new topic. “Tell me, where did the faerie population of Orcage come from?”
“There are liminal spaces across the world, mostly here in the North, that can act as portals in and out of Faerie.”
“Like mushroom rings?”
He nodded. “There are plenty all over the country. There’s even one in this palace.”
Intrigue had me sitting straighter. “Really? Where?”
He pointed down at the garden, right at a fountain of four dancing nymphs. “Through there is the court my mother came from. It’s actually how she met my father.”
“He went into the fountain?” I asked, fascinated.
Roderick shook his head, a slight smile on his face. “She came through the fountain one night during a ball celebrating the king’s birthday and just walked in, no invitation or a care to the guards that tried to stop her, and waited for someone to attempt to kick her out.”
I leaned closer, enthralled by the story, by his voice and cadence. By the love radiating from him as he remembered his parents. I had no such emotion for mine. “Then what happened?”
“My father was fascinated by her boldness. He asked her to dance, declaring her his date so the guards would leave her alone, and they spent the whole night in each other’s company,” he said, fondness softening his angular face further.
“They married not long after that, in spite of all the people who warned him not to.”
I didn’t doubt that plenty had cut him off for marrying her.
There was no need to ask about his father, as he was surely dead if the title of baron had passed to Roderick. “Where is she now? Back at your castle?”
“No,” he sighed. “She went back to Faerie not long after my father died. She couldn’t tolerate this world without him.”
“People were awful to her.,” I concluded, his same resigned sigh escaped me. “They only behaved when he was alive and in power.”
He looked at me, as if surprised I understood, and sympathized, then shrugged. “It didn’t matter to them that she was a lady in the Winter Court. All that they cared about was that she wasn’t human.”
“I guarantee they would have treated her the same if he had married someone with no title, like a maid,” I said quietly. “We’re not people to them either.”
His gaze remained soft, but his lips twisted wryly. “It’s making you rethink your desire for this life, isn’t it?”
“Wilhelm’s treatment has done enough of that.” I gave a deeper sigh. “But I still can’t help wanting what my mistress had before we moved here.”
He reached a gentle hand to my shoulder, his touch again soothing something raw within me. “I don’t blame you for wanting that kind of life. It just has to come with these kinds of people.”
I leaned into his hand, struggling with the urge to just rest my aching head on his broad chest. I felt he would let me, and that he would feel like a haven. “If you don’t like them either, then why are you fighting so hard for their approval?”
Roderick chuckled ruefully. “I care nothing about their approval, my dear. What I want is their respect. There are leagues of difference in between both.”
“What if you can’t get it?”
“That’s not an option. I either get this mission done, or I die trying.”
I looked away as my empty stomach tied itself in knots. “The only one likely to die for the sake of your efforts is me.”
His hand squeezed my shoulder, making me meet his eye. “I won’t let that happen. We will both get what we want out of this.”
Giving in, I leaned into him, resting my cold, tear-swollen face on the warmth and power of his chest and exhaled raggedly. “I’m having a hard time believing that.”
His arms came fully around me, and his exhalation mirrored mine. “I’m not asking for your belief, but for your trust.”
I looked at the hand limp in my lap, now capable of something even kings desire.
Because of him. But then everything else was because of him.
I turned in his hold to look up at him, and he loosened his arms at once.
I wanted to tell him to hold me again, but I couldn’t.
Instead I said, “And what have you done to deserve it?”
His arms dropped to his sides and his smile turned alluring and mocking at the same time. “What have I done not to, aside from the deals I made with you?”
In spite of myself, and everything else, I found myself elbowing him and smiling back. “Do I need more than that to distrust you and your pointy ears? Even if we all get what we want out of this and I never have to give up anyone to you, I’m still not keen on putting my heart in your hands.”
My last words wiped the smile off his face. I replayed them in my mind again, and wondered why they had such an effect on him.
But when he spoke again, he sounded sincere for the first time. “What can I do to deserve your trust?”
Breaking with his gaze in favor of the sun as it disappeared behind a dark cloud, I said, “Get me out of this mess in one piece, then we can talk.”